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  • B January 15 2023
March 28, 2019
​“Excerpt from “We are not generic Protestants”, written by Bishop Elizabeth Eaton (10/24/2011)”
 
“Many of our Lutheran ancestors came to this country in waves of immigration in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. They settled in ethnic enclaves where English was a second language and out-marriage was rare. 

They were not part of the Calvinist, Reformed, revivalist Protestant majority. They were aliens in America. 

There has been a long and gradual assimilation of Lutherans into American Protestant culture and American civil religion. We are quite at home in America now. But there is great danger in this. In Jesus’ encounter with "the Jews who had believed in him" (John 8:31-41) you can feel the tension as Jesus challenges the people’s assumptions about truth and identity. 

When offered freedom, they denied they had ever been in bondage and claimed Abrahamic ancestry as proof. Are we the Jews in this story? 

Gerald Sloyan in his commentary on John’s Gospel states that being a slave to sin does not mean "moral fault in general" but rather boasting in our pedigree. 

Is that what [has happened to us Lutherans]? 

The great themes of the Reformation -- justification, grace, law and gospel, the theology of the cross, two kingdoms, the Lutheran hermeneutic -- need to be reclaimed in our teaching, preaching and living. 

We are not generic American Protestant citizens in the land of American Exceptionalism. 

We are a theology of the cross people in a culture of glory. We are a two-kingdoms’ people who would never claim a covenantal status for America or any other earthly government. 

We understand that the quest for holiness and purity -- the works righteousness of the religious right -- and the attempt to bring in the kingdom through social programs -- the works righteousness of the religious left -- is vanity. 

We are sinners utterly dependent on the crucifixion, which not only destroyed sin and death but put to death the false hope of good intentions and human agency. 

We are saints made righteous by the resurrection, which has made us alive and makes it possible for us to bear God's creative and redeeming word to the world. 

We need to become aliens in America again.”
 
Thanks Bishop Eaton for this great reminder!!!!
 
Blessings to all,
Pastor Mike 


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