Heresy Charges Leveled at Lutheran Pastor

To Rev. David Benke, the ceremony at Yankee Stadium was a blessing, an opportunity to join other religious and civic leaders in offering comfort to a nation raw from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He joined the celebrities and politicians on stage to sing patriotic songs and to pray.

It was, he thought, his duty as a pastor.

But some fellow clergymen disagreed: They saw his participation in an interfaith event as heresy.

This week, six pastors from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the nation’s second-largest Lutheran denomination, called for Benke’s expulsion from the church.

Others have petitioned as well to oust church President Gerald Kieschnick for condoning Benke’s participation in the New York event--and for himself praying with chaplains from other Lutheran denominations after a tour of the World Trade Center wreckage in October.

Benke “participated in idolatry by participating with non-Christians” at the Sept. 23 service, one of the dissident pastors, the Rev. David Oberdieck, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Oberdieck would not comment further Friday, saying the dispute was “a family matter” that should not be aired in the “secular media.” But he stood by his interpretation of Benke as an idol worshiper.

He and other clergy also have accused Benke of “syncretism,” which means promoting the view that all religions are equal. The 10-page petition against Benke called his role in the New York ceremony “an egregious offense against the love of Christ” that gave “the impression that the Christian faith is just one among many by which people may pray to God.”

According to these critics, by standing alongside “heretics”--Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Christians of other denominations--Benke implicitly endorsed those faiths, giving the impression that all offer an equal path to salvation.

And that’s taboo in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which has 2.6 million members nationwide.

Church leaders hold that they must not pray in public with anyone from another faith, even Lutherans of other denominations. They believe in worshiping only with those who interpret the Scriptures and understand God in precisely the same way they do.

“We can’t go to the communion rail with someone who thinks of communion in a completely different way,” said Rev. David Strand, a spokesman for the church, which is based in suburban St. Louis.

The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, hews to a similar tradition.

“I do not have an ecumenical bone in my body,” the Rev. Paige Patterson, a former president of the church, has often said.

And indeed, many Southern Baptist clergy made a point of staying away from interfaith services after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yet Benke and Kieschnick insist that the Yankee Stadium ceremony was not a formal worship service and thus was not off limits to Missouri Synod members.

They viewed it as a secular event--organized by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and hosted by actor James Earl Jones--that happened to include prayer.

When it was Benke’s turn at the microphone, he recited a brief prayer that opened and closed with references to Christ. Although he stood in respectful silence while other religious leaders spoke, his supporters insist he was not worshiping with them. Nor was he assenting to their views.

“To suggest that when the imam was praying to Allah, Dr. Benke was praying right alongside . . . well, of course not. It’s an insult to even imply that was what he was doing,” Strand said.

As for Kieschnick’s impromptu prayer session with chaplains from other denominations, Strand said the same justification applied.

“In no way was it a worship service with religious leaders in formal vestments,” he said.

Resolution of the dispute may hinge on the church’s definition of a worship service. So far, it’s not clear which clergy have the authority to take action. So any discipline, from censure to ouster, may be months away.

Some clergy members worry the conflict will give the church a reputation as insular and uncaring.

“I think it’s a moment of truth for us,” Benke said.