Death throes or birth pangs? (Sunday Reflections for April 11, 2010)

For years The Lutheran has been the country’s largest circulation denominational magazine. It may still hold that rank but, if so, today it is in a much smaller field. Print media in general is in decline and then being tied to declining institutions is a double whammy. In recent years several church magazines have closed (some replaced by online versions) as have some non-denominational religious journals.

Circulation for The Lutheran has certainly dropped. One thing that used to keep it up was the congregational subscription plan whereby churches, at reduced cost, could subscribe for all their member households. Many churches have dropped these to save money and most were not replaced by individual subscriptions.

As with the church in general, The Lutheran has had trouble figuring out its purpose or identity. Early in the ELCA’s life it was reporting regularly on the denomination’s struggles to get going. Many synodical bishops criticized all the “negative press” implying the magazine was somehow being disloyal. The message got through and ELCA news was reduced while more articles were devoted to congregational and personal life issues.

The result was a magazine that became increasingly bland and repetitive. I’ve heard it described as a Lutheran Guideposts or even Readers Digest. Many clergy I know say the only things they look at are the obituaries. The one section most often criticized is the Letters to the Editor. Ironically as the articles became “happier” these letters became angrier, sometimes vitriolic. Given the selection that was printed I can only imagine the tone of those left out.

According to Editor Daniel Lehmann, the current April issue has a “Cover story full of risks.” In his editorial he acknowledges that for the past four years The Lutheran “tamped down” its coverage of the ongoing debate over gay clergy. Supposedly ending that embargo, this issue’s feature story reports the fallout to date over last summer’s Churchwide Assembly actions. To avoid any appearance of bias, the magazine contracted the story out to Lutheran Chicago Sun-Times reporter Sandra Guy.

Lehmann needn’t have worried. In his editorial he says that past reporting was “straightforward news” of “official actions” limited mostly to “he said, she said” accounts. For whatever reason, this almost exactly describes this issue’s story. Guy provides almost no personal analysis but rather strings together dozens of quotations of lay members, pastors and bishops. The views of proponents of the assembly action, opponents, as well as those on the fence are all reported.

The article has nothing surprising to report. Many are happy, many are sad and/or angry, and many are unsure what to make of the acceptance of gay clergy. A few congregations have voted to leave the ELCA and more may follow but thus far the numbers do not look significant. Contributions are down but the biggest cause for that may be the recession. Opposition is strongest in small town and rural congregations, especially those which were formerly ALC. Support is strongest in synods with predominantly urban and suburban memberships.

Much more interesting is Guy’s article which follows the cover story, based primarily on an interview with ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson. Basically Hanson says the church needs to move on: “I’m patient with the process of decision-making, but I’m not putting ministry and mission on pause in the meantime.” While last year’s assembly action is still important to process, Hanson says there are bigger issues which the ELCA has been confronting long before this:

The changes of our demographics didn't begin with the Churchwide Assembly. We have been becoming a smaller church body in membership, increasingly older than the U.S. population, and a predominantly white denomination in an increasingly multiethnic and multicultural world. So in the larger context, what does it mean to be faithful, evangelical Lutherans in this changing context? Those questions will continue to be foremost.

While Hanson’s analysis is largely accurate it is also somewhat disingenuous. Many would argue that the decision to allow gay clergy was exactly the kind of step the church needs to make to be more relevant and connected to the contemporary world. The problem, of course, is that a lot of people don’t want to make that connection. What would it mean for the ELCA to draw in new, younger, more ethnically diverse members? How could it not mean making the ELCA a dramatically different church which very likely would alienate many of its current members?

This, of course, is exactly the dilemma faced by countless congregations of all Christian stripes, even those thought to have figured out how to be “relevant.” For years the Crystal Cathedral was seen as a model of a new way to do church. Started by Robert Schuler in the 1950s, his new essentially non-denominational church reached out to the young post-war families pouring into southern California. His stunning glass church seated thousands and came into the homes of millions more through its TV ministry.

It is now reported that the Crystal Cathedral is $55 million in debt, has a list of unpaid vendors as long as your arm, and was forced to cancel both its epic Christmas and Easter holiday shows (the Christmas show would have been its 30th anniversary). The church has been unable to find a successor for the now elderly Schuler. His son was kicked out as the church’s new pastor when his leadership was deemed inadequate. Yet this is surely a symptom of the larger question of what direction to take the church now that the demographic it appealed to originally has largely disappeared. What if the new people really don’t like all that glass?

Prior to the ELCA’s formation, and when he was still a skeptic of the proposal, the ALC’s last Bishop David Preus said Lutheranism’s biggest challenge was that “the boats have stopped coming.” By that he meant the biggest source of new American Lutherans had been immigration, and that was now over. Thirty years later American Lutheranism still has not figured out how to create a new identity and purpose for itself.

As much upheaval as last summer’s assembly action caused it may be only a start. If Lutheranism is going to have a future it may take many more such changes for the church to transform itself into something relevant and appealing to contemporary people. In other words, to quote Jesus (and only somewhat out of context), this may be only the beginning of the birth pangs. Whether the church has the commitment, energy, and the stomach for more such wrenching course changes only time will tell. Given how rapidly and dramatically our culture is changing, however, time may not be something we have much of.