Relating Creation Spirituality
to Lutheranism
Doctorial dissertation by Marilyn E. Jackson
VI. LUTHERANISM APPLIED TO THE FOUR PATHS FROM ORIGINAL BLESSING
To relate Lutheranism to Creation Spirituality, in this section I have looked for common themes according to the four paths outlined by Matthew Fox: positive, negative, creative and transformative. I don’t cover all the subthemes that Matthew Fox does but have come up with several Lutheran themes and placed them roughly under Fox’s four themes. It is hard to put the themes, for instance, of Lutheran theologian Larry Rasmussen, including Earth Ethics, Returning to Our Senses, Redemption and Lutheran Theology of the Cross, into Fox’s four paths all the time. However, it is a useful exercise to begin to find out how creation spirituality relates to Lutheranism which I hope will facilitate dialogue and understanding.
At the end of my year at ICCS, I had the opportunity to play and sing some Lutheran hymns with a few other students. I remember picking some that I thought particularly related to Creation Spirituality. I will include a few throughout this section to add another dimension.
1) Via Positiva of Lutheranism
(I continue a parallel symbology to the four
paths in Original Blessing with corresponding elements of Lutheranism.
For this section I use an equidistant cross, which I
prefer because it is an ancient symbol that to me symbolizes harmony and
balance between heaven and earth. The heart symbolizes the God’s
love and grace and the sun symbolizes the heavens and mythological
home of God and representative of our cosmic 
origins.)
Salvation by Grace
Lutheranism has frequently been associated with guilt for many people and that is a stereotype by other Christians, I believe, though it has been a real experience for many Lutherans. Most Christians experience some generic Christian guilt which has been part of a Christian popular and theological tradition which Matthew Fox has challenged. That wasn’t my main impression or experience of Lutheranism in the Swedish American Lutheran church of my ancestors, the Augustana synod and the Lutheran Church (LCA) in America Synod of northern Illinois which began in the 1960’s. Today the LCA has merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) which is the largest Lutheran American church organization today. The emphasis I absorbed was more on grace and forgiveness. The distinction is that we are saved by grace, and not by our own effort.
I was at a women’s spirituality gathering in Mankato, Minnesota, at a time in my life when I was learning about the goddess, and spoke to a Lutheran minister woman who said she always felt that the Lutheran conception of forgiveness was a motherly quality. I heard the story at one of the Augustana Heritage Gatherings, of an old timer Swede who was asked if he was saved and he responded by saying that no, he was Lutheran. The Lutheran church, I learned at that talk, has tried not to alienate people who emphasized the popular and simplistic way of expressing the salvation message of more fundamentalist churches. However, the main thrust of the Swedish Lutheran tradition, which interweaved with other traditions, was the concept of God’s grace, and I believe is the main discourse of Lutheran theology today.
God’s Holiness and Praise
Their Original Sin theology doesn’t start on a positive note, rather it starts with sin and ends with forgiveness. A case can be made for a more positive outlook. The Swedish Lutheran American Liturgy, which must have been derived from liturgy in the Swedish church, begins by emphasizing God’s holiness, according to religious professor, Dr. Peter Beckman. In a sermon to the gathering of the Augustana Heritage Association a few years ago, he talked about the phrases in the Confession of Sin, including "tender mercy, merciful and gracious, infinite mercy," which speak of a caring, restoring love. God is referred to by "Holy and righteous God," "Merciful Father," "O heavenly Father" and thy "Fatherly compassion." God was so kind and good, that you would feel bad to disappoint "him," rather than be good because of fear of retribution. Jesus’ stories, Beckman said, were about the love of God sharing in the suffering of the world, not stories about power or domination and control (AHA, Spring ’04, 4-6).
There are many positive hymns of praise, comfort and encouragement. One of my favorites expressing awe toward God is a hymn written by English minister, set to a Welsh tune, with a version in the Lutheran Book of Worship.
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above
thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
To all, life thou givest, to both great and small;
in all life thou livest, the true life of all;
we blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
and wither and perish, but naught changeth thee.
Thou reignest in glory; thou dwellest in light;
thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
all laud we would render: O help us to see
‘tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.
The Bible & the Gospel
The emphasis on the Bible as an important source of belief is a positive force in Lutheran theology. A veteran visiting my church at coffee hour once told me that when he was in the service, he preferred the Lutheran chaplains because they emphasized the gospel, the good news of the New Testament. I don’t know what the other chaplains emphasized, but perhaps I did hear an ecumenical service in a country town a few years ago before the U.S. went to war in Iraq, that was all about how God would back the army of his choice. I didn’t care for that and then understood how an emphasis on the gospel and more about the fine example of Jesus life was what I was expecting and hoping to hear.
Spirituality
The Theologica Germanica, as discussed earlier, expresses several positive themes about spiritual experience, from a recognition of the role of God’s created world to a trust in forgiveness and acceptance by God. This is characterized by our aligning our hearts as well as minds with God first and then expressing this relationship in our daily lives, rather than doing outward actions learned only through our minds, out of fear of God’s condemnation if we do the wrong thing. In the Via Transformativa of Lutheranism later in this paper I also discuss the pious and spiritual movement of Swedish Lutherans.
Before spirituality, Lutherans used the term, piety, which has been associated with personal morality and not with public social morality. Getting back to one’s relationship with God was a reaction to religion that was highly institutionalized and connected to the government in Europe in previous centuries. This is what sparked the reformation in the first place and what inspired many to leave Europe and come to the Americas for religious freedom.
N.F.S. Grundtvig’s Perspective on Being Human as Well as Christian
The Danish Lutheran theologian, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), wrote hundreds of hymns of a very positive nature that also frequently used images of our natural environment as well as of the cultural heritage of the Danish people and other northern Europeans. Themes emphasizing the holiness of God, the beauty of Creation and the importance of cultural heritage, are, I believe, Lutheran trends toward valuing an Original Blessing, the Via Positive and Befriending Creation.
Happy or Glad Danes is a nickname for those who followed Grundtvig and Sad Danes were those who did not. Knowing one’s historical culture is a way to get back to one’s original blessing. Grundtvig wrote about the importance of knowing the history and culture of one’s ancestors. He said Danes and other Nordic people should know about the Danish and Nordic mythological history and not be forced to just study about Greek and Roman civilization as had predominated formal education. He wrote about the need for a Nordic university and felt this alternative kind of learning could exist alongside formal education already in existence.
I feel Grundtvig’s theology and theories on culture should be more widely known, especially by Lutherans. Since different cultural groups have merged together, they have less reason to remember their cultural heritage, at least not in a religious setting. The relation between religion and culture became more distinct. Traditional religion and cultural observances seem to be lagging as we Americans intermarry and inter-organize and the younger postmodern generation continues to question everything.
Grundtvig had a somewhat unique approach by being impassioned about culture and making room for both folk culture and Christianity, compared to the single-minded approach the majority of Christians have had. Grundtvig articulated a relationship between Christianity and indigenous culture, and is known to have stated, man [human] first, then Christian (Knudsen 1976, 140). "Basically there can be no dichotomy of human living and Christian living" (1976, 5). Cultural values need not totally be abolished but can be celebrated in a balance with Christian ones. Knowing one’s cultural roots is a way of valuing the legacy of creation. Grundtvig wrote that we should learn our "mother tongue", meaning the language of our mothers and fathers and we should learn the history of the land of our "fathers" (and mothers).
As Christianity has been spread throughout the world, elements of pre-Christian tradition assert some presence, though we often are unaware of it. For instance, many Christian holidays are close to special days in pre-Christian tradition. The holidays that fall at times of the changing of the seasons and based on the position of the sun and moon subtly remind us that nature exists, and Christian ritual traditionally gives nature a verbal nod now and then.
An excerpt from my paper, "The Life of the People: The Legacy of N.F.S. Grundtvig & Nonviolent Social Change Through Popular Education in Denmark," which I have also attached as an addendum, addresses this further:
Grundtvig developed a perspective on the relationship between religion and secular society which made room for both. He believed that our "folk-life is a necessary prerequisite for living Christianity." During the Dark Ages of Western Europe, secular studies were put aside and the study of Christianity had center stage (Sanford 1962, 906). Secular learning was eventually brought back to educational institutions. By the time Grundtvig lived, upper class schools taught about culture, but this usually meant the study of Greek and Roman cultures. On a secular level, there was a realization of the value of knowledge of the arts and other forms of culture, but the value of developing popular local culture for the masses of people who were poorer and less educated was overlooked and delegitimized by upper class standards.
Grundtvig was a soul searcher and a seeker of truth. He even wrote, questioning whether traditional Lutheranism in his day "was adequate for the nineteenth century", in his essay titled, "Shall the Lutheran Reformation Be Continued (Knudsen 1976, 3)?" His theology in general would be considered fairly mainstream today in the Lutheran church. He spoke out against rationalism in the church of his day and came to be a spokesperson who emphasized that Christian faith is not based on properly interpreting the Bible but on the faith and proclamation of the church as expressed in collective worship, especially the sacraments. He especially believed in the significance of the spoken Word of God in a participatory relationship among Christian worshipers with each other and as an expression of their relationship to God, as well as singing of hymns and the preaching of the Gospel, the message about Jesus in the New Testament (1976, 7).
He also encouraged the spoken word as a way of education for the folk schools, not just because there may not have always been enough text books to go around, but as a value for making learning come to life characterized by real connections being made between people (Royal Danish Embassy, N.F.S. Grundtvig 2002). He is known for his emphasis on "folkelighed," translated as "folk-life," referring to the interrelated fellowship that transcends social class. Grundtvig’s use of it did not promote the upper class, rather the common life of all people united by history and geography as well as nationality. In the situation in Denmark, the common people were emphasized as Grundtvig saw they possessed values which were underestimated by internationally and classically dominated education (Royal Danish Embassy 2002).
There were three parts to Grundtvig’s definition of folk-life. One was social, "where the art of joining together in a community of free individuals is learned," exemplified by the institution of education. The national dimension is "where the common will is transformed into political power," exemplified by the state or nation government. Neither of these, he believed, can function if not supported by "a free spiritual life and free discussion of the human condition and of faith," exemplified by the institution of the church or, it should be added, other religious institutions (Reich 2000, p. 8).
Grundtvig spend extensive periods of time in England from which he gained fresh insights on what would be good for the development of Denmark. He was inspired by the freedom of spirit there, however, conditions there caused him to be concerned about what would happen to Denmark, if it did not preserve its folk-life. (See addendum for more on this subject.) He was frustrated by the dominant Anglican church. He believed in free speech for ministers and the freedom of parishes to choose their minister. He spoke out against the authorized hymnal, sermon and text books. He believed differences of opinion and dispute were a "necessary part of a free Christian community and church," and wrote, "It is vital…that the quarrel between the clergy is maintained, so that none of them becomes absolute." In Denmark like in Sweden (which I discuss later), there was a pious movement apart from the state religion, for worship in homes. Grundtvig supported these "laymen" meetings but also stressed the necessity of realizing freedom of spirit inside the existing church. (Ibid.)
Grundtvig emphasized that Christianity should be indigenous to the life of a people.
Especially in its worship, Christianity is not a matter of individual concern alone; it is a community life which finds its earthly home in the human forms for common values that have grown in various parts of our created world. This corporate aspect, which was absent in [his contemporary] Kierkegaard’s agonizing search for Christian living…is essential to Grundtvig’s understanding of the Christian life" (Knudsen 1976, 5-6).
An American Lutheran scholar, Johannes Knudsen, who I quote frequently about Grundtvig, cautioned against "proof-texting" and taking statements out of context. In order to interpret Grundtvig for others, I run the risk of that. Everyone has their own point of view which they seek to validate in whatever they read. Knudsen perhaps feared that people would embrace the folk-life aspect and reject Christianity, which probably has been done in Denmark, at least. It is clear that Grundtvig strives for the right relationship between the folk-life and Christianity (1976, 38)
In his 1847 essay, "Folk-Life and Christianity," he starts out by saying that there are those who think his followers mix up their folk heritage with Christianity. Grundtvig claims that Christianity came to Denmark, not as a violent conqueror, but through a meek and defenseless monk, who asked the king for permission to preach. Most people tend to see things in an either/or fashion and this was the case in his day. He did see folk-life and Christianity as distinct, and claimed he tried to keep them apart. "The one is valid only in a small corner of the North, the other is universal; the one is temporally determined, the other is valid for time and eternity (1976, 37-39).
Grundtvig criticizes those who would force faith onto people. He writes that "spiritual servitude in matters of salvation is always as un-Christian and ungodly as it is inhuman." He then goes on to say that "only when Christians everywhere join up with nature-people will Christianity and folk-life everywhere, and soonest in Denmark, be restored to their original, free, only right, and natural relationship" (1976, 40). At the time of his writing, apparently, Christianity appeared to be losing its influence. He describes Christianity as being:
an ally against foreign dominance…As far as Denmark is concerned, I am certain that Christianity will gain respect and influence when it advances the cause of spiritual freedom in the service of folk-life. This will take place not only because it gains merit with the suppressed, tortured, and almost inanimate folk-life, but because true Christianity must presuppose spiritual freedom and folk-life, or if they are absent, create them (1976, 40-41).
Grundtvig refers to how the Reformation helped people throw off the yoke imposed by the pope and priests and introduced the people’s language into the church. All people should praise this movement, he writes, whether they want to be Christian or not. "This matter must be left to the individuals, but they can decide only when human nature and Christianity meet in free interaction" (Ibid.).
Further on he writes that many sanctified people regard human nature as something Christianity must combat. This happens…because they do not know a living Christianity nor the spirit which vitalizes. They have an unspiritual and inanimate concept of both…. He refers to Christians who think of "humanity as a life in heaven or in the sky, never on earth. On earth you never find humanity without folk-life, whether folk-life encompasses humanity or, as in the case of Jesus Christ, humanity encompasses folk-life" (1976, 41-42).
Grundtvig understood that mythology was an ancient tradition transferred orally through the generations and represented human’s earliest literature in the form of poetry, not prose. He admires Greek myths equally with Nordic mythology. He says that the Romans were "the most unpoetic of all the famous peoples in ancient times," furthering their own goal of suppression of all natural peoples. "Assuming that the myths of every people are a pleasing expression of its spirit and that they form its spiritual temple, they are necessarily prophetic. They forebode the destiny of a people" (1976, 29 & 33).
