You Say You'll Change the Constituti-uh-uh-uhn

Four futures for the ELCA

An old chestnut: How many Lutherans does it take to change a denominational constitution? Well, first it takes multiple synods memorializing a call for a change, which then must be endorsed by a triennial national assembly by memorializing the church council to create a commission, whose work, if any, will then…wait where are you going?

I have heard the actual punchline, about the proverbial light bulb, as either “what’s wrong with the old one?” or “CHANGE?!?” And as apt as that gag may be, it’s hard to see it applying to the governing documents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, my national church body, which just last week voted in our “churchwide assembly” to start a process of constitutional revision, restructuring, and possibly re-other things.

It wasn’t the only thing to happen in the meeting, but it seems to be by far the most consequential.¹ A wholesale rethinking of our governance, organization, maybe even our name is being undertaken, in explicit acknowledgment that all of it was built for a different church in a different time. When our three predecessor bodies merged in the late 1980’s, we were 5.5 million. Now we’re more like 3.5 million, spread over the same 65 synods (and served by eight of the nine seminaries that were functioning when I started my training).

Acknowledging the present reality is good and necessary. If only as a prudent and practical measure, we need to stop stretching ourselves over a structure built for many more of us. But it’s not just the present: we’re on a glide path to functional non-existence by, say, 2040. In my experience, we find it easier to talk about trends and the changes they do and will force than to talk about where those trends will go. Corporate denial and self-deception, especially in the soft manner of acknowledging that things are bad without really saying how bad, are at least as powerful as the individual kinds. But just like individuals, we are making every choice in the face of the default scenario, whether we admit it even to ourselves.

So any possible reorganization of the ELCA will implicitly, and should explicitly, address the present inevitability of our extinction. It would be better to say out loud, every time, “this will be the nth to last churchwide or synod assembly in any recognizable form if present trends continue” and adopt a clear stance toward either altering those trends or honorably embracing them. We’ve been on this glide path for a very long time, so I don’t know what to expect from our response now. But I can see four general possibilities for us to embrace, either deliberately or passively, as we take up the task of imagining a new corporate existence. I’m listing them in what I, with no evidence except vibes, consider an order of increasing probability. And coincidentally or not, that is a decreasing order of my personal preference. One caveat: I’m wrong about most things and I hope I’m wrong about this.

I. Confessional Body Pursuing Evangelism

The Babylonian Authenticity of the Church

We spent the first decade of this century arguing over whether and how to admit people in same-sex relationships to serve openly in ordained ministry.² That question being, in a manner of speaking, settled in 2009, we could in principle have moved ahead in different directions.³ I had hoped, however implausibly, that we would develop our Lutheran confessional identity along the more inclusive and honest lines we had opened up by disambiguating that confessional identity from taboos about sexuality. But a lot of the confessionally-minded theologians had already left for Rome or Orthodoxy in the years preceding the vote, and more than a few similarly-minded pastors left for a new church body afterward. So a reinvigoration of confessional identity is pretty much the opposite of what ended up happening.

Nevertheless, the Scriptures, Creeds, and Lutheran Confessions retain a kind of constitutional monarchy in our governing documents and structures. It remains possible to revisit them as a basis for our identity in a historical moment that is both rapidly de-churching and, within church circles themselves, polarizing along political and cultural lines.

If you’re not familiar with Lutheran Confessionalism and have by the grace of the Holy Spirit read this far, here’s how I’d explain it: in this view, the Lutheran Reformation was not an attempt to create a “new” church, but a statement of certain claims about the nature of faith, the sacraments, and the church which we wished the whole Church to adopt or, at least, tolerate. These claims are collected and defined in documents that we call the Confessions.⁴ They contain not only the central and essential teachings on the nature of faith and justification but other points of doctrine and church order. Confessional Lutherans come in many flavors and political dispositions, but as a group they tend to be more interested in theological arguments, new and old, than in contemporary debates about Biblical criticism or the “modernist/fundamentalist” split in 20th-century Protestantism. They are often committed to the older forms of Lutheran liturgy and to continuity with ancient and medieval liturgy, properly reformed to place the Gospel, preaching, and Sacraments at the center.⁵

Technically, subscription to the Confessions (and above them, to the Scriptures and Creeds) is required for ordination. Practically, we are free to ignore them in pretty much any particular. And indeed, we’ve evolved away from being defined by our confession of faith and toward being defined by our constitution. I can’t remember the last time I heard the Confessions invoked in any official setting, or anything that might sound like a Rule of Faith used to settle a question. I don’t know who I’d name as the most prominent “Confessional” voice in my denomination today.

