Book Reviews

  Living Together as Lutherans: Unity within Diversity

  H. George Anderson, Herbert W. Chilstrom, Mark S. Hanson

  Augsburg Fortress, 2008. $9.99. 74 pp.

 The twentieth anniversary of the ELCA provides a great     opportunity to assess where we stand with the Lutheran tradition in North America. In Living Together as Lutherans the three presiding bishops of the ELCA, past and present, comment on the issues that this church has faced and continues to face today.

 To set the stage, Susan Wilds McArver, associate professor of church history and educational ministry at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary writes a brief history of what she calls the “long, complicated, and sometimes fractious family tree” of Lutheranism that led to the birth of the largest body of Lutherans in North America. She covers the ALC, the LCA and the AELC, as well as the two differences that we’ve struggled with most in the ELCA: full communion with the Episcopal Church and human sexuality. This 20-page summary is worth the price of the book .

 H. George Anderson points out that we are not the only denomination to have struggled with issues of human sexuality. While some denominations have been torn apart by the debate, we have maintained our unity in spite of difficult conversations. He points out, “our theology, our history, and our ecclesial structure have made us skeptical of extremes and extremists. “ (p. 23) Three principles undergird our theology and ecclesiology: 1. We recognize the pervasiveness of human sin, 2. We believe that truth is expressed in paradox, 3. We understand sin to be prevalent in the church as a human institution.

Anderson points out that there are 25 Lutheran bodies in the U.S. After the ELCA, LCMS, WELS and other ethinic bodies, the remaining 15 groups were formed by schism. The Fellowship of Lutheran Congregations broke off from the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation, which broke off from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The Evangelical Lutheran Conference and Ministerium in North America broke off from the Lutheran Synod and Ministerium in the USA, which broke off from The American Association of Lutheran Church which broke off from the ELCA. He quotes a modified Jonathan Swift: “Big fleas have little fleas / Upon their backs to bite ‘em / And little fleas have littler fleas / And so ad infinitum.” As Maria Ehrling points out, there are two ways to be Lutheran in North America: division or unity.

 Herbert Chilstrom addresses the growing tendency to interpret the Bible in a way that is foreign to Lutheran tradition: as if all of the Bible had equal authority. The Baltimore Declaration of the ULCA (1938) distinguished between the more important and less important parts of the Bible. Joseph Sittler said the Bible must be read from the center, its witness to Jesus Christ, not from the edges. In his autobiography, Frank Schiotz, the first president of the ALC made it clear that the consensus among Lutheran theologians was that neither Luther nor the symbolic writings placed any emphasis on the inerrancy of Scripture. The Bible is the source and norm of the Christian faith. The true authority for the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ, to whom the Scriptures bear witness.

 Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson contends that the church’s unity should not be based on avoiding arguments, but quite the opposite. There are things worth wrestling with. Being evangelical, speaking the good news of Jesus to a culture where people believe they are what they accumulate requires an edgy gospel. What we need is more tension in the ELCA. Tension around what it means to be a whole church, rather than isolated congregations, tension around the centrality of worship (worship attendance is now at 30% of membership, an all time low), tension around the interplay of unity and diversity (we are still a 97% white church body).  Diversity is not a romantic liberal agenda, but a challenge of how the church must grow if it is to be a global movement in a global society.

 He ends on a note of hope. The ELCA is a maturing church. We are only twenty years old and yet we have five full communion partners, we have been part of the Joint Declaration with the Roman Catholic Church, and we are learning and growing. This 74-page book is a quick read that every pastor and rostered leader should pick up to understand the denomination in which we serve.