Grundtvig had a positive and healthy admiration of Judaism. He describes the Hebrews as the most poetic of all ancient peoples. He felt the theologians of the Reformation would have done better to see the Hebrew people as the normative people in their revision of Christianity rather than Roman culture. He refers to the Hebraic or Israelite folk life, which is clearly maintained and says that the folk life of Israel was clearly the prerequisite of the advent of Christ. He wrote that the Spirit is found through the living Word, and should not be idolized in scripture or fancy buildings or in alphabetic letters. He is concerned that Hebrew was a dead language in his day, but believed that there would come a time when "the remnant of this remarkable people and its language will be resurrected as Lazarus was…"(1976: 30, 33, 42 & 45)
Danish folk-life at the time, had not been maintained in a living manner. Grundtvig felt it useless to speak to Danish people about the life in Christ under these circumstances. "When we yet do it, we sense it is as if our master had spoken to the dead young man on the bier about the way to eternal life which he of course, did not do…When temporal life is nonexistent, or when it is a crushing burden in grief, words about eternal life will be useless, if not scorned.… "The death of Danish folk-life is the spiritual death of the people. It must be remedied by the reawakening of folk-life before we can effectively speak to the people about living Christianity" (1976, 42). "The reason that a people must become aware of itself before any other spirit than its own can speak to it is the same reason that a person must become self-conscious before it does any good to speak to him about his human needs, about the peril he is in or the means of rescue."
Grundtvig goes on to say that it is the Word which raises humanity above animals, and by which the world of the spirit is opened… Just as the invisible world becomes alive and strong only on the mother tongue, our living relation to our past and our future depends on our sense of continuity with our ancestors and our descendants. If the word of God is to find a well-prepared people, then, in Denmark as in Israel, it is necessary for a word of the people (a folk word) in the mother tongue to turn the hearts of the children to the parents and the hearts of the parents to the children…."
He goes on to defend that he has not mixed up Danishness and Christianity;
When I desire the school of the people to be Danish, I do not believe that Danishness will make us all-knowing or will gain us salvation. I do so because we must be Danish just as all people must become alive before it is of any use to speak to them about temporal or eternal life. I do not envy those who prefer to speak to the dead, but I repeat that I would rather speak to living robbers than to dead saints. The former might be converted but the latter can do nothing (1976, 43).
In another essay he writes that in order to understand "God’s Son in a living way," we must be…enlightened as a people. (This is where the folk schools came in.) If this does not happen, we have no living concepts about the relationship between God and man or between time and eternity, life or death in a spiritual sense, between the people of God and the peoples of the world.
…Otherwise we shall misunderstand, in a physical manner, all talk about a divine savior, about reconciliation, justification by faith, entrance in the kingdom, membership n the people of God, and the transition to eternal life (1976, 48).
Grundtvig’s emphasis on the importance of the Jewish roots of Christianity relates to the concept of Original Blessing and the scriptural basis for this. This and his positive reference toward "nature-people" (above); the value he placed on earthly life; his scepticism of Roman cultural control, and his support for freedom of thought in religion and lay spiritual movements all relate to important themes in Creation Spirituality and in particularly, the positive nature of the treasures of life, creation, culture and history.
Grundtvig lived in a conservative era, compared to today, though perhaps not that different, as churches in Scandinavia have not been overly crowded in recent decades. I’m sure the experience of having a state religion has been different than what we have in the U.S. At one time, all were required to attend church in Denmark. The socialist movement brought a secularism as Marx challenged the importance of religion and many followed his example. Grundtvig made room for the secular and the religious, and offered a mechanism to achieve religious goals through the secular institution of popular education. This provides an educational model for building democracy worth continuing to study today (see appended article on the folk school movement in Denmark).
In current times, the Creation theme has been focused on, in regard to the environment, by Protestants concerned about applying their faith to the real world. In a recent year I went to a gathering of a Presbyterians for Restoring Creation who base environmental ethics on Biblical scripture. One of the talks I went to was on how to make a building more environmentally harmonious. Some churches were trying to apply these principles to their church. Issues like how to save energy and the surrounding landscape were discussed. I picked up a booklet there where the author writes:
As Christians, we start with the Bible, to see how nature and economy fit into the Divine economy of creation and redemption. To our astonishment, what we find is far more than a smattering of relevant texts. From the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, the biblical witness consistently and frequently affirms God’s care for creation and each creature, especially the most vulnerable – both human and non-human. (Johnston 1997, 2)
The environment is the original blessing of creation that needs to be repaired and has not been emphasized much by Christianity. However, as I have been writing this paper I have learned about more and more Christian groups concerned about how their faith relates to the ecology. Earth Stewards has gatherings in Northern California. The largest Lutheran body, the ELCA, has an office of Environmental Education and Advocacy, though I don’t believe most Lutherans know about it. In their Division for Church in Society’s website is "A Social Statement on Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice," commenting on the relationship between the Creation theology tradition in the Bible on the current environmental crisis.
A Lutheran scholar who has worked on an ELCA Ethics Project, Larry Rasmussen, has published a book, Earth Community, Earth Ethics, in which he develops the relationship between ethics of creation and faith traditions, most specifically, Lutheranism. I found his book to be a real education in environmentalism but also insightful in how to approach this subject from a faith perspective. Rasmussen dedicated his book to colleagues in the Justice, Peace and Creation Unit of the World Council of Churches, which he co-moderates (ELCA 6/2/97). In his book he seeks to find established as well as newly developed religious and moral substance for a sound earth faith and ethic. (Rasmussen 1996, 270).
Rasmussen writes that the UN Conference on the Environment in 1972 included testimony from scientists testifying that the deepened scientific understanding developed in the last several decades confirms and reinforces many of the older insights of humanity, that all living things are part of an intricate web of inter-dependence. "They told us that aggression and violence, blindly breaking down the delicate relationships of existence, could lead to destruction and death…What we know learn is that they are factual descriptions of the way in which our universe actually works" (258).
Rasmussen writes that the phrase "the integrity of creation"…first surfaced at the Vancouver assembly of the World Conference of Churches in 1983 when it was added to the "long-standing themes of justice and peace." It refers to "the value of all creatures in themselves, for one another, and for God, and their interconnectedness in a diverse whole that has unique value for God…..(1996, 99). Creation ‘possesses an inner cohesion and goodness’ by virtue of its origin in ‘the will and love of the Triune God.’" It is not we who ‘integrate’ creation but its integrity is prior to our concern and participation. The created world has rights that precede human action and understanding. As Rasmussen seeks to define an earth ethic he states that aboriginal traditions have assumed that "all life, not just human life, shares a common moral universe" but most modern ones have not (1996, 105-107).
In his chapter, The Slow Womb, Rasmussen describes the stages over billions of years of evolution that led up to the present life on earth. He defines the universal terms of differentiation, the tendency for diversity in nature; autopoiesis, the capacity of nature to self-organize; and communion, the interrelatedness of all creation. Though nowhere in his book does Rasmussen refer to Matthew Fox, he does refer to people who have worked with Fox. He quotes from works by Brian Swimme, a physicist, and Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest/scientist, who I was introduced to at the creation spirituality program I attended in Oakland. Berry and Swimme say that a bear is meaningless outside its natural environment. The size of its arm, the structure of its eyes and the thickness of its fur all relate to the temperate forest community where it lives. This is an example of the "’integrity of creation’…’the Earth is so integral in the unity of its functioning that every aspect of the Earth is affected by what happens to any component member of the community’…. Thus the well-being of the planet is the condition of the well-being of its member communities" (1996, 29-30).
Rasmussen writes that we do not live with nature,
we live deep inside critical daily, historical exchanges large and small with all things at once, exchanges near and far and much too complex and wondrous to understand in either their minutiae or their totality. We do not live "on" earth. We live as part of earth’s articulation – in subtle bioregional communities internally tuned to tropics and arctics; seacoasts and mountains, plains, woodlands, and deserts; and urban settlements amidst these (1996, 33).
Rasmussen believes something has to change to prevent humans from devastating the earth. He seeks a viable earth faith to support the transformation that needs to happen. He acknowledges world religions other than Christian, feminist and indigenous spiritualities, while giving a focused look at aspects of Lutheran theology, which is his background, in hopes that other traditions will do the same for themselves (1996, 271). He writes: "it is precisely a deep cultural crisis that initially gives birth to religions and later to their reform. …Religions and their ways of life do not, of course, start from scratch. In a world long underway, there is no scratch to start from. …new and reforming faiths emerge as major transformations of lively or newly enlivened traditions and practices" (1996, 14)
Rasmussen often refers to the earthiness of Hebrew tradition a resource for developing a sense of earth faith. Many people will refer to the Christian Bible as saying that "man" was told to have dominion over the earth, meaning to have power over it. However, dominion also has another gentler translation meaning steward and caretaker, not master. The charge in Hebrew "’to till and keep’ of Genesis 2:15 means literally ‘to serve and preserve’.…To serve means, literally, to cultivate." Rasmussen underscores the steward’s intimacy with the soil, as the word, "Adam" is "derived from a Hebrew noun of gender meaning earth, topsoil or ground." Eve’s name means "life" (1996, 232).
Rasmussen writes that Judaism was a religion about how wonderful the physical world is. It dawned upon the freed slaves from Israel that their liberating God was also the sovereign creator of the whole universe, which the Hebrew Bible celebrates again and again. The breath of life that inspired Adam and Eve is the same breath "that brooded over the waters of first creation." The image of Wisdom, a feminine manifestation of God, has also been present from the beginning (1996, 253). Feminist scholarship states that "Wisdom" came from an earlier form of the goddess which later it was transposed in scripture with "Word." (Feminine Dimension of the Divine)
Rasmussen writes about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of Martin Luther’s sense of spirituality and earthiness. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran who struggled in Germany against the Nazi regime. Rasmussen says that Karl Barth insisted on a Calvinist stance that the finite cannot hold the infinite (finitum non capax infiniti) but "Bonhoeffer insisted, with Luther, that the finite bears the infinite (finitum capax infiniti), expressing a conviction that God is amidst the living events of nature and history. "If you would experience God, you must fall in love with earth. … Don’t look ‘up’ for God, look around. The finite is all there is, because all that is, is there" (1996, 272-273).
At least until the Enlightenment, the common catholic conviction was that God is revealed in two books, scripture and the book of nature, which Luther’s words reflect. However, there was a strong current in Greek philosophy which placed God separate and above the earth. "Luther rejects any flight from the creaturely and finite as the path to communion with God. God is wholly in the grain, and the grain is holy in God….It is to be embraced, not spurned…. The prevalent view that ‘the intellectual journey to truth and the moral journey to goodness is one with the journey from bodily beings to disembodied Being’ simply goes by the boards as Luther disavows" this view which goes back to "Neoplatonic Christianity"….The issue is not whether or not we can escape earth; we cannot." The issue is the suffering and harm caused by not accepting earth’s constraints and possibilities. The issue is "conni[ving] in the murder of Creation"(1996, 273-276).
Rasmussen says that though Luther seldom uses caution in his statements, he is cautious in how he talks about panentheism (God found in nature) as humans idolize and try to capture God in the finite. "All efforts to either capture God in our terms or to ‘be like God’ by denying our death and finitude, including political and economic efforts, eventually turn religious or quasi-religious." We seek cosmic power to escape the earthly cares and shrink from the "considerable powers we do have as wondrous creatures of earth." Or, we abuse power "in self-deprecation, even self-hatred". We fail to claim power and the potential of life, though that may be a conflicted path, given the nature of earthly existence, and "we resign ourselves to something less than what could be" (1996, 276-277).
Faith, by God’s grace, is the capacity to affirm life in the midst and face of death, be reconciled to its limits…and accept the whole without despair. In the end what separates us from God and others is not our finitude, but killing. Our problem is not that we are mortal but that we are unjust (1996, 277).
Though I had not previously been aware of this theology of earth ethics and the theme, "being with the gracious God means loving earth"(272) which Rasmussen derives from Luther, this does not seem out of character with how we were taught as Lutherans. Seminarians have a lot of fun with the earthiness of the saying, "sin boldly", whereas a Catholic priest I sat next to on a plane ride once told me he had difficulty with it. The seminarians most likely have a perspective on that term, as being used not in a general way but in a specific circumstance. There is a website,… sin boldly…..But it seems to fit with Luther’s theology that bends the human rules when they fit God’s laws, as described earlier in this paper. I know that Luther wrote profusely and the theology of nature resonates with what I have read in the Theologica Germanica and of mystics like Meister Eckhart who Matthew Fox talks about who indirectly influenced Luther, as discussed earlier.
A woman who is of Presbyterian background told me she had been surprised at a Lutheran minister who joked about buying a case of wine for the church at a discount price when it was inferred that a lot of the wine went to his home. There were always the two themes, of earthiness and piety, in my Lutheran experience. I was at an Augustana (Swedish Lutheran) Heritage Gathering in Rock Island, IL in the summer of 2000 where one minister giving a talk, Herb Anderson, said that the way Lutherans handled the more fundamentalist beliefs was to not try to turn people away, but be diplomatic and say that both points of view had legitimacy. He told a story of one old Swede who was asked if he was saved. The man replied, "Nej, Jag är Lutheran," (No, I am Lutheran).
Rasmussen calls for a conversion to an earth faith that is needed today. He uses the term "earth" rather than "environment" because his book is about earth and its distress, not just the environment. Near the beginning of his book he tells a story from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Alyosha visits the monastery cell where his spiritual mentor, Zossima, lies dead in a coffin. He prays, falls asleep and dreams that Zossima tells him to go out into the world to begin his "work". When he awakes, he goes out into the silent night under a starry sky, throws himself upon the earth, kisses it and sobs in ecstasy.
It was as though the threads from all those innumerable worlds of God met all at once in his soul, and it was trembling all over as it came in contact with other worlds… He had fallen upon the earth a weak youth, but he rose from it a resolute fighter…Three days later he left the monastery in accordance with the words of his late elder…who had bidden him [now re-born to earth] to ‘sojourn in the world’ (1996, 6-7).
Rasmussen quotes Luther as saying that God "fills it all", meaning God fills the earth but is not limited by it. In conclusion of his chapter, "Returning to Our Senses" he writes:
Experiencing the gracious God means, then, falling in love with earth and sticking around, staying home, imaging God in the way we can as the kind of creatures we are. The only viable earth faith is thus a biospiritual one. Earth ethics is a matter of turning and returning to our senses. The totality of nature is the theater of grace. The love of God, like any genuine love, is tactile (1996, 279-281)
I remember one Sunday school lesson where the Creation theme was taught. I remember looking around at nature, and for perhaps the first time, thinking about the spiritual connection between God and nature. Otherwise, as Matthew Fox wrote, it hasn’t been preached much about. I remember the theme of nature expressed as part of the liturgy in Lutheran services when there were readings from the Old Testament Christian scripture incorporated from Judaism. As far as the New Testament, Jesus’ parables often related to nature, though I don’t remember that the points expressed dealt directly with the environment or cosmic creation, but human relationships with God and each other.
