WHAT HAPPENED TO GROWTH IN GRACE?

Back in the dark ages of 1963 b.c. (b.c.= before computers), I was confirmed at the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Chicago. The Rev. Ralph Riedesel laid his paw (that’s the word he used) on my head and pronounced the blessing. “The Father in Heaven, for Jesus sake, renew and increase in thee the gift of the Holy Ghost, to thy strengthening in faith, to thy growth in grace, to thy patience in suffering, and to the blessed hope of everlasting life.” Those were the same words that had been used at the Confirmation of my father, uncle, two cousins, and would be used for my sister. When I became a pastor in 1977, I only got to use those words for one Confirmation. Then came the Lutheran Book of Worship and the words changed. Of course Holy Ghost gave way to Holy Spirit and the very personal but archaic “thee” was banished. Beyond that, however, the text as a whole was changed dramatically. “Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake, stir up in name the gift of your Holy Spirit; confirm his/her faith guide his/her life, empower him/her in his/her serving, give him/her patience in suffering, and bring him/her to everlasting life.”

What happened to growth in grace? We still had faith and patience, but where was grace? Best as I can determine, guidance of life and empowerment of service had replaced growth in grace. Maybe there was a theological problem with growth in grace, something no one had noticed in 60 years. Whatever the reason, I sorely miss growth in grace.

I don’t interpret growth in grace as meaning getting more and more grace (that would be growth of grace). Rather growth in grace to me means a blossoming and maturing of life in grace. It would be what Luther describes in the Small Cathechism as the significance of baptism. “It signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil lusts, should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance, and be put to death; and that the new man should daily come forth and rise, to live before God in righteousness and holiness for ever.”

I’ve become curious about this section of the Confirmation rite. The Service Book and Hymnal reproduced this prayer from the Common Service Book: “Almighty  and everlasting God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water and the Spirit, and hast forgiven them all their sins: Strengthen them, we beseech thee, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace: the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and might;  the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, now and forever;  through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.” The prayer was taken from the Book of Common Prayer. I can find it all the way back to the First Prayer Book of Edward VI (1549) which in turn was an adaptation of the Roman rite.

The blessing that followed this prayer, “The Father in heaven for Jesus sake,” must be unique to Lutherans. I don’t have the resources to discover if the blessing appeared for the first time in the Common Service Book or if it had been used somewhere else before that. Some liturgical scholar may please enlighten me.

In the Mid-1970s the Lutheran churches (ALC, LCA, LCMS, ELCC) began experimenting with revisions of the liturgy. In 1975 Contemporary Worship 8: Affirmation of the Baptismal Covenant was published.  Confirmation as a unique rite disappeared to be replaced with an all-purpose rite of Affirmation. In this rite the traditional prayer before the blessing and the blessing itself were substantially reworked. The subsequent Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) restored an option for Confirmation within Affirmation of Baptism that included a laying on of hands, but the “Father in heaven” blessing was reworked into prayer.

Then in 2002 came the Renewing Worship series with Holy Baptism and Related Rites. Once more any distinctive elements for Confirmation were removed along with the blessing or prayer “Father in heaven.” There must have been griping about the proposed change because the prayer from the The Lutheran Book of Worship was brought back in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), but only as an alternative to the part of the prayer that mentioned the gifts of the Spirit. There is nothing to distinguish Confirmation from any other form of Affirmation of Baptism.

Confirmation in general has been a problem for the Lutheran church. The Apology of the Augusburg Confession rightly denies it is a sacrament, although it is a rite “received from the Fathers.” Lutherans stopped doing Confirmations for a time, but the practice came back again. In his Examen of the Council of Trent Martin Chemnitz wrote: “Our theologians have often shown that the rite of confirmation, when the useless, superstitious, and unscriptural traditions respecting it have been laid aside, may be used piously and to the edification of the Church in this way: viz., that those who were baptized in infancy, when they come to years of discretion, should be diligently instructed by a clear and simple setting forth of the doctrines of the Church; and, when they seem moderately grounded in the rudiments, they should be presented before the bishop and the church . . . Public prayer should be made for these children . . . to which prayer, without superstition, the imposition of hands may be added. Nor would such prayer be fruitless, for it is supported by the promises concerning the gift of perseverance and the grace of confirmation.”

There we are back to grace again which along with Confirmation is missing from our present rite. Maybe I am just caught in nostalgia, but I am not convinced every change in liturgical texts is an improvement. Language can be fixed without being gutted. Maybe next time I do a Confirmation I’ll put my paw on the person’s head and say: “The Father in Heaven, for Jesus sake, renew and increase in you the gift of the Holy Spirit, to your strengthening in faith, to your growth in grace, to your patience in suffering, and to the blessed hope of everlasting life.”  Don’t tell anybody about this. I don’t need the liturgical police knocking on my church door with a complaint about using an illicit rite. Of course, given that some of our churches are praying to Jesus/Sophia it seems to me that there are far more serious theological errors being committed than one old pastor using the words we used for most of the 20th century tocConfirm people. However, you never can tell.

