Notes

ELCA-LCMS Indifference

In early January of 1988, the very first week of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, veteran historian and observer of the Missouri Synod E. Theodore Bachmann made some prescient comments to an inter-Lutheran group. Princeton Pastor John Mark Goerss hosted the event, now an endangered species, and saved a copy, here excerpted.

Neither then nor now—so it seems—do we take time to listen to one another, or to hear each other out. Who today, in the ELCA—the church body to which I belong—knows the power struggle going on in “Missouri”? Who today knows, or much cares, in the ELCA about the mounting forces of the Reactionary Right that are seeking to gain control of the LC–MS? Who in the ELCA looks far enough ahead—let alone, looking back—to realize the immense cost, confessionally and ecumenically, should these two major bodies of Lutherans in America drift out of touch? Indifference—and I surely pray it is not willful or prolonged—tells as much about one side as about the other. Our church bodies are not our own, for we all belong to Jesus Christ. . . .

As I see it, the ELCA’s manifest ecumenical concern remains badly flawed—particularly as to the ELCA’s own self-understanding—so long as it gives no, or too little, attention to its confessional next of kin. Are not confessional and ecumenical concerns part of the same challenge within the universal church?

Oswald Bayer’s English Festschrift

Earlier this autumn, Oswald Bayer celebrated his 80th birthday with friends, colleagues, and family in Tübingen. To mark the occasion and share in the celebration, English-speaking scholars unveiled a volume of fitting essays in his honor: Promising Faith for a Ruptured Age: An English-Speaking Appreciation of Oswald Bayer edited by John T. Pless, Joshua C. Miller, and Roland Ziegler (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2019). Sixteen essays follow a foreword by Oliver K. Olson, including several from familiar LQ authors such as Roy Harrisville, Robert Kolb, Mark Mattes, James Arne Nestingen, Steven D. Paulson, and Jeffrey Silcock.