It was a tumultuous week for Lutherans in the United States. The ELCA released the long anticipated (dreaded among some) recommendations of the Sexuality Study. Meanwhile the LCMS was mired in their own controversy – a legal dispute of a trademark on the name of a radio show canceled by Synod.

I am sure that Sarah, a one-time member of the task force which produced the current recommendations, will have something to say about it as her time in Europe allows, but from my admittedly outsider perspective it is hard to describe it as anything but a disappointment. It is a sad reaffirmation, along with the publication of separate hymnals and now separate Study Bibles, that each Lutheran denomination here in the US is content to act as if they are satisfied with the ecclesial breach among Lutherans and make decisions that may well be within their jurisdiction as a denomination but by right belong to the wider church. From an evangelical catholic perspective it is hard to see the recommendations as anything other then yet another nail in the sectarian coffin of the ELCA.

Missouri, of course, has a sectarian problem of a different nature. This week saw the heightening of tensions surrounding a radio program that was canceled by the LCMS a few months back, officially, for financial reasons. That reason, of course, has never set well with the followers of the radio program who roundly praise it for its strongly confessional and catechetical approach. The current manifestation of the dispute centers on who owns the title to the program “Issues Etc.” As the rhetoric heats up, one side claims that this is yet another attempt by the LCMS inc., to silence one of the few confessional voices in the LCMS. The other side claims that this is simply political grandstanding – an attempt to equate the protection of Synod’s copyright (which it may or may not hold) with a lawsuit filed against synod over the last convention.

About the only thing that is clear in all of this in listening to both sides its that the current flare-up probably has more to do with unresolved bad blood from the original canceling of the show than anything else. It seems to be what we in Missouri do best, never finding reconciliation or healing, just new outlets for old disputes.

The continuing internal sectarian squabbles that plague Missouri, become even more distasteful when our sisters and brothers in the ELCA face the possible rending of their church, and we have no lifeline to offer.

Perhaps Missouri’s failings began a couple of conventions ago when it condemned the ELCA as “a heterodox body”, thereby washing its hands of any responsibility for joint theological work. It allowed the LCMS to go about its work unencumbered by the inconvenience of reference to the opinions of the ELCA. It likewise freed the ELCA from the LCMS and its influence. Of course, the “heterodoxy declaration” was itself probably just another nail in the sectarian coffin of both churches that had been fueled by the Lutheran Book of Worship debacle that led to a Missouri version of the hymnal, which itself probably had roots in Missouri’s theological controversy in the late 60s and early 70s.

It was a tough week to be Lutheran in the United States. There were no winners this week only one great loser – the continued compromised witness of the once proud, but ever growing irrelevant, ecclesiastical community known as “Lutheran.”