The Father in heaven for Jesus’ sake bless you on your journey that you may grow in grace, and may the Lord greet you on your arrival.

Wayne




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THE ATTACK ON THE REV. LUTHER A. GOTWALD

In investigating something else, I fell into the story of Pastor Luther Alexander Gotwald.*  He came from a family of devoted pastors who served the Lutheran church with dedication and honor. Born in 1833 Adams County, Pennsylvania, he was baptized by that famous cleric Samuel Simon Schmucker, about whom more later. He was ordained in 1859 and faithfully served churches in Pennsylvania and Ohio before being elected Professor of Practical and Historical Theology at Wittenberg Theological Seminary in Springfield, Ohio in 1888. Five years later charges were brought by Alexander Gebhart, Joseph Gebhart, and Ernst E. Baker that Pastor Gotwald was disqualified to be a professor at Wittenberg College.

The  first charge sets the basic issue. “His Dominant Attitude has been that of opposition to the Type of Lutheranism that dictated the establishment of Wittenberg College.” Essentially they complained that he wasn’t teaching the way they thought he should be teaching. If you find that pretty vague, so did the board of directors who wanted more specifics. Those making the charges refused to make any specifics.

We can understand what this was all about by reading the sixth charge that Pastor Gotwald was trying to change the spirit and doctrinal position of Wittenberg College “which does not make the Augsburg Confession binding as test of doctrine beyond its ‘exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of the Divine Word and of the faith of our Church founded upon that Word,’ in favor of the exclusive Type of Lutheranism characteristic of the General Council, which makes all the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession fundamental.” The Augsburg Confession is the central statement of faith of Lutherans (after the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds). So the charge was that Dr. Gotwald was just too Lutheran to be teaching at this Lutheran Institution.

The Trial of Luther A. Gotwald was one more incident in a long battle over the Americanization of Lutheranism. Lutherans struggled over the transition to English from their native Swedish and German. A good number of Lutherans became Episcopalians when the Lutheran churches didn’t make the transition quickly enough. Beyond language, however, serious questions were raised about theology and worship. Lutherans held to beliefs and practices that were different from those of their Calvinist and Methodist neighbors. Should Lutherans be more like their neighbors in order to be more American?

Into the debate came the Rev. Samuel Simon Schmucker. As a young man he worked to maintain the General Synod of the Lutheran Churches in America. He worked for the establishment of the first Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg and became its first professor in 1826. He wrote the oath of office for professors which affirmed the Augsburg Confession. And then the ground shifted under him. New Lutheran immigrants questioned how Lutheran the Lutherans already in America were. American pastors studying in Europe came back with a more Confessional view of Lutheranism. Schmucker and associates like his brother-in-law Samuel Sprecher, President of Wittenberg College, and Benjamin Kurtz, editor of the Lutheran Observer were appalled by the conservative direction of Lutheranism. They wanted a Lutheranism that was pretty much like other forms of American Protestantism. They didn’t like the distinctive positions of the Confessions one bit.

Battle was engaged. Wittenberg College in Springfield Ohio was founded in 1845 in large part as a rejection of the pro-confessional stance of the German Theological Seminary of the Ohio Synod. In 1855 Dr. Schmucker anonymously issued the Definite Synodical Platform as a basis for Lutheran belief. It maintained the Augsburg Confession as a statement of faith as long as certain “errors” contained in the Confession were rejected. These supposed errors were: “1. Approval of the Ceremonies of the Mass; 2. Private Confession and Absolution; 3. Denial of the Divine Obligation of the Christian Sabbath; 4. Baptismal Regeneration; 5. The Real Presence of the Body and Blood of the Savior in the Eucharist.”  In short, Schmucker thought the Lutheran Reformers had gotten Lutheranism wrong, and he proposed to straighten it out.   

Schmucker’s proposal caused a firestorm. In 1866 the Pennsylvania Ministerium withdrew from the General Synod and the next year became a leading force in the creation of the General Council. Although the General Synod never adopted Schmucker’s proposals, the constituent synods tended to lean toward the Schmucker-Sprecher-Kurtz form of American Lutheranism. The rival General Council embraced a far more Confessional approach.

