“What Would Jesus Do?” — The ELCA “Chose to Stand Silent”

This Week’s Sun­day Scrib­blings Prompt: Inspiration

“What Would Jesus Do?” — The ELCA “Chose to Stand Silent”

~~ Orig­i­nally pub­lished August 4, 2005 ~~

First they came for the com­mu­nists, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a com­mu­nist;
Then they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a social­ist;
Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade union­ist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Rev. Mar­tin Niemoeller

I have been was busy with fam­ily com­mit­ments, church activ­i­ties, etc. so I have did not post for awhile. We took a fam­ily vaca­tion to Hawaii with the Stock­ton Con­cert Band where I played my flute in two concerts.

Frankly, I had to take a step back. I started draft­ing this entry in April 2005, but every time I tried to fin­ish it, I became so angry and upset that I couldn’t con­tinue. Because this entry deals with a very per­sonal topic: My own church.

We get very attached to our churches, of course. Our church affil­i­a­tion is part of our iden­tity. For many of us, it’s a place where we spend sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time engaged not just in wor­ship, but other activ­i­ties, as well. It’s where we go when we need to feel com­forted, safe, secure. Chang­ing one’s church affil­i­a­tion, whether it be adopt­ing a totally new denom­i­na­tion or belief sys­tem, or just trans­fer­ring from one con­gre­ga­tion to another, is fre­quently a stress­ful, trau­matic event.

I come from a long line of Nor­we­gian Luther­ans. I was bap­tized, as was my older sis­ter, at the ten­der age of three months in Pleas­ant Val­ley Lutheran Church, near Kid­der, South Dakota. (I say “near” because the town of Kid­der, like so many other lit­tle Mid­west­ern towns, hasn’t existed for a few decades now.) Three months later, when I was just six months old, my fam­ily moved to Cal­i­for­nia. My par­ents quickly found and joined a local con­gre­ga­tion in which I grew up, par­tic­i­pated in the music min­istry from vir­tu­ally the time I could walk, was con­firmed, mar­ried, and — you guessed it — had both of my chil­dren bap­tized when they were just about three months old.

I’ve vis­ited other churches over the years. My first big crush was on a young man who was a staunch Roman Catholic. I often won­der if other aspects of the rela­tion­ship had fallen into place, what we would have done about the issue of reli­gion because, at that point in my life, I would not have agreed to con­vert or allow my chil­dren to be raised in a faith other than my own. I have no ill will toward the Catholic or any other church … it’s just not right for me.

That was never a prob­lem with Big­Bob because his par­ents nei­ther took him to nor attended church them­selves, so he didn’t have any church iden­tity when we met. He works every Sun­day, so the kids and I always go to church by our­selves save for a few hol­i­day week­ends and Christ­mas Eve.

The bot­tom line is this: My church iden­tity is was, until recently, an inte­gral part of who I am. If you study Lutheran the­ol­ogy, doc­trine, tra­di­tions … if you lis­ten to Gar­ri­son Keil­lor talk about the Lake Woe­be­gone Lutheran Church in the heart of “the lit­tle town that time for­got” … you’re talk­ing about me and mine. I’ve been to more potluck din­ners than I could ever count. And yes, there were plenty of “hot dishes” right next to the Jello. Jello in the litur­gi­cal color appro­pri­ate to the sea­son, of course.

As Terri Schindler-Schiavo lay dying and var­i­ous reli­gious lead­ers weighed in, I wanted to hear what my church had to say about her case. Terri was a life-long mem­ber of the Catholic church, but dur­ing that 14-day vigil, vir­tu­ally every reli­gious view­point was show­cased by the main­stream media. Unlike in the Robert Wend­land case that I lit­i­gated, Roman Catholic lead­ers, includ­ing Pope John Paul II, were extremely vocal about the death sen­tence imposed upon Terri. In addi­tion to the many Catholic priests who weighed in on both sides of the debate, I heard or read com­men­tary from prac­ti­cally every well-known and lesser known per­son of faith, includ­ing Pat Robert­son, Pat Boone, Jesse Jack­son, Dr. James Dob­son, Joni Eareckson-Tada, Mus­lim and Jew­ish leaders.

