Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

The fifth issue is about the Church as a divine institution and the challenge of the democratic
cult of egalitarianism. We live in a democracy, and we have a right to be thankful for that. Democracy
is a form of government, as Abraham Lincoln orated in his Gettysburg Address, “of the
people, by the people, and for the people.” But the church is not a democracy. It is not “of the
people and by the people.” It is of God! Christ is king, the Lord of the church. Mistakenly we
often take our doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” to mean that we are all equal in the
church. The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is important; it means that we all have
equal access to Jesus Christ who is the sole Mediator between God and human beings. It is not a
definition of the church. Ordination is a sign that God calls certain ones to be leaders. Hebrews
13:17 says: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls.”
Some are shepherds, some are sheep. Authority in the church must be a function of the ministry
to which God has given special responsibility to make the church the church, where the gospel is
truly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. Gnostics don’t like that and never
have.

Read the whole thing here.

the ELCA has succumbed to the same ailment as liberal
Protestantism. What is that? Modern Protestantism is an amalgamation of historic
Christianity and the principles of the Enlightenment, its rationalism, subjectivism, and
anthropocentrism. The underlying assumption is the neo-gnostic belief in the innerdwelling
of God, such that everyone is endowed with the inner light that only needs to
be uncovered. The light of truth does not shine through the Scriptures and the Christian
tradition as much as through scientific reason and individual experience. This is what
happened in Minneapolis: appeals to reason and experience trumped Scripture and
tradition, punctuated with pious injunctions of Lutheran slogans and clichés. The majority
won. And they said it was the work of the Spirit, forgetting that the Holy Spirit had
already spoken volumes through the millennia of Scriptural interpretation, the councils
of the church, and its creeds and confessions.

Read the whole thing here

I hear instead a great deal of scolding about the bad manners and overheated rhetoric of
traditionalists. These are certainly real enough, though not universal. I have counseled
traditionalists to beware the poisonous affects of anger and resentment, and I will continue to do
so. But the demand for civility is a time-honored ploy by the powerful, deliberate or not, to
control or exclude the less powerful: “You don’t get to speak unless you speak politely, and we
decide what’s polite.” This is a distraction from the far more significant question: What will the
powerful do with their power? The future of the ELCA will in large measure be determined by
the degree to which those who support the Assembly actions are practically committed to
retaining fellowship with those who reject them. Traditionalists should be ready to acknowledge
and respect such commitment when it appears, and that will require spiritual discipline and selfcriticism
on our part. But the traditionalists do not have the power to decide whether space will
be provided for them in the ELCA.

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here Click on the services for February 21.