There are several hymns which uses images from nature as Jesus did in parables like Children of the Heavenly Father, and other old Swedish hymns about how God looks after his flock like a mother hen. Some praise the beauty of the naturally created world as in the Psalms, like a contemporary one, Earth and All Stars. Some speak to the beauty of creation, then conclude by saying how what God and/or Jesus have to offer is more permanent than the transitoriness of nature, such as Beautiful Savior. Several talk about the times of the day, and how God is present and active throughout, like Evening and Morning. A newer hymn in a supplement to the main hymnal, that can be a real tear-jerker for me, is called I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry, about how God is present when we are born and will be there when we are old, and all the stages of life in between as well as beyond this life.
2) Via Negativa of Lutheranism (or the Yin
and Yang of Lutheranism) 
It has been
an extra challenge to completely separate the positive from the negative
in Lutheranism. There are often at least two sides to things. That’s why
I have subtitled this section, The Yin and Yang of Lutheranism.
Above I use the heart as a symbol of God’s grace and love with the cross
which represents the letting go of Jesus on the cross, in contrasting
shades like Yin and Yang symbology. This fits with my themes below of
a both and dimension to the negative way.
Matthew Fox looks at the Via Negativa from both a positive and negative angle. From the positive side, he talks about sinking and emptying as a way to approach spiritual experience. The strong Lutheran approach to being forgiven for sin by God’s grace is way of putting a happy ending to a sad story. Luther’s approach has to be really followed though, otherwise forgiveness can just be shallow. We need to really be in touch with our faith and the spirit, to be able to act from a place of grace and forgiveness in our dealings with the world.
Rasmussen writes how Martin Luther also saw the contradictions of the positive and negative. God has been revealed indirectly through the cross of Jesus.
God is found… in weakness and wretchedness, in darkness, failure, sorrow and despair. God is not found only there,… but God is there in a special,…saving way. God is present in a certain kind of suffering love and as a certain kind of power on the home turf of brokenness, and degradation itself. God is present in twistedness and pain, and not in beauty and health alone. God is affected by creation’s turmoil and earth’s distresses, reaches into it and takes it into divine being itself. When nature suffers degradation—any of nature—God suffers (Rasmussen 1986, 284).
Another positive view of "the negative way" is Matthew Fox’ theme of letting go, and resting on the Sabbath. In Larry Rasmussen’s discussion of the meaning of dominion theology, he says that the Sabbath was not created by humans but by God after creating the world. It is the climax of the Genesis story which symbolizes the correct relationship with God and creation. You could perhaps say this means the most important thing to remember is to take a break from work regularly to reflect and get a perspective on who our creator is and what our relationship is to the rest of creation, while letting everybody and everything rest from human activity. Sin happens when we damage life on earth by overachieving and neurotic continuous activity. Rasmussen says that while the importance of human activity described by stewardship and dominion have been consistent and important Jewish themes, the Sabbath lacks the chauvinism and "unrestrained utility" of "Christian practice after the commercial globalization by the West and the industrial revolution" (1986, 232).
Humans have been in a race to succeed but if we succeed too well we will be out of the race. When I was a child I remember playing tag and running too far away so no one could catch me. I had succeeded in not getting caught, but I no longer played the game. If we destroy our natural resources, air, soil, water, etc., we will not be able to continue to grow as we have. When I took music lessons and my teacher would have me try a new technique, I inevitably overdid the technique and I had to learn to do something in between my old and new habits. The practice of finding a middle way is often a good strategy and may be needed for humans to continue to live well on the earth.
The Theologica Germanica which influenced Martin Luther talked about importance of being able to let go of material possessions in order to be closer to God. Accepting forgiveness is a way of letting go of fear and guilt and finding spiritual nurturance to march on with guidance from prayer and meditation.
The concept of Original Sin was authored by St. Augustine The Swedish Lutheran American church’s name, Augustana, was derived from the Augsburg Confession, a foundational Lutheran document written to unify Lutheran belief in its earliest beginnings. It contains a section on Original Sin which to my understanding fits in with the Lutheran theology that all humans suffer from Adam & Eve’s Original Sin unless they have come to know God. We cannot escape from sin by our own effort but are justified by God’s saving grace.
Also they teach that since the fall of Adam all men begotten in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence; and that this disease, or vice of origin, is truly sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Ghost.
They Condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that original depravity is sin, and who, to obscure the glory of Christ’s merit and benefits, argue that man can be justified before God by his own strength and reason.
The feminine qualities of God, which Original Blessing would put in the Via Positiva, are not totally absent in a figurative way, but in a literal way fromanism. When I was first learning about the "back to the goddess" movement in the early 1980’s, I attended a women and spirituality conference in Mankato, Minnesota. They were celebrating the ordination of the first Episcopal woman minister. Perhaps Episcopalians like to be at the cutting edge, as now they have the first gay bishop. You could probably call them true Protestants. At this conference I discussed the "goddess" with a woman minister who told me she felt that the Lutheran emphasis on "grace" was a feminine quality.
That having been said, the book, The Absent Mother, is a collection of essays, that criticizes the Reformation for taking Mary out of the Church’s spiritual symbols for the "godhead" in Christian worship (Pirani 1991, 121).
The Church has treated women badly…Not only woman, but the feminine principle – instinct, the body, nature – had always been suspect, but during the Reformation the figure of the Virgin Mary, woman’s cherished light aspect, was removed and banished by Reformers and Protesters, and human nature was declared to be wholly evil. Woman is closer to nature than man therefore woman is more evil than man (1991, 86)
Stained glass windows were smashed, statues of "Our Lady" were toppled and destroyed. Religion became rational and non-symbolic and individualized. "Its function as a binding of community values was weakened. God became fiercer, more judgmental, as the intercessionary powers of Mary were lost" (1991, 127). This author writes that the Reformation is "indissolubly linked with the rise of capitalism…." The individual develops the right "to accumulate wealth and charge interest. Thrift becomes a religious duty; idleness a sin." There is a shift from loyalty to Rome to nationalism. Since Mary is not needed as intercessionary, there becomes an emphasis on one’s personal relationship to God: the "symbolic dogma is abandoned in favour of morality. The already patriarchal nature of the Church is rendered more abrasive, with a fiercer examination of the individual’s conduct, with a view to the expenditure of energy in a ‘productive’ manner (1991, 127-128).
Another consequence of the Reformation, this author continues, was a swing in the Catholic church in which the "cult of Mary became more exaggerated, more militant….the Church relaxed its claim to intellectual leadership, Catholic piety…became saccharin…more emotional." The symbol of Mary in the Catholic church lost some of its "strength, toughness and artistic freshness" and in statues in homes today is generally a "vapid featureless creature" (1991, 130).
As I wrote earlier, Lutherans have been frequently associated with having an emphasis on sin and guilt, as in the Original Sin tradition. Original Blessing emphasizes much more and even counters this concept of original sin. The Lutheranism I am familiar with even quotes Martin Luther as writing, "sin boldly." I sat next to and engaged in theological conversation with a Catholic priest on an airplane ride a few years ago. He told me he didn’t like the quote from Luther, "Sin boldly." What I always thought that meant was that if we let go of trying to do good and worry less about sinning but focus on having a good relationship with the spiritual realm, then life will flow as it should with peace and harmony. In Luther’s essay, The Freedom of a Christian, he makes the case that God’s love is above human law, however, for those who are not that close to God, it is better to follow the human law (Dillenberger 1961). This is very similar to some of the content of The Theologica Germanica described earlier. However, it seems to me that it is not always easy to discern if one is close enough to God, to know which law one is justified in following. Similarly, there is a fine line in other faith traditions to know whether or not one has been "saved."
After doing a little research on the internet, I found that "sin boldly" was something that Luther wrote in a long letter to a friend at a time when Luther was in hiding and had been excommunicated unjustly. Luther is quoted as saying that the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion or gain the upper hand, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. "But if it do what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are not there present." The occasion of the letter was the discontinuation of many practices commanded by the Pope against the express command of God, aligned with the command of the devil. Earlier in the same letter Luther says "Paul speaks very openly concerning the priests. He says demons have forbidden them to marry. Since the voice of Paul is the voice of the Divine Majesty, I do not doubt that it must be trusted in this matter. Therefore even if they have consented to the devil’s prohibition at the time of their initiation, then now, knowing the true state of the case and with whom they made their pact… the contract [with the devil] should be boldly broken" (Young 1996).
Lutherans begin their worship services with a confession of sins and the minister then tells everyone that God forgives them. Going to church, knowing your sins will be forgiven can be a healing process, perhaps, but is it an easy out? Doing something in response and to try to reconcile seems equally important. It seems that it would be very easy to slide through life with easy forgiveness.
However, if we are automatically saddled with the guilt of original sin when we are born, and people are made to be nervous and afraid of every bodily function, they miss the big picture. The advantage of not having a guilt complex, is that one feels freer to live in a loving manner and to explore what there may be to critique ourselves about. If forgiveness is viewed as too unreachable, our lives seem self-defeating.
On the other hand, forgiveness can be too easy. I once heard a Native American elderly woman from Washington state, who had lost land and her husband (David Sohappy) because of the stress of harassment, ask what good forgiveness was when people had no consciousness of what they were doing to people like her. In recent decades, several mainline churches delivered formal apologies to Native Americans. Apologies are one step, which hopefully will be followed by more understanding and acceptance, though by themselves they may not solve much. Big mistakes have been made in the course of civilization. Christianity has often been aggressively instated to replace indigenous religions which already had their own worldview.
N.F.S. Grundtvig said that Christianity was not forced on the Danes, though my understanding from what I have read is that the king accepted it for the benefit of the people of Denmark, and likewise in other Scandinavian countries. I’m not sure each Dane had a choice in that matter. I visited Sweden as a young adult and visited a lot of big churches. However, not a lot of people go to these churches, built by the state. Lutheranism was the state religion there until the year 2000 (Wikipedia).
It does make a difference how Christianity is accepted as to what kind of relationship the Christian will have with the religion. Being a child of a minister (preacher’s kid or "PK") and knowing several others, I know that as PKs grow up, some remain a part of their tradition and it is at least as common for others to rebel. Having no choice in the matter, at some point, the religion must relate to the rest of the world. I agree with N.F.S. Grundtvig, that earlier indigenous cultures should not just be forgotten. One perspective is that it is human nature, when learning something new, to go to the opposite extreme, in order to do the right thing, but at some point we get out of balance if we forget all about our history.
Sins not acknowledged by a culture as a whole can easily be collectively overlooked by a dominant culture. In The Little Book on the Human Shadow, Robert Bly writes that it is healthy to be aware of our shadow side as exemplified in Bali where they have "fierce, toothy, aggressive, hostile" figures carved in stone sitting outside most homes. "This being doesn’t plan to do good." However, in real life,
The person does not aim to act out the aggressive energies as we do in football or the Spanish in bull-fighting, but each person aims to bring them upward into art: that is the ideal. The Balinese can be violent and brutal in war, but in daily life they seem much less violent than we are. What can this mean?…. We ask for roses in the wallpaper, Renoir above the sofa, and John Denver on the stereo. Then the aggression escapes from the bag and attacks everyone (Bly 1988, 20).
Otherwise, he says that we stuff what we don’t want to deal with in a metaphorical bag which we drag along behind us. If this concept is true, it is probably good and healthy that Lutherans regularly acknowledge that they are not perfect and in need of forgiveness. However, beyond sin towards other humans, the consequences of environmental destruction occur when we overlook our natural nonhuman living environment, which native religions have kept in their worldview.
Interpreting the Metaphors of Darkness
Rasmussen devotes a chapter to The Gifts of Darkness. He develops a theme of positive attributes to darkness, which the dominant culture has commonly associated with evil and death and fear. He talks about the refreshing aspect of the sleep and dreaming and silence as well as the wisdom that it can bring. "Living means lighting a light in the darkness, not against it" (Rasmussen 1996, 224).
I learned about this concept from a classmate who is now an alumni of WISR, Lisa Carey. Lisa’s ancestors were European and her late husband’s ancestors were African. She was concerned about her dark skinned children living in a culture where dark has so many negative connotations. This is one more example of how slanted our culture in its race to succeed, with light as its emblem, ignores and disregards what is darker, in a literal sense.
Hymns with Metaphors of the Negativa
Most hymns are uplifting and when they deal with pain, they bring comfort. Unfortunately, hymns quite often refer to dark as negative which those labeled as dark skinned may find hard to take over and over again. One of my favorite hymns on the theme of God’s presence through struggle, is one sung by Happy Danes (Grundtvig’s followers).
On your way! Be brave and true!
Should the road seem endless,
Walk where God is near and you
Never can be friendless.
Stars above the clouds still shine
Through your darkest hour!
In the Lord’s own prayer you find
Courage, peace and power.
Live and die for what you love!
Cherish and defend it!
Then you lift your life above
Things that waste and end it (Knudsen 1978, 84).
I don’t know how I would easily change the metaphor of dark here. A favorite hymn I sang during summer camp counseling, Wonderful World, does see God in darkness. The chorus is "Take care, to wonder at the world through which you wander. Never hurry by an open door. For you live in a universe full of miracles galore!" One verse starts with "Look for God in small things." Others say to look for God in bright, weak and wet things. One takes an unusual tack, "Look for God in black things: Storms at dusk or a brother’s skin, Praise Him whenever you find Him in anything black" (LOMC 1981).
Larry Rasmussen on Environmental Apartheid
If we look for God in darkness, perhaps we will see what has been neglected and mistreated that we need to be concerned and look outside of ourselves to care about. Larry Rasmussen addresses the neglected area of our environment from a faith perspective and talks about many sins toward the environment. He calls it apartheid thinking that distinguishes between human and non-human. The insightful focus in his book on the environmental peril we are in was a course in environmental studies for me. Rasmussen writes:
Earth’s crisis is a crisis of culture…. A now globalizing culture in nature and wholly of nature runs full grain against it. A virile, comprehensive, and attractive way of life is destructive of nature and human community together – this is the crisis. Soils, peoples, air and water are being depleted and degraded together….It is not ‘the environment’ that is unsustainable. It is …life-as-we-have-come-to-know-it…’the environmental crisis’ is a sign of cultural failure… It is the failure to submit human power to grace and humility, and to work ‘toward the habitation of the places in which we live’ on terms that respect both human limits and the rest of nature’s…. Modernity devours its own children" (Rasmussen 1986, 7-8).