Without this confessional self-understanding, it isn’t at all clear what our rationale for existing even could be. I have argued that our existence as a distinct church body is, on balance, a bad thing without this grounding in our particular articulation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Apart from it, we are left offering false assurances or false condemnations.

But it’s not too late to reconsider this neglect of our own theology. If anything, the case for a specifically Lutheran articulation of sin and grace, and the objective reality of the Sacraments, has gotten stronger in a world of competing legalisms and proclamations of peace where there is no peace, both within the Church and beyond it. That articulation remains profoundly counter-intuitive, both to people new to Lutheran Christianity and even to those long marinating in it.

That, of course, is part of the problem with this possible future. Something we learned in our long trek from ethnic church bodies to a nationwide denomination and back toward obscurity is that the cultural identities and economic circumstances of our congregations were always the locomotive and the confessional principles the whistle. A revival of confessional faith and witness, and any renewal that could come from it, would require our organizations to be flexible, our cultures to be adaptable, and our teaching and piety to be rigorous in a way that not many of us seem to actually want. To the extent that I have experienced “traditionalism” in the ELCA, it is rarely focused on the Confessions or even our hymnody but about the aesthetics and social practices of 20th-century America. I tend to identify with the ecumenical Protestants, mostly younger than me and mostly online, who promote “inclusive orthodoxy,” and I think that’s the correct position for my church body to hold. But it is an uphill battle on both fronts. It won’t be attempted by default.

And if it isn’t attempted, the pressing question for people like me will be our place in the new dispensation. The danger in rewriting any binding documents for a church body is that the passions, problems, or faulty assumptions of the present moment will be enshrined in a more or less permanent way. If we end up subtly or not subtly diminishing the role of the Creeds and Confessions in our self-definition, some of us might wonder if we still belong in the denomination. Which suggests the second possible future:

II. Force for Ecumenical Unity

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the ELCA was at the center of ecumenical dialogues with pretty much anyone who would sit down with us. This seems to have ended during or after the Great Recession, but not before we’d inked formal agreements burying old disputes and clearing the way for comprehensive cooperation with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and a few others. We agree enough, these documents said, to remove old anathemas, establish “full communion,” and share any and all ministries.

Then we sort of dropped it. Greater unity among closely-related Christians would have been a nice dividend for downplaying our confessional heritage, but having established that our differences need not be church-dividing, we seem to have remained in a state of division because we preferred it. Most of our functional unity projects have happened at the very local level. But all of these agreements are, as far as I know, still in effect, and every partner church is in similar shape. It’s not too late to find ways to practice “organic union,” or at least much closer cooperation.

Collectively, we and our ecumenical partners maintain (or affiliate with) something like thirty-nine seminaries (and this does not count Methodists). We have many overlapping regional governance bodies, campus ministries, military chaplaincies, advocacy offices and philanthropic organizations. If we wanted to, we could merge many of these functions, in a closer or looser fashion, even without sacrificing distinctive practices of worship or credentialing clergy. A handful of consolidated regional seminaries, each lavishly funded by proceeds from the inevitable (and already accelerating) sale of real estate and each having good departments of Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed Studies, could plan for a meaningful presence beyond the time frame in which most of our seminaries will get picked off one by one.⁶ Big, long-shot bets on paths to revival—e.g. a massive investment in campus ministry, sophisticated media presence, or a social crusade of some kind—could be made together or cooperatively by division of labor.

Of course a big Protestant super-church is going to be subject to the same trends of decline that have afflicted each of our groups separately. But on one level it just seems silly and improvident to have these duplicative fiefdoms so long past the time when we could ever articulate their doctrinal rationale, even if we had not explicitly and with votes and all decided to stop articulating any such rationale.

And on another level, it may be that transcending some of these cultural and historical differences would actually open doors to exactly the kind of internal diversity and adaptability we claim to value but find much harder to practice. We might be able to turn some of our frozen or over-committed assets into seed resources for attempts at evangelism we can’t, or won’t, make separately. And a bigger, culturally and historically “broader” church might provide harbors of mutual affinity and support for many church subcultures that are doomed, separately, to fight for space or predominance in our own present structures.

This doesn’t strike me as very likely, but we could absolutely do it if we wanted to. The same general logic, however, can also lead in the opposite direction:

III. Network of Distributed Ministries and Social Services

For reasons I do not understand, we developed a church polity that is both top-heavy and decentralized. This may in part account for the coexistence of considerable grassroots conservatism within the denomination alongside things like the goddess church.