It was then I learned that the Evan­gel­i­cal Lutheran Church in Amer­ica (ELCA) “chose to stand silent” on the Terri Schi­avo case.

Find­ing no indi­ca­tion any­where on the church’s web­site of what posi­tion church lead­ers had taken on Terri’s sit­u­a­tion, I finally gave up and called its Chicago head­quar­ters. Those were the pre­cise words of John Brooks, Direc­tor of the Evan­gel­i­cal Lutheran Church in America’s News and Infor­ma­tion Department.

I sat in stunned silence for what seemed like an eter­nity after hear­ing Mr. Brooks’ words.

When I finally regained my com­po­sure, I asked if I could quote him, and he assented. We dis­cussed the mat­ter a bit fur­ther and he reit­er­ated: “The ELCA had no pub­lic comment.”

No won­der scour­ing the ELCA’s web­site turned up no press release, posi­tion state­ment, mes­sage from the Pre­sid­ing Bishop, or any other indi­ca­tion that the ELCA — my church at the time — had pub­licly taken a stand in favor of life vis a vis Terri Schi­avo. As I dialed Chicago, I had been feel­ing pretty stu­pid, think­ing that I just wasn’t nav­i­gat­ing to the cor­rect por­tion of the church’s web­site where I would surely find proof that my own church had issued a pub­lic state­ment in favor of life.

Instead, as noted above, the ELCA opted to “stand silent.”

Our Lutheran Church, Mis­souri Synod broth­ers and sis­ters were not silent. Specif­i­cally, on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2005, the Rev. Dr. Ger­ald B. Kieschnick, Pres­i­dent, issued this statement:

As Chris­tians, we believe that assisted sui­cide (euthana­sia) fails every test by which his­tory judges the com­pas­sion and moral­ity of a soci­ety. We believe it degrades the ethics of med­i­cine. Judg­ing from var­i­ous news reports, it does not appear that Ms. Schi­avo has entered irre­triev­ably into the dying process. There­fore, admin­is­ter­ing food and hydra­tion would belong in the realm of ordi­nary care and should not be with­drawn. Remov­ing Terri’s feed­ing tube will not allow her to die, since she is not dying. Remov­ing her tube will, in fact, cause her to die.This court strug­gle has the poten­tial effec­tively to legal­ize and set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for this type of killing in our country–a prece­dent that would have pro­found effects on our cul­ture as a whole. Our soci­ety is shaped by the value we place on human life. If we believe that the life of every human being is of spe­cial worth, we will choose to treat each per­son with care and respect. As we face often-difficult end-of-life issues, our aim must always be to care, never to kill.

As Chris­tians, in par­tic­u­lar, we under­stand that God has cre­ated civil gov­ern­ment so that His creation–and espe­cially His gift of human life–would be pre­served and pro­tected. We under­stand that it is our duty as cit­i­zens to help our gov­ern­ment ful­fill this respon­si­bil­ity, espe­cially in a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety, when legal­ized assisted-suicide is being pub­licly advocated.

To that end, The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod will con­tinue to inform and edu­cate our mem­bers and soci­ety as a whole that human life has mea­sure­less value at every stage of devel­op­ment and con­scious­ness, for every indi­vid­ual is known and loved by God. Every human life is a life cre­ated by God and a life for whom Jesus died to buy us all back from sin and death.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Terri and her fam­ily for strength­ened and renewed faith.