Rasmussen excerpts from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s writing:
Man’s sense of dependence upon nature and his reverent gratitude toward the miracle of nature’s perennial abundance is destroyed by his arrogant sense of independence and his greedy effort to overcome the insecurity of nature’s rhythms and seasons by garnering her store with excessive zeal and beyond natural requirements. Greed is in short the expression of man’s inordinate ambition to his insecurity in nature…. Greed has thus become the besetting sin of a bourgeois culture (1986, 276).
Larry Rasmussen writes that
for all their power as articulations of faith amidst several historical crises, canonical Protestant Theologies from the 1930s to the 1970s were miserably deficient as cosmologies. They located human beings in the cosmos in ways that alienated us from the rest of nature and set the living substance of nature’s infinite variety over against us. Nature was submissive objects at the disposal of creative subjects, human beings… (1986, 188).
Rasmussen critiques some of the theologies of some Protestants. The assumptions have been that life is no longer fated…nature exists for us, we are artisans of a world of our own making, "human power and purpose can shape nature, society and psyche in indeterminate ways". The meaning of life in terms of this split human/nature relationship was stripped down to a struggle between the human mind and the rest of the natural order (1986, 188-189). My favorite example of the mind/body split is in the movie, Baron von Munchausen, where a husband and wife floating through space discuss intellectually with their heads while their separate bodies engaged in a sensual way.
In his chapter, The Vine Languishes, The Merry-Hearted Sigh, Rasmussen quotes prophecy from the 24th book of Isaiah which sounds like what could happen if environmental destruction continues at the pace its going:
the earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statues, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled, and few people are left. The wine dries up, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh….The city of chaos is broken down, every house is shut up so that no one can enter….all joy has reached its eventide; the gladness of the earth is banished (1986, 191).
Elaine Pagels is a religious historian of Protestant background (Religion and Ethics) who in her book called The Origin of Satan, says that Christians have historically identified with Jesus’ disciples and identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with the forces of evil and thus with Satan (Pagels 1995, xxiii). Christians have often blamed Jews for killing Jesus. A case could be made that some Jews may have been implicated in his death, but Romans were mainly responsible (xxii). Furthermore, Jesus was a Jew who founded Christianity among others, Jewish and non-Jewish. To blame the Jews for killing Jesus might be comparable with blaming Lutherans for allowing Hitler to kill the Jews in Germany. Some Lutherans might be implicated, but it was Hitler who was mainly responsible.
Pagels has made such a connection. She has written that Martin Luther denounced as "agents of Satan" all Christians remaining loyal to the Roman Catholic Church, Jews who refused to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, all who challenged the power of landowning aristocrats by participating in the Peasants’ War and all "Protestant" Christians who were not Lutheran (1995, 180). I know that I absorbed the belief, while growing up, that anyone who was not Lutheran did not have quite the right understanding, though we did not try to proselytize or discriminate against others who weren’t Swedish Lutheran. A friend of Norwegian Lutheran background has told me that she absorbed the same belief from her Norwegian forebears, that they had the most correct belief. Religion can be a rather competitive business. It seems silly as most people in the world are not that concerned about Swedish or Norwegian Lutherans and people I have encountered tend to confuse Swedes with Norwegians if they know anything about Scandinavia.
John Dillenberger writes that when peasants interpreted the new freedom of the Christian man as favoring their plight and revolted, Luther showed himself at his worst. While sympathetic with their plight, Luther feared anarchy and felt the authorities should be supported completely. "Some of his most vindictive writings came out of this period" (Dillenberger 1961, xxv). According to a website listing the Via Negativa of Luther’s behaviour, the peasants in the revolt of 1525 protested their miserable living conditions. 100,000 German peasants were horribly slaughtered, which was condoned by Luther. Luther apparently wrote, "They should be knocked to pieces, strangled and stabbed, secretly and openly, by everybody who can do it, just as one must kill a mad dog!" (Loflin)
Similarly inflammatory things were said about Jews, because they did not have the correct theological understanding. Luther was not the most tolerant of other beliefs, shall we say. However, the question is begged, how much of his statements influenced the general German population. We must think they had a lot of influence. At a time when the Bible was beginning to be published in the language of the common people, so too were Luther’s writings. If people took the Bible to be God’s word, wouldn’t Luther’s be close to God’s word? Luther wrote prolifically. How much of this influenced the Nazis and others who persecuted Jews in centuries to come? This is a legacy that Lutherans need to be aware of in any attempts at inter-religious dialogue. It’s amazing what people will believe that is written in black and white. Most of us are not born with advanced critical thinking abilities though today we have a barage of media influencing us to sort out.
According to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) Guidelines for Lutheran-Jewish Relations, its 1994 Declaration to the Jewish Community, "repudiated the anti-Jewish views of Martin Luther, expressed repentance for Christian complicity in hatred and violence against the Jews through the centuries, and committed itself to building a relationship with the Jewish people based on love and respect. Most Lutherans, however, probably are not aware of either Luther’s first pronouncement or the ELCA’s statement. A new movie on the Passion of Christ, his last days, has drawn criticism before it has come out, for repeating stereotypes that Jews killed Jesus Christ. The ELCA has issue a statement to Mel Gibson and to Lutherans about this film (Passion of the Christ). It asks Gibson to change the film before the final version. Hopefully the word will get around.
There has been some reluctance for Lutherans to engage in political involvement because of Luther’s belief in the separation of church and state, described earlier. We have to admit, that the takeover of Germany by Nazis was not stopped by Lutheran Christians during World Wars I and II. However, in neighboring little Denmark, almost all of their Jews were escorted to safe refuge in Sweden during World War II. So all Lutherans can’t be generalized by the history of one country, though Germany could be called the country of origin for Lutheranism though it’s perspectives could be altered in other countries.
Theology of the Cross as Earth Ethic
The symbol of the cross is the extreme example of the presence of God who is good, present in tragedy, in an opposite form than we would expect. "We have not direct evidence of God…that is not via nature. Martin Luther calls this the "rearward parts" of God (posteriori Dei). The reference is to Moses and the Jewish idea that no one can survive a direct encounter with the "majesty of God" (Rasmussen 1996, 284).
Rasmussen points out that the underlying assumption here is that the "farther one is removed from the suffering present in creation, the farther one is from its central moral reality." Rasmussen writes about Compassion, a common theme with Matthew Fox. He defines it as suffering-with and "the passion of life itself,…even as joy is." He quotes the Dalai Lama, who says that Compassion is the "common connective tissue of the body of human life" that nurtures and protects children, resolves conflict and brings people together. There would be no pleasure without kindness and compassion and thus it "seems to be the greatest power." Rasmussen continues to say that "a-pathy" contrasts with compassion. It is the denial of the senses and our inherent connectedness to all things. It is a rejection of our constitutional sociality and of the pathos of life (1996, 285) .
Quoting from another source:
Empathy is what leads to compassion. It is not pity or sentimentality. It is the ability to "see from multiple perspectives, be affected by them and take them into account." It leads into compassion and action. (Ibid.)
The Hebrew Bible has a term called Chesed, meaning lovingkindness, or some combination of "compassion" and "justice." It means we are flesh and blood, weak and vulnerable and often trapped in social realities we cannot transcend. There are limits that call for gentle, loving and kind responses. Knowing such reality from the inside out as a wounded healer is a redeeming action. Compassion as chesed is fired with the desire to move from where we are to where we ought to be. The goal is creation’s repair (tikkun olam) and its fullest possible flourishing (justice) (1996, 285-286).
Rasmussen says that a religious earth faith is that power which overcomes suffering by entering into it and leading through to "abundant life pictured as the Sabbath condition of redeemed creation." Jesus life reveals that what undergoes all can overcome all. He says suffering is a practical necessity for redemption:
Until our pain is intensified at the sight of creation’s pain, as God’s is, there is no movement toward redemption. Until we enter the places of suffering and experience them with those who are entangled there, as God does, our actions will not be co-redemptive…. This is a different kind of power than wealth, fame, legions of soldiers and ships, triumphalist ideologies, and arrogant, wasteful ways of life (1996, 286-287).
Rasmussen says at several points in his book that a love for nature should not just romanticize it and put it on a pedestal.
God is present in creation’s beauty…But God is also present in the crosses of pain and twistedness and whatever other ways by which creation is violated. If God were present only in the beautiful and graced and not in the blighted and disgraced, and if we were present only in a redeeming way to creation’s beauty and not in its plunder and rape, then broken creation would never be healed (1996, 287-288).
Rasmussen says that "suffering may make life difficult, but we cannot live without it. It is part of our creaturely constitution to struggle in the process of becoming…." In itself it is not negative or "necessarily life-destructive." It may be integrative by furthering our development as mature and responsible beings. "The suffering the cross opposes is the suffering that negates life and destroys the realization of creation " (1996, 289).
Rasmussen goes on much more about this theme which I have excerpted from. He is aware that as someone put it, "theology is very old ice cream" and "very tame sausage." However, he feels that the Lutheran theology of the cross "still has more bite than flat sausage and more life than very old ice cream." He says that Lutheran cross and resurrection theology falls near the intersection where liberation theologies and creation theologies cross and all three are "curiously optimistic. It has seen the worst and discovered a mighty power for life… smack in the midst of death…." The power of God and the Holy Spirit is in all of creation and therefore is not unreachable. Sustainability and redemption are within reach. The Holy Spirit moves to where there is "negative suffering…to discover and uncover power for life there."
It stands with victims to empower them and negate[s] the negations that generate victims….It insists that environmental justice is also social justice and that all efforts to save the planet begin with hearing the cry of the people and the cry of the earth together. Not least, it is a power that receives our violence without responding in kind so as to multiply it (1996, 291).
This is the redemptive power and cosmic energy of the Creator at work. "We are not exactly cocreators" as that would be too arrogant, Rasmussen writes, "but coparticipants" (1996, 292). The issue for an adequate environmental ethic is not a romantic view of nature. "The issue for earth ethics is the discovery of a power… that serves justice throughout creation." Rasmussen relates this redemptive power as found not only in creation but also seen in Jesus as a divine and human activity. All humans can let this energy flow through them as well. Lutheran theology of the cross and resurrection "asks us to find God deep in the gifts we naturally possess…." This means developing our spiritual and human powers within the limits of nature in a way that does not block and transcend the senses but works within the biophysical world. This earth ethic formed by cross and resurrection theology "puts responsibility squarely in human hands." It is a humble power used in the "sobering shadow of the cross and in full view of the considerable powers of destruction we have and wield." It is power that is keenly aware of the sin of devaluing other creatures and their habitat and of taking more than our due as corporations, nations, individuals, and as a species. It is aware of sin as "arrogance of treating earth as property at our disposal" and the sin of denying "creaturely limitations upon our ingenuity and technology and their uses…. (1996, 293).
This earth ethic, Rasmussen goes on, recognizes the "Achilles’ heel of human creativity—that the same human powers that shape the earth can destroy it…. It also knows the hope and exhilaration that spring from mended places and the affirmation of human participation in that mending" (1996, 293-294).
3) Via Creativa of Lutheranism
(This particular cross appears on the ELCA’s green hymnal cover. It is a more equidistant cross than usual and seems grounded on the earth and also open to the earth, with rounded corners, appearing a little flexible and open to change. The cross on the LCA hymnal we had when I was growing up was a cross above a circle, rooted in the center.)
Matthew Fox’s four paths as a whole are about a creative process. When an artist begins a project, he or she has a vision. Then as they try to do something, inevitably there is failure along the way. Then comes a breakthrough as creativity leads to fruition. It is not always so easy to separate the stages but they do make sense when applied to the whole of creation for humans capable of creative projects.
In this section, I describe several sacramental symbols that Larry Rasmussen suggests can be reclaimed to fit an Earth Faith. He also suggests that an Earth Faith reclaim science, and economics. I also discuss ecumenical dialogue with Eastern Orthodox and others as a sign of creativity in Lutheranism and other faiths. I also talk about Lutherans who encouraged celebrating culture as a way to bond and to communicate to weave a more functional society.
When I was young and trying to decide on a major for college, a main concern that I came up with was the environmental crisis. As I struggled to decide on a major, I realized that it is one thing to study the environment, but since human beings make decisions and take actions which cause the pollution, it is humans who can really take the steps to change the world. I directed my studies toward religion and ethics. Beyond college, as I explored other movements, I came to believe that if our religious symbols are life-giving, then in real life, whatever these symbols mean literally will not be devalued, especially women, nature, indigenous people and people from many cultures which are downtrodden today.
Throughout his book, Rasmussen echoes a statement by Thomas Berry, a Catholic scientist, and Brian Swimme, a physicist, who have written that preserving the viability and health of the planet must be the first laws of economics and medicine, respectively: "To preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine must be the basic concern of religion." To think that humans can benefit by exploiting the Earth is absurd. Human well-being is derived from the well-being of Earth (1996, 30).
Rasmussen quotes Aldo Leopold who once wrote that Education is learning to see one thing by going blind to another. Our symbols give us perspectives that hopefully guide us along a safe path. However, when there are indicators that our path may be going off a cliff, it is time to reexamine our symbols. Rasmussen devotes a large area in his book toward the recovery of earth symbols which can relate to the creation of an Earth Faith. He writes about a need for cosmology in Protestantism, meaning a perspective that takes into account all creation from the microcosm of a molecule to the macrocosm of a universe (1996, 188). However it happened, the Christian ethic of neighbor-love and justice "never included five to ten million other species of God’s fecund imagination…. If God’s love knows no bounds and embraces the interests of all creatures," why would a species created in God’s image, "instructed to love as God does, draw the line in the sand in front of its own feet?" Few theologians seem to be concerned about the eco-crisis. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, "There’s no there, there" (1996, 190). The Spirit’s presence is not among us for one species only, Rasmussen reminds us:
The earth does not revolve around humankind. Nor does our relationship with the cosmos turn on the exclusive salvation of the human being, despite our preciousness as a member of the Community of Life…. While we do not need to create or conjure up symbols, "the need now is for those symbols that effect a "reenchantment of the world" that edges out the deadly cosmology of mindless and valueless nature worked over by ghostly human freedom in all to much of modernity…. (1996, 194).