All of this set the stage for the Trial of Luther Gotwald before the board of directors of Wittenberg College. For a year various attacks were made on Gotwald. The motivation for the attacks may not have been purely theological. Personal resentments and professional jealousies were woven into dynamics at work. One of the accusers Ernest Baker eventually left the Lutheran Church altogether. The Board of Directors was unable to find enough specifics in the charges to try the case and asked the accusers to clarify their position. They refused to do so. The Board tried to get beneath the accusations. They asked the accusers to call witnesses. They refused. In the end Gotwald was acquitted of all charges. After the trial Luther Gotwald published Trial of Luther Gotwald, D.D. in which he defended himself against the charges that had been made against him. In essence he held that there was no difference between the theological basis of the General Synod and the General Council as concerned the Augsburg Confession. History would prove him correct as in 1918 the General Synod, General Council and United Synod of the South would merge to form the United Lutheran Church in America.

So Dr. Gotwald was rightly vindicated, but it is far from clear that Confessional Lutheranism will survive in the successor to the General Synod and General Council: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  Thirty-five years ago when I was a seminarian, I mentioned the Lutheran Confessions to my teaching parish supervisor. His response was that they should have been thrown into the trash can long ago. I am afraid that is a common attitude within the ELCA today. Although only a few may say aloud that they reject the Lutheran Confessions, many more reject them in practice without saying so.  I recall the chilly reception the proposers of the 9.5 Theses received when they raised concerns about a Confessional Crisis in the ELCA with The-Powers-That-Be.

I doubt that anybody will be tried on charges that they are too Confessional (or too Lutheran). To do that would be to face the same problem as the accusers of Luther Gotwald–being specific about charges. Nobody wants to take an anti-Confessional stance officially. No, the approach will be much more subtle. Anyone who is too obviously an advocate of the Lutheran Confession will not be appointed to national or synodical committees. They will be unlikely to be called to faculty positions at a seminary or perhaps if they are, their application for tenure will be denied. Candidates for ministry who express too strongly an opinion supporting the Confessions may be sent for counseling because of their rigidity. Noisy advocates of the Confessions may discover a difficulty in being placed on call lists. And there is always the approach of not having an application for being on leave from call approved resulting in immediate removal from the roster. Impossible? I have seen all of these things happen.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial” (Luke 22:46). Why, Lutheran Church, are you sleeping? Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne


*Luther A. Gotwald was the brother of William H. Gotwald who started the Lutheran Church in Martin, Florida.



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LIBRARIES

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Public Radio talk show about libraries. One caller insisted libraries, by allowing people to check out videos, were engaged in socialism. They were depriving  the video stores of revenue. I’m not sure why videos are a bigger issue than books, but there’s no accounting for such things. I passed it off as part of the latest fad of labeling anything that is disliked as socialism until I got a “Printers Row: Lit Links” email update from the Printer’s Row Literary Festival in Chicago. It seems Fox News aired a piece entitled “Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?” Here's an excerpt: “They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It's money that could be used to keep your child's school running.” Shocking to think we are undermining our children’s education by spending money on libraries. Why, children might learn something not on the approved curriculum in the library! They might read a book on the notorious radical Thomas Jefferson.

What really seems to irritate the anti-library crowd is that so many people come to the library to use the Internet. That’s true, but for the poor seeking a job the library may be the only access they have to the Internet. In case no one has noticed, today you have to search for apply for jobs online. The old days of walking into the personnel department of a company and filling out a form are long gone. Even clergy in the ELCA have been compelled to use the new online Mobility Papers. As someone who still uses fountain pens, I resent this reduction to electronic digital code, but what can you do?

I love libraries. I still remember my father taking me to the old Hamlin Park Library in Chicago when I had first learned to read. I think there hasn’t been a month since then that I haven’t used a library. Recently I was treated with uncommon courtesy by the Special Collections librarian at the University of Florida, and I’m not even a Gator.

The Internet is a wonderful research tool, and maybe someday it will replace physical libraries, but not yet. You can find all sorts of things poking around in libraries that just don’t turn up online. You discover these locally produced magazines and pamphlets or maybe the cookbook of the Littleburg Ladies Crocheting Society and Karate Club from 1964.  You can’t find that stuff on the Internet.

The buildings themselves can be fascinating. The wonderful marble stairways and mosaics at the old main library in Chicago made it seem that you were truly entering a temple of knowledge. Maybe that’s what it was like in the great library of Alexandria before it burned.

And think of the role libraries play in literature. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christe. Or the library that is almost a character in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. And of course the library that forms the passage between the ordinary world and the magical world in Not All is as You See by–well, modesty prevents me from naming the author. (However it is available at Amazon.)

The old Benedictine monasteries had libraries. The Rule of St. Benedict directs the Abbot to assign each monk a book to read during Lent. I know some people who would think that was a terrible penance.  I can hear certain people: “A book, how strange. Where do you plug it in?” Of course nowadays they do sell books that you plug in in order to recharge their batteries, but I’m not going there or buying one.

