Lutherans’ Challenge: Make It Interesting : Churches Tend to Avoid Being ‘Out Front’ on Issues, Analyst Notes

One of the hardest tasks of the newly merged Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its presiding bishop will be to “make Lutheranism interesting,” according to religious analyst Martin E. Marty.

“He’s interesting, but do they want to be? A lot of church bodies work hard at suppressing” their interesting features, Marty recently told religion newswriters in a wide-ranging discussion on the state of organized religion.

Most church bodies, wary about offending their members, tend to avoid being “out front” on issues or caught up in acrimonious debate, Marty indicated.

Least Provocative Elected

Indeed, it may have been more than coincidental that on the heels of months of newsmaking conflicts reported first within Roman Catholicism and then among television evangelists, the new Lutheran body elected the least provocative figure among the top candidates for presiding bishop at its constituting convention last week in Columbus, Ohio.

The Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom, a soft-spoken Minnesota bishop known for his conciliatory skills, won on the ninth and final ballot over Bishop David Preus, the presiding bishop of the American Lutheran Church since 1973. Preus’ opinions on various matters and administrative style had alienated some delegates.

It was clear that the majority of the more than 1,000 delegates wanted a candidate from the Lutheran Church in America, Chilstrom’s church.

Running third and fourth late in the balloting were two others from that denomination--ex-seminary professor William Lazareth and Barbara Lundblad, both New York City pastors who impressed delegates with articulate talks. However, Lazareth is also blunt at times (as he was about limited progress in Lutheran dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church) and Lundblad made a surprising run despite the fact that no Lutheran clergywoman has ever been elected a regional bishop, let alone a denomination’s presiding bishop.

Making Lutheranism “interesting” has been seen as a challenge required of a denomination whose 11,300 churches and 5.3 million members, as of its official Jan. 1 start-up, will afford Lutheranism unprecedented opportunity to gain attention as they try to build churches and make public policy pronouncements.

Marty had been mentioned as a possible presiding bishop. But he notified would-be supporters in late March that he did not want to be considered, saying he lacked the pastoral and administrative experience.

Prolific Author

Marty, 59, is a minister in the smallest of the merging denominations, the Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. He has been perennially regarded as one of the country’s most influential Lutherans despite his long career in academia.

Professor of church history at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Marty is a prolific author of books and articles. His regular commentary on U.S. religion appear in a column for Christian Century magazine and in a twice-a-month newsletter. Next year he will serve as president of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional society of university-level teachers in religious studies.

Fielding questions from members of the Religion Newswriters Assn. last weekend in Columbus, Marty advised reporters not to look to denominational headquarters for their best stories but to local churches. As examples, he cited local responses to the AIDS crisis and the refugee sanctuary movement initiated by groups of churches.

National news often erupts within denominations when what Marty called a two-party system--a kind of theological left and right that is beneficial when operating within understood limits--changes from a “political” tussle to “military” battle.

Marty claimed that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod before the 1970s and the Southern Baptist Convention before the 1980s had their “best years” when the two-party tension acted as a stimulus. But in both denominations the most ardently conservative group gained the upper hand by insisting on a purge of teachers unwilling to affirm belief in an errorless Bible.

“The inerrant party always has the advantage,” Marty said, because the moderates are only 95% sure and allow for some ambiguity and paradox.

Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church is a “two-tier” church of orthodox teachers/leaders and those who dissent on selected issues, he said. “During the papal visit (to nine U.S. cities in September), both churches will be present,” Marty said, but he added that the distinctions probably will be hard to see amid widespread approbation.

Secularism Growth Denied

“In general, Americans like the Pope . . . and Americans like a parade,” Marty said. He said he did not think that threatened demonstrations by several groups will be truly representative of the bulk of dissenting Catholic opinion.

On another matter, Marty warned writers against accepting the idea that secularism is a growing ideology in America. The claims have been made by both the religious right and some religious analysts.

“I have a very glacial view of American religion,” Marty said. Baptists, Methodists, Mormons and Lutherans have remained predominant in sections of the country where they always have been numerous while Catholics have stayed most visible in large cities.

“All the talk we had about the cult explosion, the new religious movements, didn’t change the statistics of that at all,” Marty said.

“I think the 40% who are predisposed to be at worship every week will vary to 42% one year, 39% another and 44% another . . . but it’s really glacial,” Marty said. The same is true for the annual Gallup Poll finding that about 60% say they belong to a religious congregation, he said.

“Certainly the cultural climate was much more hostile to religion in the 1930s than in the 1980s,” Marty said. The “public philosophers” of the 1930s notably included John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, both critical of religious beliefs, he said.

“Today, the main public philosophers are neo-conservatives, very often Jewish, and all of them friendly to religion,” Marty said. As examples, he mentioned syndicated columnist George Will and Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine.

Also, Marty said, several influential personalities depicted as anti-religious are really misrepresented. Marty wrote about the religious sensibilities of TV producer Norman Lear, founder of People for the American Way, in an article for the Jan. 17 Christian Century.

“I’d love to do a series on people like that, who are nominally secular but who fill religious roles in society,” Marty said. Scientist Carl Sagan would be one of his subjects, he said. Though not a believer in God, Sagan demonstrates a reverence for life and the universe and denies being at war with religion, Marty said.