How can we elevate the symbols that represent a healthy world for all creation? As mentioned earlier, the ELCA now even has an office of Environmental Advocacy. Rasmussen reclaims several symbols from the established religions of Christianity and Judaism, some of which have been referred to above in the Via Positiva and Negativa of Lutheranism: dominion, steward and Sabbath. Another symbol is place and calling. He refers to part of a statement made at a World Council of Churches gathering, which states that our calling or orientation needs to be toward the created realm of earth. Our calling is to be its servants, tillers and keepers, co-creators and priests of creation. He asks us to imagine ourselves as distinctive earth creatures about to cross into a new millennium in search of the fourth great human environmental revolution. He asks us to think of what symbols and models we might live by for this endeavor (1996, 228).
Partner is another image to reclaim as a human model alternative to steward and is less homocentric. In this scenario, quality of life does not pertain to humans alone. "The value of otherkind goes beyond… ‘silo’ value (a stock of resources), ‘laboratory’ value (the object of learning), ‘gymnasium’ value (value for human leisure and recreation) and ‘cathedral’ value (aesthetic pleasure and religious emotion)" (1996, 236). Humans do have a distinct moral calling and responsibility but they are not the only creatures due moral consideration. "They are decentered both as the goal of creation and as its moral measure. Though humans do exercise dominion as a result of their powers to be self-conscious and capable of "transformations no other species can effect." However, Rasmussen writes, "the rest of nature may well hold the final trump card." Short of an endgame, the fact is that for human power to affect so much of nature means we are responsible. There is a recentering that needs to occur where humans realize that whatever power our species wields, "we do not legislate the laws of "an encompassing nature. Indeed, we violate them to our own and otherkind’s peril," and demise. The World Council of Churches (WCC) has addressed this too, saying: "’the integrity of creation’ is utterly basic. ‘Justice’ and ‘peace’ are pursued as a means to creation’s flourishing and fulfillment." Rasmussen continues:
Justice and peace aren’t human goals and states only, but all creation’s; and they can be attained only on creation’s terms. Creation’s integrity sets the terms and requires "moral considerability" of otherkind in human decisions. The preservation of ecosystem communities is of necessity a first value (1996, 237).
Larry Rasmussen says that St. Francis leads the nominees for patron saint of partnership toward God and creation.
Another ecologist Lutheran theologian, Paul Santmire, author of The Travail of Nature, feels the term stewardship is overused by churches and resonates a motif of power over nature. He has come up with the terms creative intervention in nature, sensitive care for nature, and awestruck contemplation of nature as part of a theology of partnership (Santmire 2000).
Creation-loving asceticism is a concept Rasmussen recommends for an environmental age, meaning loving the earth fiercely with a simple lifestyle, as contrasted to the wealthy habits of unsustainable consumption as lifestyle. He says this would be an "earth-sensuous asceticism, not done in pursuit of self-denial as such or obsessed with sex, but in pursuit of a joyous participation in earth community in nondestructive ways" (Rasmussen 1996, 237 –238).
Sacrament and Priest are two related symbols Rasmussen suggests taking another look at. Sacrament is at the heart of traditional religious practice which is centuries old. The early understandings, he writes, are that sacraments are "dramatizations of nature’s transfiguration. Humans’ high calling is as ‘priests of creation,’ referring the creation back to the creator in acts of liturgical doxology." A doxology is a form of liturgy that praises God and humans give thanks to the creator on behalf of all of creation as well as themselves. Sacramentalism is panentheistic by celebrating the divine "in, with, and under all nature, ourselves included." Sacramentalism is embraced by indigenous people who traditionally have a deep understanding of an "easy flow of the everyday into the sacred and the refusal to desacralize any arena of life" (1996, 238-239).
Rasmussen quotes Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, who objects to "setting aside pristine wilderness while at the same time treating the rest of the land profanely," as a commodity and utilitarian vehicle for profit only:
I do not object to either saints or wilderness, but to keep the holy isolated from the rest, to treat our wilderness as a saint and to treat Kansas or East Saint Louis otherwise, is a form of schizophrenia. Either all the earth is holy, or it is not… The wilderness of the Sahara will disappear unless little pieces of non-wilderness become intensely loved by lots of people….Harlem and East Saint Louis and Iowa and Kansas and the rest of the world where wilderness has been destroyed will have to be loved by enough of us, or wilderness is doomed (1996, 239-40).
Indigenous people as well as ecofeminists participated at the World Council of Churches international gathering in Canberra, Australia in 1991. Ecofeminists have been critical of traditional established patriarchal religions where priests use sacraments "to reinforce powerful linkages of patriarchy, social domination, and environmental degradation." At Canberra, Women from around the world gave a presentation where each told their stories of struggling in their communities and of "God’s presence with them in adversity. As each finished her story, she took a branch of green and placed it in a large wooden structure resting at the rear of the stage." At the end of the presentation, the beams were hoisted to show a cross turned into the tree of life. "The greening of the cross" is an ancient Armenian Orthodox tradition, Rasmussen writes, although trees of life have been symbols for many indigenous religions from ancient times (1996, 241). At my church this past year, an ivy plant was encouraged to grow up around the cross in the sanctuary, the center of the focus for worship, exemplifying this "greening" or life coming out of chaos.
Prophet and Covenant are symbols that cut across ecumenical lines and have been discussed at the World Council of Churches gatherings. The prophet’s message is that the covenant with the creator is not being followed. Covenantal responsibility is a theme for "people of the book" (Jews, Muslims, Christians). Isaiah’s passage reads, "The vine languishes;…they have broken the everlasting covenant." God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and very living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth" (Gen. 9:12-13). Covenant is ethically charged. Consequences for all creation hang on human adherence to its terms. "Its particular emphasis is justice for the weak and protection for the vulnerable, on the one hand, and the sure negative consequences of injustice (unrighteousness) for the land itself and its peoples when the land is violated on the other." To violate the covenant is to violate the laws of life and to "come to a sorry end…. To keep the covenant is to live long and well upon the land and enjoy its abundance. Thus saith the prophet" (1996, 243).
Rasmussen points out that covenant and prophet models critique the tendency in sacramentalism for "ethically deficient ritual and uncritical affirmation of what is." Fertility rites regularly included offenses of prostitution and drunkenness, and the chief offense was diversion from the demands of just social living, of "righteousness."
Caught up in the recurring cycles of nature, people could forget the hard task of fashioning a just society on covenantal terms. The gods of nature could be adored in glorious ceremony while widows were forgotten and orphans abandoned. The smoke and song of the Temple liturgies could praise Yahweh while oppression reigned in the streets and the poor were sold for a pair of shoes. Covenant was violated while rites were meticulously observed (1996, 243-244).
This is why the prophet Amos’ verse says "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your burnt offerings and grain offerings" and so forth, I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream" (Amos 5:21-24) (1996, 244).
Larry Rasmussen quotes Rabbi Heschel who wrote that "Humankind will not die for lack of information" but "may perish for lack of appreciation" (1996, 195). The total manipulation of the world leads to the "complete instrumentalization of the self." He feels we need to turn to rediscover natural forms which bear rich moral substance and power as symbols. Reclaiming darkness as a gift has already been described in the section on Via Negativa of Lutheranism. The tree is another natural symbol used in many religions, sometimes used interchangeably with the cross in Christianity, as in the greening of the cross mentioned a few pages earlier. One can think of other natural symbols he doesn’t go into, such as sacred mountain, valleys, rainbow, the sun, moon, stars, and elements of water, fire, earth and sky.
The tree of life is one of the most ecumenical symbols from ancient times and is found in many indigenous cultures and art. Just to use Jewish and Christian imagery, in the garden of Eden there was the tree of good and evil and Revelations refers to a tree for healing of the nations (Rev. 22:1-2)(196) When Noah released the dove, it came back with an olive branch (1996, 197). Martin Luther, when asked what he would do if he knew the Day of Judgment was tomorrow, answered that he would plant a tree (1996, 199). Buddhists have the Bodhi Tree at the World’s Axis.
Trees are one of the oldest life forms, predating humans and can live for longer than humans, marking off each year at their core. For me personally, trees have been counselors and comforters. A Native American, Walking Buffalo of the Stoney Indian Nation, as saying:
Do you know trees talk? Well they do. They talk to each other and they’ll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, white people don’t listen. They need learned to listen to the Indians, so I don’t suppose they’ll listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees, sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit (1996, 202).
At ICCS, we learned a ritual from Starhawk where we imagined sending roots into the earth and branches out into the air, reaching to the heavens and around the world. The maypole of Scandinavian midsummer ritual is also a tree of life symbol.
Rasmussen also talks about trees of resistance. What comes to mind for me is the gospel hymn turned into a song for peace and justice, "We shall not be moved…Just like a tree that’s standing by the water…." Tree huggers and climbers try protect trees from logging, especially in old growth forests from California to India. One book for children, Aani and the Tree Huggers, tells the story of women who instinctively hug trees to protect them for their survival:
The women drop their chores to view the destruction of the trees that provide so many necessities-wood for cooking and building, shelter for animals, fruits and berries to eat. Kalawati, a village elder, tries to stop them, but is rudely ignored by these men who have official, written orders to proceed. But when Aani’s favorite tree is threatened, she sets a bold example of passive resistance by hugging it (Atkins 2000)
Rasmussen also talks about trees of death. In winter many trees appear to have died and there is a waiting period before they appear alive again. The cross in Christianity is often called a tree of life, however Rasmussen writes that this bold attempt to wrest a tree of life from the tree of unspeakable death helped root Christianity. Though Christians often have accused Jews of killing Jesus on a cross, Christians and others have persecuted Jews on crosses, literally and figuratively. The truth is, however that Romans had killed thousands of Jews before and after Jesus by crucifixion, which was a form reserved for the lowest classes (Rasmussen 1996, 211).
Christians saw in Jesus new life, as in Isaiah 11:1, which says that a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots." The tree, fully severed at the base, would still give life " (Ibid.).
Trees are often taller than humans. They provide homes for countless species as well as shelter, fuel and food for humans. They protecting the soil as well as watersheds. They give oxygen to the air. They provide furniture, fishing vessels and tools. Rasmussen writes that all green plants are trees of life. People who’s whole lives are lived close to trees, naturally have pictured the axis of the earth as a tree. "The forests were God’s first temples," William Cullen Bryant wrote (1996, 213-215).
Many forests and other plants are in danger and humans, by and large, can not live without them and the whole food chain. This alone is a moral imperative for treating trees as symbolically sacred, though anthrocentric. Plants have been key in the evolution of this planet and hold together the whole web of life. We humans would not even know about our Creator if we had not been created as part of the web of life.
The web of life is a type of circle, another universal symbol. The symbol of the circle symbolizes to me what the golden rule preaches. When people gather in a circle, it is clear that each one is important. Often there is a circle around a cross. The circle and the circle with an equidistant cross in the middle is indigenous to all cultures. This shape is often called a mandala and often has more intricate designs and connections within it. This symbolizes balance and interconnectedness around the circle. The ELCA hymnal has a cross on the cover inside a square with rounded corners that is open at the bottom, which is halfway between a plain cross and a mandala. The symbol of the cross appears within a mandala many times as has its place there in perspective with the web of life.
Rasmussen talks about changing the attitudes of religion towards science. He reclaims the contributions of science to the discussions of earth, cosmology and ecology for the good of creation. This correlates with the teaching about the new cosmic story at the creation spirituality institute, ICCS, which I attended, as presented by many physicists today. Rasmussen writes that science’s descriptions of the story of ongoing creation become a source for religious awe, respect, and humility.
Scientists have also participated in the World Council of Churches gatherings where large masses of participants dialogue through statements as well as workshops and rituals for worship and prayer. The scientists presented a preparatory statement for the Canberra meeting where they talked about their spiritual humility that has been nurtured by their knowledge of the created world. They have learned about the "intricacies of nature" and its "fragility in the face of human onslaught. Our sense of the mystery of life and nature, and our awe and wonder at the Creator’s handwork, has been deepened." This new perspective has pointed out to them the "uniqueness and preciousness of life itself on this planet." The following statement echoes my realization as a young person, that what we hold sacred as a culture, we will take care of in every day life, described at the beginning of this section:
We understand that what is regarded as sacred is more likely to be treated with care and respect. Our planetary home should be so treated. Efforts to safeguard and cherish the environment need to be infused with a vision of the sacred (1996, 245).
Rasmussen writes that the significance of the scientists statement is that their precise knowledge of the drama going on in our environment should be taken seriously by religion as well as government, I would add. He writes, "This is substance… moral substance…. For ethics, the detailed attention to environmental degradation and the scientific knowledge of nature’s requirements for its ongoing life…pose conflicts that cannot be shoved aside," without consequences." The implication is that the "expectations and habits" of many humans will have to be "radically adjusted in order to avoid even worse consequences." These are not just scientific questions but ethical and religious ones as well. "Reciprocity and sacrifice are required at the same time that moral ambiguity surrounds the choices that must inevitably be made." This is something we are suited for, by calling this process "the ascendancy of ethics for a species whose vocation it is to make just such choices." Rasmussen pulls many symbols together by saying that "an evolutionary sacramentalist cosmology offers the richest conceptual resources for addressing earth’s distress, if infused with a profound earth asceticism and married to prophetic efforts aimed at ‘the liberation of life: from the cell to the community.’" Rasmussen compares this situation with that of Adam in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:9) when God asks, "Adam, where are you?" The response will determine the amount of responsibility humans are willing to take for their covenant with the Creator (1996, 246-247).
In an article I found on the internet featuring an interview with Rasmussen, he spoke of the symbol of the Eucharist, or reenactment of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. Rasmussen questions what the practice of shared community at the table means for all the tables set by humans and society. Embedded in the meaning of the sacraments, one can unearth radical economies and politics (Arbogast 2000). The focus on food, how it is shared and with who, are central in our need for environmental consciousness. Seeing every act of our survival as sacred and worthy of prayer may be something we postmodernists should contemplate as a way of changing our consumerist lifestyle.
Larry Rasmussen talks about the ancient symbol of the ship, Oikos as a symbol for earth. Okoumene, from which ecumenical is derived, is Greek, meaning the whole inhabited world or globe. He writes that humankind and otherkind are integrally related. We are not so much at home as we are home on earth. The most important thing is that the earth is habitable! Habitat is the core meaning of eco in ecology as well as ecumenical. Economics means habitat (eco) + the rules or law (nomos) (Rasmussen 1996, 90-91).
The Greek word Okoidome means the building up of the community. For Rasmussen this means building global citizenship with earth patriotism with the values of continuing life. Though attendant to global stewardship, the term Okoidome doesn’t lose its focus on the well-being of the particular community at hand. Microcosm and macrocosm share the same dwelling. Okoidome was seen by the early Christians as meaning "forging and sustaining a specific moral culture precisely at a turning point in history, a time when a ‘new age’ was taking shape...that required moral and religious communities attuned to it" (1996, 93).
