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Up one levelPrayers for The Season of Lent (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Season of Lent, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Prayers for The Post-Christmas and Epiphany Season (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the post-Christmas and Epiphany Season, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Prayers for Advent and Christmas
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Advent and Christmas Season, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Women in Theology: One Man’s Memoir
Time was when theology, theologizing, doing theology, studying theology, arguing theology was considered a man’s job, something like waging war, throwing down empires, toppling thrones, and establishing republics. The few women engaged in theological pursuits appeared Amazonian, mannish. The women at Port Royal, Blaise Pascal’s sisters among them, drew the hatred of pope and king, not just for their Jansenism. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, whose salon was the center of the eighteenth-century literary world, flooded Paris’s bookstalls with pamphlets on republicanism and Protestant faith and was exiled by Napoleon, who believed the female’s principal function was to produce babies. Mary Ann Evans, translator of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, traveled under the name of “George,” and anyone who has seen a photograph of Dorothy Sayers will scarcely denominate her a sex symbol. Theology was a man’s job...
Three A’s for Advent: 3. Aurelius Augustine
I am Aurelius Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, North Africa. I was born and grew up in the small town Tagaste, fifty miles inland from the coastal town of Hippo, but I went to the university in Carthage—the big city that the Romans centuries before had completely destroyed as only the Romans could. I was of a dark complexion because my parents were Berber Africans, but because of my father Patricius’s influence and my classic education, I was culturally Roman through and through. Nothing would destroy my identity with Rome, even though I spent most of my life in North Africa...
Three A’s for Advent: 2. Ambrose
I am Ambrose, bishop of Milan, Italy. It was in this northern Italian city that I once served as a Roman consular. A consular is something like a governor, much like Pontius Pilate in Judea centuries ago. Sixteen out of the over one hundred provinces in the Roman Empire at my time were governed by a consular. My father held a similar position in the conquered territories of Gaul, and at an early age I was introduced to leading Roman officials who came to our home to visit. It was not surprising that my father, who had the same name as I, Ambrosius, made sure that I was schooled in the subjects that led to becoming a lawyer. I loved the reading of the Greek classics, Homer and the Greek dramatists, and I loved the training I received in the art of rhetoric: the ability to deliver words to educate, to delight, and to persuade. This was of foremost importance for lawyers and statesmen...
Three A’s for Advent: 1. Athanasius
My name is Athanasius. Athanasius? I sense that that is an unusual name for you who live in the twenty-first century. It was, however, a common name during the century before the fall of the great city of Rome in A. D. 410. Of the other two church fathers who will come to visit you during this Advent Season, I am the oldest. In fact, some historians believe I was born in the third century, maybe about the year A.D. 298, so I can speak about events and personalities in the Roman Empire that the other church fathers will not be able to. For example, in my lifetime, from A.D. 298 to 373, members of the orthodox Catholic Church experienced torture, persecution, and often martyrdom under the Emperors Diocletian and Galerius, who reigned from A.D. 284 to 311. Later in my lifetime, Christians suffered political intimidation and persecution during the brief reign of the reactionary Emperor Julian the Apostate, who attempted during his brief three-year reign of the Empire to return the people to the worship of the pagan Roman gods...
What's Up with Lutherans Indeed?
Recently a Reformed blogger named Kevin DeYoung called the Evangelical world’s attention to the absence of Lutherans from the wider American Christian conversation. Well, at least someone noticed we’re here! Kevin, here’s my response...
Prayers for the Pentecost Season Through Christ the King
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books "O Lord, Teach Me to Pray" based on the Small Catechism, and "We Believe" based on the Augsburg Confession, continues his series of prayers for the church, now for the remainder of the season of Pentecost - Series A. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Crush on a Calvinist
It’s been a year now since the lauded and laureled Marilynne Robinson came to Strasbourg for the public celebration of the French translation of her latest novel, Home. Her appearance gave me the reason I’d been needing to settle down and read her three novels. Simply as human stories, the novels are wonderful, with a kind of restraint and gentle exploration of pain and delight worlds away from the sensationalistic scandal-mongering that pretends to be deep in most popular fiction. It is a relief, too, to see clergy portrayed as basically kind souls rather than hypocrites and perverts in disguise. But perhaps what was most eye-opening for me was to realize that, on some level, as an American I am a Calvinist. And you, American Lutheran reader, are one too...
Prayers for the Pentecost Season
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books "O Lord, Teach Me to Pray" based on the Small Catechism, and "We Believe" based on the Augsburg Confession, continues his series of prayers for the church, now for the season of Pentecost - Series A. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Theses on Christology in the Tradition of Luther
At the conclusion of the recent semester, I prepared the following theses for students as a summary of what we had learned. The theses are an attempt to restate early Lutheran christology in the context of contemporary concerns. At the request of the students, I am putting them forward for public discussion. Please bear in mind that theses are distillations of large arguments, reduced to their logical and material essentials. Disputation about theses is meant to sharpen understanding, then, of what is logically and materially essential. It is not meant to replace those larger arguments but to provide a roadmap through them...
