“Lutheranism must change or die” is how the Rev. Dr. Lawrence Rast summarizes the 1840s hysteria of a General Synod Lutheran seminary professor named Benjamin Kurtz (1795-1867), as found in Rast’s outstanding introduction to the 2007 reprint of Charles Porterfield Krauth’s The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (1871).

This panicky penchant for change sounds very much like today’s fear that the LCMS is dying, and it must change to “reach Gen-Z!” Twenty years ago, the exact same pearl-clutching was happening over our need to change in order to “reach the Millennials!” In fact, the noted atheist bishop John Shelby Spong wrote a similar screed in 1998 called Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Well, Spong died three years ago, and we’re still here.

Kurtz was very much opposed to the LCMS and the other “Old Lutherans.” According to Rast, Kurtz believed that “Old Lutheranism’s outmoded theology and liturgical practice could not be meaningful to the advanced mind of the 19th century United States” and believed that the Old Lutheranism was “deficient in character.” Kurtz thought we focused too much on the sacraments, did not approve of closed communion, felt that we should be more open to cooperation outside of our own church body, and accused us of Romanism.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Kurtz held to a progressive (rather than conservative) worldview, and was “frustrated with those who appealed to the older expressions” (Rast). As far as looking to the fathers of the church, Kurtz opined:

The Fathers - who are the “Fathers?” They are the children; they lived in the infancy of the Church, in the early dawn of the Gospel day. John the Baptist was the greatest among the prophets, and yet he that was least in the Kingdom of God, in the Christian Church was greater than he. He probably knew less, and that little less distinctly than a Sunday-school child, ten years of age, in the present day. Even the apostle Peter, after all the personal instructions of Christ, could not expand his views sufficiently to learn that the Gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles, and that the Church of Christ was to compass the whole world. A special miracle was wrought to remove his prejudices and convince him of his folly. Every well-instructed Sunday-school child understands this thing without a miracle, better than Peter did. Who, then, are the “Fathers”? They have become the Children; they were the Fathers when compared with those who lived in the infancy of the Jewish dispensation; but, compared with the present and advanced age, they are the Children, and the learned and pious of the nineteenth century are the Fathers. We are three hundred years older than Luther and his noble coadjutors, and eighteen hundred years older than the primitives; theirs was the age of infancy and adolescence, and ours a full-grown manhood. They were the children; we are the fathers; the tables are turned.”

It’s important to note that Kurtz was a 19th century “influencer,” a publisher and writer with a following and the ability to shape opinion.

Kurtz’s progressivism shines forth in this quote from him cited by Rast:

Revolutions do not go backwards; the Reformation of the 16th century was emphatically a revolution in the sentiments and dogmas of Christendom, and you will never turn the church back into that night of barbarism and spiritual bondage out of which she emerged at the Reformation, while the Holy Spirit makes men free with the liberty of Christ.

According to the progressive worldview, “turning back the clock” is anathema, and some will argue that it simply cannot be done. As to “turning back the clock,” C.S. Lewis mused on how it can not only be done, but should be done in some cases, as he writes in Mere Christianity:

First, as to putting the clock back. Would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from that whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

For all of the vociferous cries for change, there is a stubborn conservative streak among many in the Gen Z cohort - conservative, and even reactionary. The younger Lutherans of this ilk are quite intense and intentional about it: being committed to tradition in our Lutheran sense: a high view of the Book of Concord as a right exposition of Scripture, an exclusively liturgical approach to worship, a rejection of modern mores concerning men, women, family life, and contraception, and desiring even the restoration of very old Lutheran customs, like full eucharistic vestments, incense, and ladies covering their heads in worship.

In spite of this trend, the calls for change today are many and varied, although the one constant is that we need to ditch the liturgy. This has been the battle cry since the birth of the Church Growth Movement. It doesn’t work in the 21st century, they say. We need to find new expressions (new measures?) to reach modern people, especially the youth, they say. Our churches are shrinking - not because of our faithlessness in being fruitful and multiplying, not because we went through several generations of birth control - but rather because that which was effective for 2000 years (as Christians) and 500 years (as Lutherans) suddenly won’t work anymore, they say.

We have to change and be “entrepreneurial” - especially in abolishing the Mass and other traditional forms and expressions of worship. Our staunch commitment to our confessions - including Article 24 - is holding us back. Our hymns are also relics of the past that stand in the way of progress. A previous synod president’s ideal for our synod reflected a similar “forward thinking” progressivism, and was summed up in his bromide of somewhere near 20 years ago: “This isn’t your grandfather’s church.”

Today, the approach is a little different. Progressives often pay lip-service to our doctrine, and sometimes even to our liturgy (“Hey, I wear robes, I love the liturgy, but…”). Sometimes, however, in the same breath, they argue that we’re too concerned about doctrine, we’re a “purity cult,” (whatever that means). And as for worship, we really need to be less rigid and be willing to throw away things we treasure in order to “find new expressions to reach the youth” (in other words: ditch the liturgy). Interestingly, they will sometimes even appeal to their pedigrees as sons and grandsons of generations of LCMS pastors (Kurtz likewise had an impressive genealogy, his disdain for the past notwithstanding).

Some progressive voices in the LCMS are more radical than others: promoting so-called LGBTQ acceptance, “pronoun hospitality,” and “gender affirming care.” Some argue for expanded roles for women in our leadership and ministries. Some have taken a deep dive into woke ideology. But whether radical or moderate, our progressives share a worldview dedicated to change, whether rapid or gradual, and they all justify their progressivism, because, let’s say it together, boys and girls and others:

“Lutheranism must change or die.”