He writes that the Stoics had similar values of seeing themselves citizens of a moral world that transcended their immediate locale:
Yet transcendence of the local was not in contempt of it, or a way of leaving it behind. Rather, it was a way, through local responsibility, of gathering the whole world together as community over time. For the Stoics, humans, gods, animals, and vegetation were all included and understood by way of the theologia naturalis—knowledge of the essence of things (1996, 93-94).
Rasmussen sums up three prevalent visions regarding the earth’s economy today. Cowboy Economics believes we have can have infinite growth on a finite planet. Another theory, he calls Spaceship Earth, sees humans as the crew and earth as a small capsule in which we will achieve sustainability if we just organize things to be recycled within a closed system. There seems to be a vast improvement in Spaceship Earth, toward taking care of the environment. However, there is a still a problem, in that it doesn’t leave room for error in the long haul. He writes that a big problem with the unsustainable human economy prevalent today is that it pushes the unforgiving boundaries of nature’s economy. The fact is, with the rate of human expansion on the planet, recycling will become more difficult (1996, 168-69).
He defines the Net Primary Product (NPP) as the "amount of solar energy captured in photosynthesis by primary producers, less the energy used in their own growth and production", the basic food source on Earth for everything not capable of its own photosynthesis. Ecological economists in 1986 calculated that humans were appropriating 25 percent of the potential NPP. Since humans use less of the NPP from oceans, human use of terrestrial NPP is more like 40 percent.
This means that only somewhat more than one doubling is arithmetically possible before total human capture of net primary production! Since humans cannot live without ecosystems, made up of innumerable other species, the doubling cannot happen." Theoretically, more green space could be created and more photosynthesis could be encouraged, but "this runs counter to economic growth which has steadily increased the "take" of NPP by humans. It runs counter to increasing the standards of living for more people (read: higher consumption) and counter to meeting the basic needs of increasing numbers of people overall (1996, 169-70).
Thus, the Spaceship Earth view is one vast human controlled machine in which the human life system and earth’s life-system coincide and collide. Leaving humans in the traditional understanding of domination is an anthropocentric view that is flawed as an illusion of planetary management by an imperfect species in charge of earth’s primary production (Ibid.).
A better understanding than a used lemon-of-a-spaceship is that is human wrong-headed notions, arrogance, greed, ignorance, prejudice and stupidity that are the problem. Day-Care Earth is the symbol he feels is best. Environmentalist and Ecological Designer David Orr has suggested that the needed orientation is more like "child-proofing a day-care center than piloting spaceship earth." In day care, children are both free and protected from the excesses of their "raw and raucous" freedom. Electrical circuits can’t be chewed, dangerous objects are out of reach and allowances are made for changes in the schedule and unexpected problems.
Rasmussen admits that the day care image may not be perfect, but for now, it is better than cowboy economics or Spaceship Earth (1996, 170-171). The Capitalists probably won’t like that idea. My own conclusion is that Democratic Socialism, used in Scandinavian countries among others and a limited extent in the U.S., is a political economic model to follow. This kind of a system allows for freedom as well as controls of those entities that would endanger the rest of us. To trust capitalism, or unlimited freedom and competition, is, to play on a well-used analogy, to put the cart of goods before the horse of wisdom. Our wisdom should guide our choices as a society.
Ecumenical Dialogue Between Lutherans and Eastern Orthodox Christians
Dialogue between denominations and faiths in a creative way to deal with our differentness, resulting in finding ways we are the same which leads to knowing ourselves better as well as being a better friend to those of different backgrounds. Lutherans have engaged in many dialogues. One I read about is with the Eastern Orthodox Christian church which I have mentioned earlier in the paper as an alternative way of being Christian to what was formed by the Roman influence. Earlier in this paper, I wrote that Meister Eckhart followed some Eastern Christian trends, including an emphasis on creation and down-playing of original sin. The author of Heaven on Earth, A Lutheran-Orthodox Odyssey, wrote that in the early years after Lutherans split from the Catholic Church, there was some discussion and dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Church about joining with them. However, Lutheran beliefs became solidified and this became no longer possible (Tobias 1996, 2-4). Both Lutherans and Orthodox Churches were involved in ecumenical dialogue in the 1st half of the 20th century, leading to the formation of the World Council of Churches, "for shared programs of postwar construction and leadership training"(1996, 7). Since then there have been at least two rounds of dialogue between Lutheran and Orthodox.
Icons, symbolic and artistic representations of spiritual figures and concepts, are part of the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Lutherans have not been opposed to them. However, the immigrants to the U.S. did not have the resources to be as elaborate as their European roots and found themselves in a midst of Protestants who were more austere and iconoclastic. I have visited churches in Sweden and all were very elaborate. I thought it was only because of their Catholic roots. Apparently, if they had believed as Calvinists do, they would have destroyed the ornate artwork. Calvinistic and Puritan belief is that icons are equal to false idols. The Lutheran view is that God is manifest through the created world but God is not the same as the created world. This is the same concept as panentheism which Matthew Fox talked about in Original Blessing. God is experienced through nature but is not the same as nature. Lutheran expression in the U.S. may be on a continuum between Calvinists and Orthodox in this respect (1996, 24-34, 88). In the old traditional Catholic church, where services were in Latin, art and music would have been ways to get the message across to large numbers of people.
Just as icons are not literal representations of spiritual beings, the way I relate to Christian faith is metaphorically as well as historically. I generally don’t take the messages from the Bible and the theology of the theologians literally, except for basic principles which see teach concern for and which see the divine in all.
I think most people join churches for cultural and community or social reasons as well as spiritual. Often they may repeat what they are told but if they thought about it, it might not make sense. In the postmodern age, this questioning will continue. If people don’t question, often they just leave, given the opportunity. This paper engages in a process of questioning religion but using the material faith that is there is a creative struggle and dialogue between the old and the new ways.
Another commonality between Lutheran and Orthodox is a sense of "communality, of corporate, familial…responsibility and common destiny" (1996, 68). Lutheran ministers cannot be ordained without a congregation ready to accept them. Major decisions are often made by consensus rather than a straw vote. The downside I see to consensus is when people do not feel free to voice their opinion. It works well when you do resolve issues as a whole community, and do not go into new choices with only partial agreement.
Tobias writes that Lutherans and Orthodox see a relationship between matter and spirit as contrasted with the split prevalent in our society. In religious terms this has been referred to as an I-Thou (from theologian Martin Buber) relationship rather than I-It (1996, 80-82). This again has to do with the pan-en-theism and theology of incarnation as well as communion with bread and wine. Catholics believe that after the priest prays over it, it becomes Christ’s body and blood. Calvinists believe it only represents Christ. Lutherans call it transfiguration and that God has a presence there and everywhere (1996, 89-90).
In the U.S. at least, Lutherans are usually lumped together in the same boat (metaphorically) with other Protestants. I have been aware of distinctions, such as the emphasis on grace, however, some Lutherans did not grow up with that emphasis and other Protestants can emphasize that as well. However, Tobias writes that "Orthodox and Lutherans have more in common with each other than each has with the dualisms of Calvinism or Roman Catholicism" (1996, 97).
I don’t think many Lutherans are aware of this Lutheran Orthodox dialogue. I know there have had been dialogues with Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Catholics, with results such as sharing ministers or allowing people to accept communion among agreeing denominations. Those engaged in ecumenism believe that since their traditions originally came from the same source, they should learn to get along. There are ethics when it comes to proselytizing among faiths which ecumenical dialogue can address. The Lutheran Orthodox dialogue is engaged in the hope and commitment that there will be more sharing and communion between the faiths in the future.
Deep Ecumenism
The ecumenical goal was to get rid of ethnic separations and that has been achieved for the most part within the Lutheran Church in the U.S. Conrad Bergendoff, who I describe in the next section on Via Transformativa and Lutheranism, was a Swedish Lutheran American leader who worked with the Lutheran mergers as well as the ecumenical movement during much of the 20th century. Tobias says that separation by language and culture is not the normal condition to be sought in the ecumenical movement on the one had, on the other he seems to accept some of it as a necessity when he states the goal as "full communion in one church with whatever variations in ethnic customs and regional governances" (1996, 79).
Again, the danger in over-striving for unity is that you may miss some of the truths along the way. For all his talk about panentheism, Tobias probably values but doesn’t theorize about the indigenous realities of cultivating local culture. Nicolai F. S. Grundtvig said that Christianity should be indigenous to a culture. He also believed that culture is part of God’s plan, as it were, and that humans need to have an indigenous culture, which Christian teachings can complement. One of the newer hymnal supplements in the ELCA has hymns from a variety of cultures. Sharing cultural traditions is the best way we can start to relate locally in this land of many cultures taken from an indigenous people.
Culture that is indigenous must develop in local places for living communities to be responsible for the environment and each other. Environmentalist Gary Paul Nabhan points out in Cultures of Habitat, On Nature, Culture and Story, where people move around less, there are fewer endangered species and naturally biologically diverse regions are also culturally diverse (Nabhan 1997, 1-2). The slogan "think globally, act locally" is a realization of how we must balance our global conscience with how to live locally.
The World Council of Churches in recent years has taken on some environmental and indigenous issues as Larry Rasmussen reports in his book, Earth Community, Earth Ethics, referred to elsewhere in this paper. Deep Ecumenism is a phrase that has been coined to apply to environmental principles. As Matthew Fox has put it: "There is no such thing as a Hindu river and a Roman Catholic ocean and a Buddhist rain forest and a Lutheran sun and a Baptist moon." (Dykema 2001).
Fox writes,
To me postdenominationalism means that denominations pale in comparison to nature, creation, and creation in peril. How can human beings come to the aid of creation? How can denominations come to the aid of creation? Consider how the ecumenical movement in this century among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews was born in the death camps of the Second World War. In the face of death, denominationalism wanes.
Fox feels that denominations are of lower priority and that other values are of higher priority if they bring about more social and eco-justice (Fox 1996, 247-248). My point in all this, which I believe fits with Grundtvig’s view, is that denominations can relate to social and ecojustice to the extent they weave people and the earth together through their natural cultural history and community life.
If Christians want to respond to the move back to indigenous religion and the neopagan European movement, they might consider that indigenous religion and culture have valuable knowledge. This would be a new way to think about ecumenism to an interfaith perspective, as Matthew Fox has done. If Christianity was to dialogue with the neopagan and indigenous movement, they might consider what each has to offer the other. Creation Spirituality has many parallels to indigenous beliefs around the world.
N.F.S. Grundtvig’s statement that we are human first and Christian second makes a place for both indigenous as well as Christian or other monotheistic values. The real dualism has been to call everything native or indigenous, pagan, and to equate that with evil. Beyond Christian ecumenism, I suspect that many Americans, if asked, would describe themselves as being either Christian or not Christian, as religious or not religious, theist or atheist, believing in a faith or agnostic. Dialogue may be the best alternative to proselytizing and is a graceful way to deal with differences and conflict. Perhaps the concept of grace is the Lutheran term that is closest to the Via Creativa, as it lifts one out of the separation of positive and negative toward a resolution that is creative and new.
Ethnic Backgrounds of American Lutheran Churches that Merged into the ELCA
For those not familiar with the Lutheran church, the ALC was similar to the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), before they and a third group, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), which included a segment who had separated from the more conservative Missouri Synod, merged into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in 1988 (Worldwide Faith News Archives 2003). Perhaps the silliness of all these anachronisms had something to do with the merger. The old Swedish, Augustana synod, was part of the LCA.
When I was growing up, the main difference I was aware of was that the ALC included Norwegians. Both contained different Lutheran organizations of Germans and Danes as well. The LCA also merged with Finnish, Slovak and Icelandic groups.
My awareness of the differences emphasizes that the rivalries between Swedes and Norwegians go way back. As I interacted with Norwegian culture in culture activities as a young adult, I realized that some of our best friends growing up had been Norwegian. In some ways, however, the two cultures in the U.S. have probably clung together like twins, in the context of the camaraderie of the wider Scandinavian community. Frequently, people who don’t know much about Scandinavia confuse Norwegian with Swedish identity, as if it was interchangeable and tell me they had thought I had a Norwegian background (Indiana Weslyan University Website).
Magaly Rodriguez: Multichannels
Magaly Rodriguez is a woman who had a leadership position in the American Lutheran Church (ALC) in their Office of Church and Society, who I met while working in Minneapolis in the early 1980’s. I met her in conjunction with inviting a Native elder to conduct a healing ceremony for peace, described in my Introduction, for a national gathering of Lutheran Peace Fellowship.
Continuing our discussion of culture, Magaly promoted diversity by celebrating peoples’ various cultures and worked with non-church groups as well. She cited brain research as evidence that most of communication happens nonverbally, through the arts and any right brain activities. She showed how to do it by leading songs and promoting cultural and nonverbal ways of communication. She said that in face to face communications, words are only seven percent (7%) of the impact. Vocal sounds and inflections are 38% while nonverbal communication makes up 55%. Thus, 93% of communication is nonverbal. (Rodriguez 1985). In an essay she gave me as part of a paper called "Is Lecturing Irresponsible?" she wrote that research indicates that many (if not most) women are double dominant (in both left and right brains) and most people of southern hemispheres are right brained as are most people in indigenous cultures. It is irresponsible to ignore the way of communicating of most people of the world. These modes are not inferior but superior when it comes to solving complex problems.
Magaly had direct experience applying this concept by working with migrant farmworkers and found that it was easier to get a message across if you worked with people through their cultural language, meaning not only the spoken and written word, but through music, the arts and humor. As I mentioned earlier, this may be how the Catholic Church communicates with masses of people, with their emphasis on liturgy and icons. Today, Magaly teaches this way of thinking to corporations and helps them gain greater productivity by learning to communicate with what she calls "multichannels" of communication with the company, Rapid Change Technologies in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Campus churches, church camps and retreat centers are usually the most creative educational centers where Lutherans gather to dialogue. They seem to attract young thinking adults. One retreat centers for all ages I have heard about but not visited is Holden Village, on an island in the middle of a lake in Washington State. The ARC Ecumenical Retreat Center in central Minnesota was started by Lutherans and I visited it once in the early 1980’s. These reflective centers always seem to be places that bring many things together, including nature, reflection, community and creativity. I have often met friends at St. Martin’s Table in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an urban community center started by people from Holden Village. It is a place to go for lunch or tea. There is a bookstore and the proceeds support local causes. The food fare includes wholesome soup and sandwiches and the people who go there seem to all be activists.