Women and Men in Christ - Furthering the Discussion
In February of 2011 I was privileged to speak, along with the Rev. Dr. Joel Lehenbauer and the Rev. Dr. Armand Boehme, on the topic of "Women in the Church" at the Theological Convocation held by the Minnesota South district of the LCMS. It was the desire of both the speakers and those who arranged the convocation that the presentations of the day would generate and foster further useful discussion throughout the district and synod. My specific task was to respond to Reverend Lehenbauer's presentation and to share thoughts on a broader view for women in the Church. Since that day I have become aware of numerous responses to my presentation, many of which were insightful and which have been helpful to me in terms of clarifying my own thoughts. I am deeply grateful to those who took the time to attend the conference (and/or to read the papers) and then to offer thoughtful questions, comments and resources for further consideration. These responses generally fell into three areas that I believe merit further attention: 1. Methodological approach 2. The "Order of Creation" 3. Freedom and justice as a paradigm for future work
Justification and the Messy Boundaries of Church
In recent discussions with Midwestern Lutheran friends who are as troubled as I am about the drift by the ELCA into liberal Protestantism, I heard again the tired argument: the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church is doomed to failure because Lutherans have only one, I repeat, just one criterion for church unity, namely, “the” article on which the church stands and falls—justification”! But the Joint Declaration is doomed because Catholics do not affirm that Justification is more than one criterion alongside others...
The Three Lutheranisms
I have some ideas about the peculiar history of Lutheranism which stands behind our knotted reality. Historically, if we begin with period between 1517 and 1580 and call that the Confessional period, there have been three additional Lutheranisms: Orthodoxy, Pietism and Liberalism. Each in its own way can claim the legacy of the first, though the authenticity of each claim is viewed with considerable skepticism by the heirs today of the other two (in my scheme, no one gets to claim the initial “Confessional Period,” for reasons adduced below). All three Lutheranisms evolved in part in reaction to what preceded, and continues in opposition to what follows, but each operates on the common principle that the true-blue Lutheran is obliged to critique theological opponents as veritable deformers of the gospel. This habit of passionate denunciation, what historian James Burkee calls “the Luther syndrome,” is the common thread running through all three. Nothing then so modest as clearing up muddled thinking, defeating ignorance with knowledge, or expanding small-mindedness with generosity of vision can be the work of genuine Lutheran theology! Behind the perceived error of our foes lurks apostasy, for nothing less than the gospel is at stake! Thus the three Lutheranisms de facto, if not de jure, habitually anathematize each other...
Critique of the LCMS's "Creator's Tapestry"
Prof. Elizabeth A. Goodine of Concordia Bronxville presented this paper criticizing "The Creator's Tapestry" at a Theological Convocation in Minnesota this past February. She also wrote "Going Postal in Judges 19" for the summer 2009 print edition of Lutheran Forum. The summer 2011 issue of Lutheran Forum will feature another critique of "The Creator's Tapestry"; look for it in June...
The Death of the Funeral Society (and the Resurrection to Christian Community and Mission)
Remember the Beatles’ tune “Eleanor Rigby”? Now allow me a provocative thesis: most of our congregations are funeral societies, their pastors “writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear; no one comes near.” That is not meant as a put-down, but rather as a sober sociological observation about “all the lonely people”—not out there in the world but sitting right in our pews. The funeral society was one of those Hellenistic institutions that early Christianity absorbed and made over. It performed a perennial religious function that in one way or another has to be taken care of. In the ancient world, intergenerational voluntary associations were formed among the urbanized masses so that, upon death, one’s mortal remains would be entombed, honored, and memorialized. Religious rites primarily had to do with the passing through the trauma of death. Beliefs were not nearly as important as ritual processing of that trauma...
Rip Van Winkle, Brom Bones and the Sleepy Church
One of the delightful benefits of retirement is the leisure to read and muse in areas of interest that have been neglected since college days. I regularly purchase various courses from The Teaching Company to fill in the night hours when insomnia blesses me with an alert and inquisitive mind. The following article is based on a course entitled “Classics of American Literature” taught by Dr. Arnold Weinstein. Many of the insights of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are his observations, but I have included some of my own, so don't fault him for anything theological that you read below, and beware, for I live by the motto: “Never let the truth interfere with a good story”...
Prayers for the Lenten Season
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books "O Lord, Teach Me to Pray" based on the Small Catechism, and "We Believe" based on the Augsburg Confession, continues his series of prayers forthe church, this time for the season of Lent - Series A. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Diakonia and Christian Social Practice in Oslo
The European Lutheran churches tend to have far more developed diaconal service and programs than their American counterparts. Though we have certainly done a lot in the area of social service, it has been less explicitly connected to the public minsterial offices of the church. Norway is par for the course in the European model, and in fact has a school called the Diaconal University College in Oslo. This fall it will begin offering a master's degree in Diakonia and Christian Social Science. As you might guess, since the program is offered in English, it's not intended primarily for Norwegians, but for Lutherans and indeed all Christians across the world, so it will be a place to study diakonia in a truly global context...