Well, it is Friday, my usual day for heading to the Library. I’m still researching old Lutheran churches and want to check the 1842 government survey of Marion County. I could get on line, but the last time I tried to download a section, my computer said it would take 1 day, 2 hours, and 17 minutes. It’s a lot faster to drive to the library.

Good reading.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne


The picture of the Chicago Cultural Center, formally the Chicago Public Library.



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THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AT MARTIN, FLORIDA

The story of the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Martin, Florida, is brief, but not without it’s complexities.  It starts with the Martin Family who moved to Marion County in the 1850s from Edgefield County, South Carolina. The Martins established a 3,000 acre plantation called Sugar Hammock about seven miles north of Ocala.  While the Martins were a very influential family the local patriarch Col. John Marshall Martin (nephew of the U. S. Chief Justice John Marshall) moved from his plantation to the city of Ocala in 1881 and started subdividing and selling off his land. The unincorporated town that grew up in the area after a railroad depot was established was called Martin. According to a local history magazine “Salty Crackers,” among those purchasing land in the area between 1885 and 1900 were a group of Pennsylvanians who established orange groves.  They also established the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Martin.

Several names among the purchasers of land could very well belong to Lutherans from Pennsylvannia: Mary Werner, West Kuhn. Priscilla Kaufmann, Bucher H. Geigerich, Wilbur Webb, Aaron Kroh, Mary and Sarah Gnagy.

There is this brief mention of the church in Martin in Old Salem in Lebanon by Theodore E. Schmauk: “About this time the congregation built a small frame mission in Martin, Florida.” “About this time” is terribly vague, but the context suggests sometime after 1884 which fits the time the Pennsylvanians arrived in Martin. Were they from Lebanon? Perhaps, but there is one more clue. Wikepedia has a lengthy article about the Rev. Luther Alexander Gotwald which includes a paragraph about his brother the Rev. William Henry Harrison Gotwald. “ He served as a Presbyterian minister in Ocala, Florida, where he had gone due to his health. However, he built a Lutheran church at Martin, Florida.” The move to Florida could not have happened before 1887. A curious thing is that while W. H Gotwald was serving in the Union army during the civil war, his brother Luther was a pastor in Lebanon. Was Gotwald the reason the Salem church constructed the building in Martin?

I found the following in The Ocala Banner for December 28, 1888. “Rev. W. H. Gotwald is again in our community to spend the winter. He has urgently been solicited to fill the Presbyterian Pulpit recently made vacant by the resignation of Rev. G. A. Hough.” This is very interesting. G. A. Hough had served as the Presbyterian pastor at Kanapaha, 1885, Reddick 1886-1887, and Ocala 1887-1888. (Each of these charges moves further south in Florida.) From 1881 to 1884 he was pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Lake City, Florida, the first Lutheran church in Florida. E. P Webber’s History of the Lutheran Church in Florida relates that Hough’s early ministry at Bethlehem had been quite successful, but conflict arose and he resigned the call. This would have marked his transition to the Presbyterian Church.  We can see why the Presbyterian Church in Ocala might have been interested in Gotwald as a pastor, since they had already had experience with a Lutheran.

I don’t believe that Gotwald actually became a Presbyterian for at some point he became the founder of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C. I am still researching to discover how long Gotwald was in Ocala, but I suspect it was not long.

Now this story takes an odd turn because Martin became one of the preaching points for Missouri Synod Reiseprediger. In 1890 F. J. W Reinhardt was preacher on this circuit, in 1891 C. F. Brommer was preacher. The last preacher in 1894 was Ed Fischer. Investigations by Webber indicate this was the same group that moved from Pennsylvania “According to the Rev. Eagar Brammer, pastor of the Gainesville-Ocala parish from 1938-1941, a cornerstone was removed upon his request from a church in Martin which is now occupied by negroes. Pastor Brammer, with whom the writer was in correspondence, stated that the negroes gave him some torn documents taken from the cornerstone, on the basis of which he was inclined to believe that the Lutherans who originally occupied the building were German Lutherans from Pennsylvania, who Later moved back to the North. It seems that it was these Lutherans who were served by these early missionaries.”

This fits with local history that the Pennsylvanians returned home after the Big Freeze of 1894-1895 that destroyed the orange groves.  The church came to be the school house and then was used by an African Methodist Episcopal Church. I have read a report that the derelict church was still standing in 1988, but my exploration of Martin has shown no evidence of it. I hope someday to discover a photo of the church. (Anybody who has a photo of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church that was in Martin, let me know.)

I’m continuing the local research. I believe I have identified the site of Pr. Bernheim’s Freestone Springs Academy, but I am not sure. If anyone has information about Cedar Grove Methodist Church, Marion County, let me know.  Some research will have to wait until I can make a trip to the ELCA Archives in Columbia, South Carolina.

In the meantime, may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne









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