Last but not least, hymns are an obvious expression of art and creativity prevalent in Lutheran and as far as I know, universally in Christian churches, in addition to the usual liturgy and scripture that is part of worship. N.F.S. Grundtvig felt that singing binds people together in community. By his emphasis on local indigenous culture in relation to Christianity, the folk-life, he encouraged creativity. When people come together in community, they create ways to tell their stories and to celebrate life, as well as to make a living, through arts and crafts.
Several hymns talk about spring, a creative time, one favorite being, Now the Green Blade Rises. I found another favorite hymn, Now Comes the Time of Flowers, in a hymnal I brought home from a visit to Sweden and I later found it in the old Augustana Synod hymnal. It extols creation and God’s goodness and grace, offers praise and asks for help from God, acknowledging God’s presence through it all. It is used as background music during a scene a recent Swedish film, House of Angels (Änglagård) by Colin Nutley, about a nightclub singer returning to her mother’s village to inherit a home while shocking the locals. The local minister plays an important part in reconciling her and her male partner the townspeople. In a way this movie mirrors my work of contrasting society’s newest ideas with tradition.
NOW COMES THE TIME OF FLOWERS
Now comes the time of flowers
With great delight and beauty:
Draws near the splendid summer,
When grass and fields grow.
With mild and lively warming
To all that had been dead,
The sun beams streaming near us
And all is born again.
The lovely flower meadows
And fields of noble grain,
The fertile herbal gardens
And green trees in the wood,
They all should be reminders of
God’s goodness and wealth,
That we the grace consider,
That’s with us all year round.
We hear the birds singing
With many varied sounds;
Should not then our tongues
Give praises to our God?
My soul extols God’s glory.
Let’s raise our joyous song
To the one who will both nourish
And the one who brings us joy.
Oh bless this year’s harvest
Bring water to our land.
Give food to all the people,
Oh bless the sea and shore.
And bless our daily labor
And evening time to rest.
Let life’s wellspring flow through
The deep ground of the Word.
(Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer text by Israel Kolmodin, 1690’s;
Music: Swedish Chorale; this English translation by Marilyn Jackson, 1999 )
4) Via Transformativa of Lutheranism
I use the graphic to the left to symbolize the involvement of many Lutherans in world issues of caring about human justice and peace as well as the environment. Applying religious values to life can lead to a transformation of society. The Christian tradition as well as its Jewish ancestor developed ethical values of treating people with respect within communities. Matthew Fox calls the path that most closely relates to change social conditions for the better, the "Via Transformativa." Connecting our faith to life is a prevalent theme within Christian tradition, though not universal. There is definitely resistance to it and there has been criticism of Sunday Christians who go to church on Sunday but don’t appear to apply the teachings to everyday life. For others, though, the Kingdom of God concept expresses the vision that the world is gradually growing to reflect Christian values, which applies to everyday life.
The Weber Analysis: The Call, Calvinism and Capitalism
When someone goes into the ministry, it is often said they have been "called." Martin Luther parted from Catholic belief by saying that one could be called to live out their religious beliefs in the secular world as well. He said we do not necessarily depend on the church to save or pardon our sins. We can pray straight to God. The inner life, however, was a primary focus, and outer works followed from an inner relationship with God. His was not an ascetic belief and was based more on emotion than reason (Green 1959, 14). Luther retained more of the Catholic sacramental ritual than other Protestant groups that formed later.
Protestant reformer John Calvin developed the doctrine of works. This differed from the Roman view in that works led to salvation, whereas for Calvin, good works gave an assurance of salvation. According to the Weber analysis, the ideal of discipline, or "asceticism" was transferred to the secular sphere. Within this sphere "lies one’s calling (so Luther) but calling now becomes the means of moral discipline (so Calvin)." Just as the monk subjected him or herself to severe discipline, so the Calvinist must rigorously regulate oneself within the world, to a rationalized life of systematic self-control. Neither did it for reward. The Calvinist did it for the Glory of God and in the process became assured of salvation or election as a result. Life becomes "rationalized by its aim, the glory of God and by its method, a life of ceaseless watchful self-control," which "led to the development of an immensely intensified moral activity with the sphere of the secular life as the most noticeable characteristic" of Calvinist and Puritan churches. Three themes were present, (a) a rationalized theory of life, (b) an intensified mood for work and (c) a "quasiascetic discipline." The Weber thesis suggests that these three themes, a further development away from Roman and Lutheran themes, "furnish the key to the development of the spirit of modern capitalism" (1959, 15).
In Calvinistic theory,
Labor is asceticism... which is absolutely necessary. Profit is the sign of the blessing of God on the faithful exercise of one’s calling. But labour and profit were never intended for purely personal interest. The capitalist is always a steward of the gifts of God, whose duty it is to increase his capital and utilize it for the good of Society as a whole, retaining for himself only that amount which is necessary to provide for his own needs. All surplus wealth should be used for works of public utility, and especially for purposes of ecclesiastical philanthropy (1959, 25).
Hence, philanthropy arose in the business community, even as a tradition by wealthy people with no interest in church. Originally, other values were applied, such as not taking interest for loans or not refusing them for lack of securities. The debtor ought to gain as much money from the loan as the creditor. The fight against usury and the exploitation of the poor are Christian-Social elements of Calvinistic doctrine that have left a mark on ethics. Thus there has always been a tendency within Calvinism in the midst of Capitalism, for an element of Christian Socialism (1959, 26).
One author in a book on the Weber analysis is critical of Lutheranism for never developing a Christian social ethic because of its inward focus, "lack of a clear standard of moral behaviour, and its acquiescence in the conditions of life which were created by Natural Law." Though "often extremely unChristian, it was not able, on its own initiative, to bring about a coherent and systematic transformation of social life in general. Neither in theory nor in its attitude to life does it possess a systematic ethic." He claims that Lutheranism seems dubious about sin or doesn’t emphasize it enough by its emphasis on forgiveness and withdraws from the world to its refuge of inner happiness of justification through faith (Ibid.).
Many would agree that Lutherans have tended to steer a middle course, as Luther advised and Lutherans in this country have not been known to be social activists en masse. I remember being at a peace rally in Minneapolis with Lutheran Peace Fellowship in the early 1980’s and it was announced that Lutherans were taking part and people in the crowd laughed. There actually are and have been many Lutheran activists for social change. Many Lutherans have marched in peace rallies and have done civil disobedience, though they are a minority. I used to have a T-shirt with a picture of Martin Luther and a bubble around the text, "No nukes."
A primer for Lutherans on Christian Pacifism states that pacifism is not a way to earn salvation. It’s philosophy is based on the gospel message to love our enemies (Luke 6:27-28). "The Lutheran pacifist believes we are to respond to that gospel by practicing the same kind of indiscriminate grace – even towards enemies." Lutheran Peace Fellowship is made up of pacifists as well as those who oppose war except as a last resort. These just war adherents follow the criteria of proportionality: they oppose war when the unnecessary destruction outweighs any good that results.
Education and Social Change and the Legacy of N.F.S. Grundtvig
One way to speak out is through educational venues, especially popular education, free or accessible education for all people. A society has to find ways to specifically deal with its ills, however, and that is where education and social change come in. I have explored and worked in the arenas of religion, culture and education as venues to reshape society to better take care of the created world.
The folk school educational model, inspired by Nicolai Frederik Severin (N.F.S.) Grundtvig, a Danish Lutheran theologian, provided a way for the people of Denmark to deal with the changing times in the early 1800’s as industry and other modern forms of commerce were taking hold. Folk schools, supported by the government (originally proposed by Grundtvig), continue to provide a way for a democratic society to deal with the modernity.
The "folk school" idea spread into the rest of Scandinavia and took hold in various other parts of the world, including the U.S.A. One example is the Highlander Center in Tennessee which was started by Myles Horton who was inspired by Grundtvig. Highlander has educated people to deal with many issues relevant to their lives over the last several decades, including civil rights, labor and environmental issues. Grundtvig wrote hymns about life and living. The folk school was a place where teachers and learners lived and learned about life together without grades. Singing together is a folk school tradition and is a way of cultural sharing that is one way to bring people together in community of learners. Attached to this paper is a more extensive chapter I have published on how the folk schools or popular education model in Denmark which was ignited by Grundtvig, can influence the transformation of society. In Germany, the belief in the importance of culture was warped by being interpreted to mean that one culture was better than the rest. This is not what Grundtvig tried to convey. In the United States we have few guidelines for how to maneuver a country as people have so many different backgrounds. The principles of folk schools could be studied for some clues, though what is American needs to be sprouted here. Having a folk life that is indigenous to a place in the ground Grundtvig believed in. Christianity applies to that folk life and he felt that every place should have its own folk life (see Addendum).
Bonhoeffer: The Christian’s Song of Songs
Though most Germans did not stop the Nazis, the young Lutheran theologian Dietrick Bonhoeffer organized against Hitler in Nazi Germany. The same Sunday School teacher in about sixth grade who taught us about God’s concern for and presence in all of creation also taught my class about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I expect she followed the curriculum that year, yet I know she understood what she taught. The part I remember is that he resisted the Nazis and that he was forced to eat his own excrement.
"Virtually the only man in a position to do so, Bonhoeffer became the crucial link between international ecumenical efforts and the German conspiracy against Nazism." Because of his efforts to communicate with others outside of Germany, he was implicated as a threat to the Nazi regime, was imprisoned and killed. He was involved in the Christian resistance movement to the Nazis, even as the regime tried to take over the churches (Barnett).
Larry Rasmussen’s chapter, Song of Songs, tells a story about Bonhoeffer and quotes many of his writings as a young theologian as well as from prison writing to friends and his fiancé who he tragically was never able to marry. He writes beautifully and eloquently, integrating a love of creation with commitment for justice and his love for his fiancé:
"I don’t mean faith that flees the world, but the faith that endures in the world and loves and remains true to that world in spite of all the hardships it brings us. Our marriage must be a "yes" to God’s earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too (Rasmussen 1996, 295-296).
Rasmussen describes the "demonic earth faith and ethic" that arose in the early 1930s in Germany. Nazism articulated its faith as "a matter of earth and of blood." "Blut und Boden—blood and soil—became the rallying cry of a fevered German nationalism." This was different than the Danish nationalism according to Grundtvig. National pride, was Denmark’s way of retaining its own heritage in a changing world but every nation was entitled to tell its own cultural stories to its own people. Bonhoeffer had his own national feeling for Germany. "He could speak of das Volk—the people—with sympathy." Yet he and his family did not fall for Fascist vitalism "which combined a romantic presentation of nature and culture with a valorization of a primitive state set against the corruptions of civilization." He never wavered from his loyalty to earth and immersion in its agonies and ecstasies as the only place God is met, faith is lived, and eternity is glimpsed" (1996, 298-299).
Bonhoeffer, after arguing that "ethics is a matter of earth and of blood, but also of the One who created both, wrote about the story of the giant Antaeus, who was the strongest on earth and no one could overcome him until one day in a fight someone lifted him from the ground and he lost all his strength which had flowed into him through his bond with the earth. Thus…
The person who would abandon the earth, who would leave its present distress, loses the power which still holds him by eternal, mysterious forces. The earth remains our mother, just as God remains our Father, and our mother will only lay in the Father’s arms those who remain true to her. Earth and its distress—that is the Christian’s Song of Songs. (1996, 297).
Earth and its distress, the Christian Song of Songs, for Bonhoeffer meant not just his love for life with is blessing, pleasures and passion (the Song of Songs) but meant "earth comprehensive of it suffering and agony."
Rasmussen writes that the larger-than-life notion of the strong and virile, with whom the Nazis identified themselves, denies real human frailty and limits and leaves us striving "to become a god against God." While reveling in human strength, they have contempt for humans. For the Nazis, life and the earth, which "Bonhoeffer loves so much…become toys of arrogance and condescension. Nazi nature romanticism soon goes hand in hand with genocide." Nazi idolization of the human went hand in hand with the idolization of death.
Rasmussen writes that "the presence of God in Christ in, with, and under all reality means that each human being ‘is at liberty to be the Creator’s creature,’ and no more or less." Truly responsible action is limited by God and neighbor, according to Bonhoeffer. It is not its own master, nor unlimited and arrogant, but "creaturely and humble" (1996, 300). Bonhoeffer’s antidote to the aggressive identity with nature is also fidelity to earth, but as a matter of faith in the suffering God pegged to earth in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. He echoes Luther in saying that "one takes of life what it offers, not all or nothing." Rasmussen continues,
Neither clinging convulsively to life nor casting it frivolously away, one allows to death the limited rights which it still possesses. Jesus Christ, in whom we graciously have earth with God and God with earth, …shows a humbler, more vulnerable and compassionate way (1996, 301).
I think what all this is saying is that, sure we love the earth, but there is another law that religion reveals that we need to incorporate into our values. Grundtvig’s response to this was to say that we are human (man) first, and then Christian. However, less complex humans may hear only one part of the story and live that out to the destruction of others.
While Bonhoeffer studied in 1930-31 at Union Seminary in New York, white racism was the issue to confront. Back in Germany this transferred to anti-Semitism and he took it to heart that this was an injustice to be resisted. He walked the way of the victims, or the anawim, as Matthew Fox would put it. He gained wisdom from this perspective which Rasmussen says influenced liberation theology. He felt that suffering was a more effective and rewarding way to explore the world than personal good fortune. "He wrote that people ought to be judged more in light of what they suffer than what they do" (1996, 301-302).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer stuck his neck out literally for the oppressed Jews in Germany. A few neighboring countries were able to resist Nazi coercion. In Denmark, the Jews were escorted to Sweden. Why did this happen here as well as in Bulgaria and a village in southern France? The author of A Conspiracy of Decency says that though there were many factors, three a few main ones were because most of the leaders spoke up; there were strong grass roots organizations of people and "weakness of anti-Semitism; and civic equality of the native Jews", along with circumstances of "the relative leniency of the local German commanders" (1996, 175).
Sociologists studied the personality factors of the rescuers. One study came up with four types. The first characteristic was strong and cohesive family bonds, a tendency towards religious commitment and a positive outlook toward other people. Another group developed their orientation through close contacts with Jews in their communities. Another group was marked by "a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare and improvement of society as a whole" and credited at least one parent figure for teaching them to care for others in need, regardless of their faith or class. The fourth group were more abstractly concerned about egalitarianism and identified with humanity as a whole, people who were suffering and saw themselves as similar to others on the margins of society (1996, 175-177).
