We are in the middle. Today is a day of transition, and that is something wonderful, something beautiful. The missional movement is by no means a new idea, in fact it’s a very ancient one; nonetheless we find ourselves in this time and place in the midst of reshaping and remembering a body of Christ that is truly seeking to live as the broken and poured in community.
This post is about one simple facet of that transition, which is this idea of selfhood as it relates to a transition of identity as Christian and in this case, Lutheran.
The video below is a production called ‘RSAnimate’ put out by the Renaissance Society of America with lecturer Jeremy Rifkin as he discusses the evolution of empathy in our society. Although I don’t agree with everything in the lecture, I hope as you read this, you understand the general idea and transition that’s taking place as it relates to how we operate as Christians.
Now if you’ll allow me some liberty for a moment, I would propose that our Lutheran ‘tribe’ is undergoing an important transition in what means to be Lutheran and the culture that follows shortly thereafter.
Basically, if you were to oversimplify the last 50 years of Lutheran Church history you’d end up with this transition from selfhood and identity meaning German-white-Protestant-Lutheran to a broadening of said identity. In other words, prior to our post-Christian, post-modern context, being Lutheran meant subscribing not only to Lutheran theology, but much more so a Lutheran culture.
What concerns me most about Christianity, is that we have come to equate the ideas of Christ and the culture that is created by Christianity, so much so…that we no longer see a difference between the two.
Whereas perhaps a glimmering hope of our transition into post-Christian America is the movement away from a culturalized theology to a more confessional identity that is more concerned about changing our lives, than just the way we speak, talk or think.
To be Lutheran, to hail from a Lutheran tribe, essentially means to be confessional…that what Christ declares as reality, actually is reality, as we confess as such. I may not ‘feel’ or ‘think’ according to this declaration of a redemptive reality, but I confess it as truth nonetheless. And that distinction is incredibly important, because it means that when the proverbial storms beat against the shore, our faith rests in Christ’s confession of redemption; not a sensation or head knowledge…but a spiritual reality.
With this in mind, let us continue to pursue a confessional faith; laying aside the illusions of a cultural faith and clinging to Christ as our sole source of identity and righteousness. For if we trust Christ to lead our sense of selfhood, then who on God’s green earth is able to escape the family of God.
May you resonate with the identity and selfhood that God has already grafted you into, rather than seeking to fabricate a heritage outside of him.
“… let us continue to pursue a confessional faith; laying aside the illusions of a cultural faith and clinging to Christ as our sole source of identity and righteousness…. May you resonate with the identity and selfhood that God has already grafted you into, rather than seeking to fabricate a heritage outside of him.” Excellent thoughts here, Chris. I really enjoyed the video, that is a neat way of keeping someone’s attention during a lecture or speech video.
I think part of the problem too is the past break with Lutheran pietists. The moment we start asking that people’s words and actions line up, a lot of folks place you in the Pietism category and stop listening to you. Oddly enough, Pietism also heavily influenced the Anabaptist movement, which is who a majority of “missional” folks align themselves with these days. There is certainly a balance that must be maintained, lest we make works a post-requisite for salvation (versus being the natural evidence, or “fruit,” of it), but a little more emphasis on Pietism in the Lutheran tribe is certainly in order.
I am pretty sure that I disagree.
Issue 1:
I think that you are drawing the lines of the “Lutheran Tribe” (whatever that means) too narrowly and so you are drawing false conclusions. In my own personal experience, I converted to Lutheranism without having ever knowingly met a Lutheran. I subscribed to the Lutheran Confessions without having ever set foot in a Lutheran Church. I think the phenomena that you are describing is a local thing which exists in those places where Germanic Lutheran Heritage is pervasive and/or life-long Lutherans have adopted Germanic cultural norms.
I have encountered what you are describing before. One Lutheran once asked me how I became a Lutheran with a last name like “Baker”. …but this was an odd and rare occurance in my neck of the woods and certainly not my experience. This is not so much because Lutheranism is breaking down cultural barriers or becoming more enclusive… it’s an accident of geography.
For example, consider the Hispanic Roman Catholics in the border states. A person living there could argue as you do that Roman Catholicism in America has become overly tribal and confused Hispanic Culture with their Christianity. That may or may not be true in a local sense, but an Irish Roman Catholic from Boston would just shake his head at your assertion that to be Roman Catholic in America is to be a part of the Hispanic Culture. Which cultural norm is a true expression of Roman Catholicism? They both are as defined by their people group because their identity as Roman Catholics is not cultural at all… it is confessional and sacramental.
As you have pointed out, Christ is the head of the church. The problem that I see in many “missional” approaches is that it diagnoses a problem and then falls into that exact problem in proposing the solution. Missional approaches say that “culture essentially does not matter. It’s not the core of the theology and we need to distil religion to its roots and focus on that.” Then as the solution, it focuses exclusively on engaging the very thing that it claims to want to move past: cultures. This is similar to civil rights movements that say “race doesn’t matter” and then make everything they do about race. It leads one to believe that race really does matter… in fact it’s the only thing that matters. The missional approaches do essentially the same thing. By engaging culture as they do, they assert their belief in the primacy of culture which is the very thing that they claim to combat.
If the Christian culture is not an important part of the Christian life, then why bother with it at all? If we need to be post-cultural, then why is culture all of a sudden such an important topic? If post-modern and missional Christians believe that tribalism inhibits access to Christianity, why have they unneccisarily created their own sub-culture and tribe (complete with linguistic jargon) in order to express that idea? Why not simply look past it and proclaim the gospel? Why not treat cultural norms for the adiaphora that that they are and move on?
Issue 2:
You say, “Whereas perhaps a glimmering hope of our transition into post-Christian America is the movement away from a culturalized theology to a more confessional identity that is more concerned about changing our lives, than just the way we speak, talk or think.”
That is not a Lutheran way of speaking. Dan’s Anabapist influence diagnosis is 100% spot on. This is a rewording of the pimary focus and material principle of theological traditions like the Southern Baptist Convention. A confessional identity is not “more concerned about changing our lives, than just the way we speak, talk or think”. That theological system is more akin to Methodism.