So if we’re not going to use our institutions of unity for confessional revival or ecumenical unification, maybe it’s time to lean the other way and formalize the disposition of assets from a national body that isn’t really working as anyone had hoped. Spin off (or loosely affiliate) the institutions that are fulfilling some kind of mission, explicitly allow congregations and other ministries to form non-geographical networks and covenants, and stop worrying so much about maintaining a national brand and a distinctive denominational identity. Let the goddess enthusiasts and the confessional sticks-in-the-mud do their things without unduly imposing on each other or anyone else.

I honestly don’t know what this would even look like, let alone how it could be formally embraced by our institutions, but it’s a direction with more momentum than the others I’ve mentioned. We’ve lost people to death, boredom, and schism for long enough now that our lacerating self-accusations about the trauma we’ve caused are starting to ring a little hollow. One might reasonably ask why, after so many rapid and frictionless defections and so many apparently heinous institutional crimes, we are bothering to do all of this business together. Would anyone dare to claim that participation in the ELCA is somehow required for salvation, or for true doctrine, or to be considered a Lutheran (let alone a Christian)?

The recent scandal, if that’s the right word, involving the Sierra Pacific Synod and a Spanish-language worshiping community (now called Santa Maria Peregrina) highlights this institutional problem. A badly functioning structure can’t demand even pragmatic cooperation. Maybe a reportedly thriving congregation like Santa Maria should not be subjected to the kinds of hostile and blundering oversight they had to deal with. One putative answer to the problem of “structural racism” is more diversity training. Another is less structure.

A reasonably straightforward dispersal of effects would allow those worshiping communities and charitable auxiliaries with growing, or at least well-defined, missions to go their ways without having to evade, lament, or influence the wider body. Let a hundred flowers bloom. Some will cease to be Lutheran or Christian even in name, which is happening rapidly enough anyway that we can steel ourselves not to complain about it. Others will forge new identities or affiliations, and that can plausibly be called success.

An old colleague, who was by his own account a curmudgeon, wrote a lengthy story on his departure from the ELCA years ago. The bit that stuck with me was actually in the title: that the ELCA had become, or attempted to be, a “programmatic triumphal church” rather than the “missionary servant ekklesia” he ended up seeking out. Our ambition to be a full-service national denomination is not one we can sustain, even if it wasn’t misbegotten from the beginning. And if we don’t want to correct that imbalance by merging with other groups, we can correct it by setting each other free to pursue the charisms and identities that have become more important to us.

Of course none of these options is straightforward or emotionally easy to implement, so there’s always the default scenario:

IV: Voice of Progressive Cultural Christianity

When a group that broke off from the ELCA after the 2009 assembly created a statement of faith, they simply tacked on, incongruously and without a clear confessional or theological rationale, a stipulation that sex can only be allowed within heterosexual marriage. What was the status of this requirement? How did it fit into the architecture of the faith? What would the consequences for violating it, in teaching or in life, be?

These quasi-confessional statements—becoming the Lutheran Church of No Gays—may not answer any theological or church-polity questions but they are good at signaling who does and does not belong. We are now giving ourselves the chance to do something analogous, having directed a yet-to-be-named Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church to be “particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism.” Given what I have experienced of “our shared commitment,” I can only hear this as a slogan, a signal of our alignment with the managerial anti-racism that predominates in many culturally liberal institutions. “Racism” in these settings is not understood, as I think it should be, as a historical phenomenon. We don’t talk as if it arose out of economic production and social organization, and in turn has served to reinforce economic and social inequalities. It’s not even a thing to be fought and conquered through multiracial solidarity based on shared interests. Instead, in our usage, “racism” is almost an abstraction. It’s an eternal enemy within that can (and, by implication, can only) be rooted out by purifying our language, disciplining our unconscious habits, and rigorously credentialing our institutions.

I don’t think managerial anti-racism correctly states the problem and even if it did, I don’t think its standard solutions would do anything to fix it.⁷ But the highly evolved and precise language of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusivity does something very well: it signals who does and does not belong within the culture of an institution that uses it.

And I can’t deny that this rhetorical turn in my denomination can serve a useful purpose. As more conservative church institutions, willingly or by default, vacate whatever confessional positions they once held and drift toward the grim race, gender, and immigration-related rhetoric of Christian nationalism, the people who rightly feel abandoned by this drift will want and need a place to feel at home in their faith.

