Here it comes! That beautiful Gottesdienst steed, bolting forth to a mailbox near you, if you subscribed; if not, quick, fix that little matter right now! The cover and table of contents have already prominently displayed on this website for some time, and now the goods are on their way. And you’ll want to see the issue, because this issue is a hot one, and I suspect we’ll even be seeing quite a bump in readership. It’s a Reformation issue, and it deals with 1517. Not the date, the organization; it has a flashy website, puts on conferences in many places, and attracts many confessional Lutherans. But we have confessional and liturgical concerns, and we are providing them herein, that our readership may be better informed. Here’s an excerpt.

The reason I find [the account of the Crypto-Calvinist controversy in Wittenberg] a fascinating one to review is that it has some possible points of comparison with a similar situation facing the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod today. While to be sure there is no evidence of any secret or nefarious plotting or planning on the part of those whose doctrine is not congruent with what we believe, teach, and confess according to the Lutheran Confessions, there is nonetheless a kind of stealth, if one can call it that, that can be detected in our midst.

I refer to an impressive looking website that sports the innocuous and simple Reformationesque name “1517.” (www.1517.org, also known as 1517 Publishing). This organization has been getting the attention of a great number of confessional Lutherans in recent years, and they appear to have in their list of supporters and participants a great many associates whose names and good reputations are familiar to us, and who are affiliated with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, though one wonders whether all the names listed are really involved.  If the rumors are true that this organization is loaded with millions of dollars, then it would also be easy to see how a scholar would be glad to be a speaker at some event they happened to sponsor if they offer thousands for one lecture and perhaps for that alone his name appears on the list. In any case, a good number of people have been giving them favorable reviews and kudos, and among those people are some in our own circles who have the respect of many. But what is this organization, and just what sort of teaching do they represent? Why are they so heavily peppered with LCMS names, how are those individuals associated with them? We have to believe in the likelihood that a good number of those people in particular, who have good theological reputations and whom we ourselves respect, must not be fully in step with what we have found to be some questionable aims of the organization itself, but are more tangentially involved.

So, dear friends of the Lutheran Liturgy, update your subscription if needed, and watch your mailbox!