The Large CRTechism
The recently published annotated Large Catechism has a lot of great stuff in it: outstanding theologians and commentary on the Large Catechism, including, of course, the text itself. However, there are parts that have caused offense as well. In his Easter Sermon of 1540, Luther says, “Just as good wine or precious medicines are corrupted by a single drop of poison or other impurity, and the purer they are, the more readily defiled and poisoned.”
Some of the socio-political aspects of this work are reminiscent of statements by Pope Francis: squishy, ambiguous, and self-contradictory political pronouncements regarding sexuality that leave us scratching our heads. There is wokeism in this volume, a tidbit of which I will share. There is political leftism being put forth on political hot-button issues - including the second amendment, immigration, sexuality, and race. It is as though the ELCA has wheeled a Trojan horse to the doorway of the Purple Palace, and Missouri is dispatching a welcoming committee and sending a thank you card for the gift.
Warren L. Malueg-Lattimore’s essay “The Fifth Commandment: Hatred as Murder,” takes up the topic of racism, and ironically calls for “racial reconciliation,” while denigrating white people. Of course, this is so ubiquitous in the world that we have all essentially become used to it. Antiwhitism masquerades as “anti-racism,” and we are constantly harangued about “whiteness” - treating it as a disease or a pathology. Sadly, a lot of young white people are trapped in a cycle of self-loathing as a result. I can only imagine the backlash that will result when time and life experience kick in, and people open their eyes to the grift. It won’t be pretty.
This antiwhiteism is ungodly for many reasons. First of all, God made us white, black, and whatever other adjectives we choose to employ. Neither white nor black people have reason to hate themselves or be put to the back of the bus - regardless of what people who lived a long time ago, who looked like us, did to other people who lived a long time ago, who looked like someone else. The amount of melanin in our skin is theologically irrelevant in terms of whether or not one is human, part of God’s creation, a sinner, is redeemed by Christ, and part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
But one place where racial matters are reflected in the Ten Commandments pertains to the fourth commandment: to honor our fathers and our mothers - which means to honor our ancestors. All ethnic groups are plagued by sin and shameful histories, and all ethnic groups also have nobility and laudable heroes in their genetic makeup. Whether one is white, black, or other, one is obliged to honor one’s ancestors. While we are not to excuse sin, the eighth commandment ought to hold sway as well. We are not to honor those of a particular ethnicity while degrading those of a less favored race.
Today, the favored race is black, and the despised race is white. This racial hygiene or hierarchy is called “social justice” or “equity.” Antiwhitism is supposed to be a payment for antiblackism of years past. White people are expected to sit atop the stools of repentance, to shut up and “listen,” and take part in Maoist style “struggle sessions” - regardless of their individual innocence of the accusations. This is common and mainstream in our neo-socialist godless and graceless culture to the point of ubiquity. Why this is being admixed into our church is a mystery.
We in the LCMS are constantly harangued for being 95% white. The ELCA is even whiter. But black people in America are a mere 13% of the population, and they are historically part of religious bodies that are not part of the Lutheran confession. None of that matters. We don’t have enough diversity. In other words, there are too many white people. Our diversity would improve, and we would be better off, if a plague wiped out three quarters of the so-called Caucasian population. For our Social Justice brothers and sisters (if we are still considered brethren to them) are concerned about percentages. Those percentages would be more to their liking if we had a great white die-off, and frankly, the world would like nothing more.
It is not a problem when there is a lack of racial or ethnic diversity among, say, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya. There is no angst that these church bodies are not diverse enough, with outreach programs to reach and recruit whites and Asians. Nor is it surprising that we have few Greeks in the LCMS - as most are Greek Orthodox. Nor is it a scandal that we don’t have a lot of Italians in our synod - as they are far more likely to be Roman Catholics. The fact that the ELCA’s diversity scorecard is about the same as us - their extreme leftism and institutional antiwhitism and wokeism notwithstanding - is proof that this isn’t a result of some kind of racist right-wing conspiracy (aka systematic racism). We are a confession that is largely northern European in ancestry - at least in the USA. Obviously, Lutherans on the continent of Africa are overwhelmingly black.
Who cares? We are all souls created and redeemed by God. Why is this nonsense being tracked into the holy church and wiped on the carpet?
The secular antiwhitism in the Rev. Malueg-Lattimore’s essay is easily seen in one of the footnotes, in Black and white:
“The deaths of a number of unarmed Black [sic] citizens at the hands of white individuals or police officers sparked widespread protests and turmoil in recent years and especially in 2020. Many churches sought ways to promote racial justice and healing.”
This is, of course, a leftist interpretation of the George Floyd riots, and a deliberate cherrypicking of crime statistics involving racial breakdowns. But the real obvious agenda is demonstrated in the the uppercasing of Black and the lowercasing of white, which is only defensible based on a kind of Master Race premise: a kind of racial supremacy. One can imagine the outcry if White were uppercased and black were lowercased. It would be equally outrageous. But the former has become politically-correct, even to the point of mainstream style guides - the same ones that dictate how to talk about sexuality and discourage the use of AD in favor of CE - pushing this racialist agenda.
Why should Christians denigrate either ethnicity or skin tone? How is the author not doing the very thing that he decries? And yes, I’m familiar with the woke gaslighting in offering convoluted explanations of this, and I don’t buy it. The boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes is pointing out the obvious, that which our eyes and ears tell us. This is naked racialism, but of the secularly acceptable kind. There should be no place for this in the church.
So it seems that the LCMS is at least open to the world’s racialist wokeness. Are we now going to define sin in such a way that only white people can commit certain transgressions? That is what secular workplaces, government, and universities teach. And it seems that our Concordias also have a woke problem. The Rev. Dr. Gregory Schulz was right all along.
Too bad Dr. Schulz wasn’t asked to write an essay in this new release.
This shows how important it is for confessional Lutherans to assert themselves and courageously confess in our church and all her institutions. The time for appeasement and fear is over. We need to start pushing back and speaking out. They wanted us to notice. Well, we’ve noticed.