So there is an opportunity here, if we want to call it that, for church bodies all over the map to signal their cultural positioning in a way that gathers the stragglers of other groups while gently nudging anyone who doesn’t fit toward the door. For anyone who considers “church” or “Christianity” a thing one ought to be involved in, for whatever reasons, it is in some sense rational to sort ourselves into communities that more clearly reflect the real dominant voices in our society. Why try to fend off both Robin DiAngelo and Tucker Carlson? “Because they’re both wrong” is the answer I’d give, but that would be glib. We make peace with all kinds of wrongness, and picking more fights than are strictly necessary is itself a choice with consequences.

So while I myself don’t want to be part of the Lutheran Church of Doing the Work, I can see the urgency. It just comes with costs we aren’t great at acknowledging. Theologically, the contemporary rituals of self-accusation and self-praise are two sides of the same fundamentally legalistic, solipsistic attitude toward justice. And as social witness, we have advanced our rhetoric of justice even as we seem to have dimmed our hopes and our advocacy for material equality. We have the seemingly unbreakable habits and expectations of a middle-class church. We are tied at the parish level to a definition of clergy vocation that normally requires housing and health insurance costs our congregations crush themselves to provide.⁸ We’re pretty quiet on housing affordability and seem committed to using the Affordable Care Act markets for seminarians and as a benchmark for our clergy rather than pushing for universal coverage.⁹ In an environment of widespread economic precariousness, for clergy and many worshipers alike, our official statements and resources still characterize ourselves as inherently and eternally privileged.

I could go on, at the risk of cramming even more public-policy issues into a church-polity box. I don’t think these are remotely definitional issues of faith or doctrine, but they’re important for how we conceive of and organize ourselves. We can use our central denominational institutions to cultivate a brand of equity while our essentially congregational structure makes it impossible to ensure equal pay and equal access to good calls for women, LGBTQ people, or people of color, let alone to address the wider inequalities in which our provincial failures are situated. That strikes me as a likely source of frustration and ongoing accusation.

But maybe frustration and accusation are inevitable. Each path involves some loss for the sake of some possible gain. Perhaps by playing our position out—as history, circumstance, and our own choices have assigned it—we will be able catch whatever unexpected movement the Holy Spirit makes in the world. Well and truly do I, and many of us, need to hear it said: The spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. If stranger things than revival have never happened, we’re all in the wrong business.

We-e-ell You Know, We’re All Doing What We Can

Jokey “Revolution” framing notwithstanding, this is a very important topic for me. I’ve given my adult life to the ministry of what we like to call “this church.” I love its people, and am grateful beyond words for the gifts of grace God has given me here. I am at peace with the possibility that my work will not be justified by any visible posterity but only by the eternal weight of a million forgotten moments. But I would wish that our life and witness as a church body would endure, in some form, and lead people to God’s Kingdom.

So for anyone likewise invested in the future of this harried assembly, and for myself, I’ll end with an exhortation: the visible structures of the church will be what we make of them, and it’s time to take responsibility for what we think they can and should be. Start or join a network that proposes a clear future direction, make yourself heard, and try to get others involved. I do not love our tagline “God’s Work. Our Hands.” But while there is no end to the making of constitutions, here, at least, the slogan is true.

1. Full disclosure: I was asked to stand for election to the churchwide assembly last year at our synod convention and was decisively not elected. I regularly forget that this even happened so I don’t think it has colored my perception of the assembly but take it for what it’s worth.

2. Not how this would be framed today, admittedly, but these were the terms of the debate.

3. There were two schisms in this period, one following our full communion partnership with the Episcopal Church and one following that 2009 assembly. I wrote about the latter here.

4. The relationship between the Confessions and the other authorities goes, as I was taught, like this: the Scriptures are the sole norm for faith and life, acting as a normative authority over all else. The Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds are accepted as valid explications of the Scriptures. The Confessions, having an authority still downstream from this, are accepted as true witnesses to the Scriptures and Creeds.

5. Another way to put this is that we tend to be insufferable dweebs.

6. This has started happening in a limited way with local partnerships forged out of necessity. A more focused and deliberate plan could make more things possible.

7. I think a lot about James Baldwin’s line about “racial good works” in his essay on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I have a lot more to say about managerial anti-racism as a technique and an ideology but for everyone’s good I won’t try to say it now.

8. Since we rejected even a reformed or evangelical ethic of clerical poverty, celibacy, or communal living a long time ago, the only adaptations to current economic circumstances we seem to have available are to push bi-vocational ministry (where you work another, even primary job to meet your material needs) or to have a partner who can provide adequate financial security.

9. I am told of a time in the distant past when the denomination paid for health insurance in full. The particular evolution of our social witness alongside the process of pushing this cost down to parishes and clergy households is not something we discuss but probably should.