Fol­low­ing Terri’s death, dis­played promi­nently on the “Office of the Pres­i­dent” page was “A State­ment on the Death of Terri Schi­avo and Liv­ing Wills” which begins with this obser­va­tion: “The long, tor­tured saga of Terri Schi­avo finally has ended.” After appro­pri­ately assur­ing read­ers that the church will con­tinue to pray for Terri’s fam­ily, friends, and sup­port­ers, Dr. Kieschnick reit­er­ates what hap­pened to Terri:

It took two weeks for Terri to die fol­low­ing the removal of her feed­ing tube. This would seem to indi­cate that depriv­ing her of food and water did not per­mit her to die but rather caused her to die. As Chris­tians, our aim should be always to care, never to kill. This is par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal when sig­nif­i­cant doubt exists regard­ing the actual irre­versible nature of the patient’s ill­ness and his or her ongo­ing desire to live.

So why did the ELCA choose to “stand silent?”

And, more impor­tantly, I asked myself back in August 2005, “Can I rec­on­cile my mem­ber­ship in an orga­ni­za­tion that made such a deci­sion with my own sen­si­bil­i­ties and the pub­lic stands I have taken over the years? What would Jesus do? Would he have ‘stood silent’ while a dis­abled woman was sense­lessly mur­dered with her par­ents, sis­ter, brother and the rest of the world watching?”

This was only one of the trou­bling events and cir­cum­stances that inspired me to finally, after a long and intense period of prayer and dis­cern­ment, say, “No, I can’t be a mem­ber of this orga­ni­za­tion any longer.”

Some­times, even though we are inspired to take action, even know­ing it is good, right and proper to do so, it still takes us a long time to do it because we are stub­born, pride­ful and, in my case, deter­mined to trans­form an unwork­able sit­u­a­tion into a success.

Ulti­mately, the answer I believe to be true was, “No, Jesus would not have stood silent.” Nor could I.

I do not believe that He would have His church on earth stand silent in the face of injus­tice. But it hap­pens every day. The prob­lem with orga­nized reli­gion is that it has become a watered-down ver­sion of the church Jesus envi­sioned, fueled by the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ties of run­ning a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion in this cul­ture at this time in our his­tory. Churches need money to sur­vive and that con­sid­er­a­tion dri­ves decision-making all too often. Choices are made based on who will cut off their finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions if their wishes and desires are not deter­mi­na­tive, and the min­istry the church was founded to per­form falls by the way­side. Middle-of-the-road stances are adopted in favor of bring­ing in the masses (and their check­books) and not offend­ing any­one in the process, which is, of course, an impossibility.

If you study the Gospels, you will find that Jesus offended a lot of peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the power bro­kers of the day. Ulti­mately, His bold procla­ma­tions and refusal to “stand silent” led to His death.

I take inspi­ra­tion from those per­sons and orga­ni­za­tions who live and pro­claim what they believe in an unapolo­getic way, while respect­ing those who believe and live dif­fer­ently. I came to the con­clu­sion because of the 2005 episode detailed here, as well as inter­ven­ing events, that the ELCA is not such an orga­ni­za­tion. These days, I am not affil­i­ated with the insti­tu­tional church and have no plans to return, pre­fer­ring to take my daily inspi­ra­tion directly from the Gospels.

For me, the church has strayed too far from what it’s founder, Mar­tin Luther, inspired us, as believ­ers and mem­bers of the Body of Christ, to do:

God does not save peo­ple who are only fic­ti­tious sin­ners.
Be a sin­ner and sin boldly.
But believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly,
for he is vic­to­ri­ous over sin, death,
and the world.

I would much rather sin boldly, but sin­cerely, than live in such a way that peo­ple even­tu­ally stand by my crypt in the mau­soleum, look­ing at my name, with no idea what, dur­ing my life­time, I believed, stood up or fought for. The fear of that sce­nario play­ing out inspires me daily. I believe that at the end of my days on earth, our Sav­ior will exam­ine my thoughts, words, and deeds to see if they were well-thought-out, sin­cere and con­trite. If so, He will over­look that I was wrong from time to time, reward­ing me for being a “good and faith­ful ser­vant” who refused to “stand silent.”

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