I can’t help but interject here how the folk school education popularized by N.F.S. Grundtvig in Denmark and which spread to other parts of Scandinavia, must have aided in this enlivening of Danish society. I have included in this paper many references to this educational movement in Denmark and my paper attached as an addendum, relates this to nonviolent social change for a healthy society. Bonhoeffer, who had a quality education from home schooling, was taught critical thinking skills. Danes in folk schools learn not because of coercion because of a real desire to learn. This shows how education has been used for social change and is a force to contend with, when unleashed. Nonviolent protest is a force that can stir attention and conversation on the issues on a grand scale, in the cause for peace. However, the dialogue skills fostered in positive educational settings can build up a society where people’s relationships and culture are respected along with the goal to make the world a better place.
Swedes, Socialists and Secularists
Lutherans and other organized religious groups have come some distance to be up to date and relevant during the past century. For instance, Dr. Louis Almén writes how the Augustana Synod (Swedish Lutheran) played an important role in leading the American Lutheran church to change its social obligation from merely preparing Christians to become good citizens to becoming a challenger of institutions which practice negative social practices through "public pronouncements and legislative and executive branch contact. The change to greater social activism is one of Augustana’s legacies and is a role of particular importance because of the failure of the Lutheran Church in Germany to challenge [Hitler’s Nazi regime] forthrightly, with one voice" (Almen 1999, 150).
Swedish American Lutheran theologian A.D. Mattson, who believed that God’s will is to be manifest in this world, at least in part in present times, was joined by Swedish theologians as well as an ecumenical movement around the 1920s and ‘30s, partly at least in response to Nazi Germany’s behavior (1999, 142-143). My college religion major thesis theme was on the meaning of the Kingdom of God.
One historical trend has been the abolishment of slavery and classism and Christianity has been influential in these movements, sometimes at the head, though not always. In Lutheran Sweden, in 1335, according to Vilhelm Moberg’s book on the History of Sweden, slavery was abolished, partly because of Christian beliefs and partly because there wasn’t enough work for the slaves all year round (Moberg 1970, 21, 22, 28). Christianity fueled the movement to abolish slavery during the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement 100 years later.
This "secular" trend seems to have arisen as science came to be more respected and logic informed thinkers that religion was not important, but going about logically to solve the problems of "mankind" was. Secularism brought freedom of religion.
Karl Marx, though a nonbeliever, came from a long line of Rabbis which must have influenced his thinking in a formative, though perhaps not conscious way. They lived in a time of extreme anti-semitism in Germany and his father converted to Protestantism to gain more acceptance for his family. I imagine his disillusionment with religion must have had something to do with the circumstances of being Jewish and being compelled to switch to Christianity (Roth 2004).
I once knew a Lutheran who was involved in organizing a Christian conference on communism when I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early 1980’s. I knew another Lutheran Christian immigrant from a communist country there who believed in communist principles. Several countries have adopted Marx’s ideas in different forms, from communism in China to Socialism in Europe to the Democratic party in the U.S. (public roads, I heard it commented recently, are a form of socialism).
In Sweden, where few attend state church services regularly, they have a remarkable socialistic system which takes care of peoples’ needs. Before my ancestors left Sweden in the late 1800’s, there were laws on the books requiring people to go to church. It makes sense that people who are required to go, would prefer not to when they then given a choice. The need and relevance for Christian churches changes without state control. In some ways they may be freer to be more authentic, but also have to compete in a new way for financial resources.
Historical Perspective on the Swedish Lutheran American Church’s Social Stance
There is more history to Lutheranism than Martin Luther and Germany, which most people identify it with. I spoke to an elderly Lutheran pastor in recent years who told me he "glad about the Swedes. His statement seemed kind of patronizing by make the Swedish experience seem marginal to the main German tradition. However, it indicates that the Swedes brought a different perspective. Other traditions will have their own stories and even among Swedish immigrants. The main immigrant church, the Augustana Synod, is the one I was born into and have the most information about. It followed the Augsburg confession like the German church, but being in a different country, naturally had some different developments. The German church was organized in a top down way, where people were subservient to authority, a system that made it hard to resist the Nazi regime. In Sweden, apparently, in the late 1500s, the Augsburg confession was chosen for the country as a religion (changing from Catholicism) by democratic representatives and thus technically was chosen, not imposed. The political mandate of the people gave the bishops the ability to resist the crown’s attempts for absolute control (Almen 1999, 131-132).
The state church was well educated and involved in the nation’s education of children, and were instructed to care for the sick and handicapped. The state church set standards for Christian behavior that were moral as well as social, with implications for communities and government. However, a popular and religious movement developed as the state church pastors were viewed as too distant, emotionally as well as literally, for people in the country. The church leaders were seen as socially a privileged class, and intellectually beyond the understanding of most people. Disinterest in official worship grew, and numerous unofficial worship groups sprang up. These unofficial groups did not necessarily try to leave the church, but wanted to supplement it with a personal and meaningful smaller group experience (1999, 133). The many groups were tied together by popular spiritual leaders and hymns. One hymn from this tradition, which I grew up with, this side of the Atlantic, is Children of the Heavenly Father. Others that have been put into modern hymnals are Day by Day and Thy Holy Wings, with themes of God’s involvement in and concern for our lives. These supplemental religious groups were called pietists. They favored a personal experience of sin and grace and avoided worldly pursuits, according to Dr. G. Everett Arden, in his book, The School of the Prophets (Arden 1960, 41). Pious implies following Christian teachings very closely, often with strict moral overtones. The word pious has come to be looked down upon by many as it may have been overused to imply having an attitude of moral superiority as well as hypocrisy. The term spiritual used more today is similar but has more neutral connotations which focus less on judging whether one follows strict religious guidelines, but shares the connotation of having an active prayerful or meditative lifestyle.
Swedes who immigrated to the U.S. and formed the Augustana Synod were influenced by these popular movements but were also respectful of the official church in its role in ministering the "word and sacraments…. They were pious, memorizers of Scripture, prayerful, and supportive of parish schools, academics....They also, in the course of a century, developed 100 institutions to care for indigents, the sick, orphans, single women in the city, seamen, the old, and the seriously handicapped." They held moral values against liquor, divorce, gambling, suggestive dancing, etc. and were, as a group, pietistic, but devoted to a liturgical (ritualistic) church. They were committed to the church’s role in education and welfare activities in this country, which they had been accustomed to supporting in the old country. The Swedish Lutheran American church began in the late 1800s and was established by the early 1900s. Swedish gradually faded out as the language of liturgy by the end of the 1920’s, for the most part (Almen 1999, 133-134).
In 1930, Conrad Bergendoff became Dean at Augustana College and Seminary (1999, 135). A few years later he became president (Weber 2002). Bergendoff’s legacy was to guide the Swedish Lutheran Church into modernity. In addition to graduating from Augustana seminary and serving as pastor in Chicago, he earned a Masters degree at the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and a Th.D. in Sweden. He must have been familiar with cutting edge theologies of his contemporaries and interpreted what this meant for Lutherans in his various positions. He was also involved in force in guiding international ecumenical movements. I remember hearing that he helped with the decision to move the Augustana seminary to the inner city of Chicago while keeping the college in Rock Island, Illinois. He contributed to the advancement of academic standards as President of Augustana College as it moved in the modern age. Bergendoff was a force in the modernization of the Swedish Lutheran church and helped shepherd it through various mergers to the large Lutheran American body, the ELCA that exists today. It was a difficult choice to leave behind some of the Swedish identity but the need to become American and ecumenical was compelling as society changed (Ibid.).
In his role as Dean, Bergendoff hired Alvin Daniel (A.D.) Mattson as a professor at Augustana seminary. Soon after, Mattson gave an inaugural address on the "Kingdom of God," in which he addressed ethics and social action. "He addressed the limitations of a legalistic morality, the rights of labor, the rule of God in all of life, the necessity to work for peace and co-ops as a countervailing, equalizing method of approximating justice within capitalism—all issues vigorously debated as the economic depression deepened in the early ‘30s" (Almen 1999, 136). The issues he addressed in 1934 are still relevant today, indicating how timeless Mattson’s thinking was.
I was influenced by both of these men, directly or indirectly. Bergendoff presided when my father went to seminary and helped him gain admittance. The story I was told is that my father’s grades hadn’t been all that good and one man on the acceptance committee raised a question about that in front of my father and made an off handed account about people from the country being not so smart. Bergendoff responded that the grades had improved since my dad had figured out what he wanted to do. That act of grace was one of Bergendoff’s hallmark traits and themes. He believed in a radical theology of grace: that God’s grace is showered on all of us so that we will, in turn, be graceful. In Irwin Weber’s documentary video on Bergendoff’s life, he is described as being graceful, honest, kind, objective, open-minded, generous, inclusive, tolerant, accepting, optimistic, even-tempered and ecumenical (Weber 2002).
While a parish pastor in Chicago, the membership increased tremendously. Bergendoff organized many educational events and believed that the educated mind and soul could counter the spiritual chaos of the 1920’s. He worked with the Archbishop of Sweden, Nathan Söderblom, in his work for ecumenism after World War I. Söderblom believed that "Doctrine divides but service unites." They believed that Christians should be able to get along as an important path to peace. This early ecumenical movement was a precursor to the formation of the World Council of Churches. Bergendoff studied in Sweden for awhile and when he earned a doctorate in the U.S. was given an honorary one from Sweden (Ibid.).
While growing up I went to many Swedish and other cultural events at Augustana College with my family which Bergendoff frequently attended as well. Whenever my family went on vacation my parents would always identify the Augustana Lutheran churches in towns we passed through. Usually we would go to church on Sunday, even when on vacation trips. Once there, our parents would usually find someone they knew or who knew someone they knew, even if there were no Augustana Churches around and we had to go do a different type.
A bust was made of Bergendoff’s head before I was born in the mid 1950s (Ibid.) and, though retired, he was still a presence at Augustana College long after I graduated from there in 1981 and lived to be over 100 in the early 1990s. He was a contemporary of and six years younger than my mother’s father who was also an Augustana pastor who frequently concluded his letters with "Grace and Peace."
I learned about the concept of "grace," growing up as a Lutheran within the northern Illinois Lutheran Church in America (LCA). I learned about different philosophies of peace in a Christian Ethics class for my religion major and gained a belief in pacifism when I learned what it was. Augustana College was not a Bible school when I went to it. Its leadership had earned degrees from major educational institutions and their goal was to prepare us for life in the real world. At some point the college came to be focus on including students from backgrounds other than Swedes and Lutherans.
In the religion department, one of the faculty, Peter Beckman, who I talk about in the Via Postiva of Lutherans above taught classes which many nicknamed "Beckman’s Beliefs." The reason, as I understand it, was that he talked about the principles of grace and forgiveness and less about salvation and fear and judgment. The faculty stood for what they had studied to be correct out of academic research. I took a class in Biblical Criticism, and introduction into the process of dissecting the gospels to see what Jesus most likely said and meant and what he probably didn’t actually say or mean but what someone wrote for him. I remember hearing that our school was criticized by people in the country who said their children would lose their faith in a place that taught to not read the Bible at face value. Augustana brought Swedish Lutherans to the modern world and invited the modern world in.
I learned about justice while working at Grace University Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, under Rev. Vincent Hawkinson. He had been active for many years in the peace movement and in the early 1980’s when the nuclear freeze movement was very much alive. He studied under A.D. Mattson at seminary and often spoke about how Mattson had influenced him. I remember him quoting from the Old Testament passage, the question and answer, "And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8), as a reason for acting for social justice. I now also found this phrase quoted in an essay on Mattson excerpted a few paragraphs below.
I remember hearing about how tomatoes were thrown at Vince when he spoke at peace rallies during the Viet Nam war. Vince was a character and once told me he was an agnostic. I remember him being critical of other pastors who he felt mouthed statements about religion but didn’t really connect this with their own deep and real beliefs and feelings.
Prior to the Great Depression, Swedish Lutheran Americans limited speaking out for social change to personal morality or issues like war and slavery that were social evils strongly rejected in Sweden. They were hesitant to join the American social gospel movement, however, especially before the Depression of the 1930’s. A few spoke out for social change in the 19th century on the East Coast. Some of these precursors as well as contemporary theologians of other denominations probably influenced both Mattson and Bergendoff (Almen 1999, 137-138). They were both influenced Swedish theological thinking as well (1999, 135, 143).
The early "Augustana Synod was deeply affected by two traditions, orthodoxy and the pietistic legacy of C. O. Rosenius," a Swedish popular spiritual leader. "The latter had a moralistic emphasis on both personal and social responsibility, addressing social ills through the years. While orthodoxy reigned in the seminary in the early part of the twentieth century, the moral emphasis had been no stranger to the congregations, and Mattson was able to pick up on it." In 1923, the Swedish Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, a Swede, traveled widely in the U.S., lecturing at key institutions and preaching in congregations with an enthusiastic reception. "In 1925 he convened the Life and Work Conference (Stockholm) and invited Augustana leaders to attend. This event established new ecumenical contacts, and its emphasis on the social responsibility of the churches affected the Augustana leadership" (Hultgren 1987).
Bergendoff’s Ph.D. dissertation, Olavus Petri and the Ecclesiastical Transformation in Sweden (Almen 1999, 135) was published shortly before Mattson was hired in the early 1930s. A. D. Mattson’s biographer called him a prophetic voice for the kingdom. Because of his teaching, his leadership of the church in developing social statements, his involvement with the labor movement, with problems of rural farmers, his "courageous stands" in support of blacks and other minorities, he was a prophet reminiscent of Olavus Petri, the chief leader of the Reformation in Sweden. Like Petri, Mattson insisted that all aspects of life and all authorities are subject to the "lordship of Christ". Petri held the king accountable to the "Word of God in all his doings", though this led to his removal as advisor to the king and temporary imprisonment. Petri’s statement at the coronation of Gustavus Vasa, based on Deuteronomy 18:15, was that the
"king must not consider himself as lord over his brethren...He must remember that the reverence...shown him by his subjects, is not for the sake of his own person, but for that of his office...and he should direct all the honour and reverence...shown him to God...For he is set to be a ruler not over his own, but over God’s, commonality ...and his fellow-brothers (1999, 138-139).
A. D. Mattson was Professor of Sociology and Ethics from 1931 through 1965, and he chaired the Commission on Moral and Social Problems of the Augustana Lutheran Church from 1937 to 1962. He had an enormous impact upon his students, and he was the most important figure in giving vitality and shape to the social consciousness that was characteristic of the Augustana Church. Mattson is presented not only as the vigorous champion of social justice he was known to be (the public Mattson) but also as a warm and winsome person who genuinely affected his students and countless others in the church who had been accustomed to Lutheran quietism. (a term he often used as a reproach); he directed them to their own Scriptures to discover the call of God to seek justice. In his classes, writings, and activities he championed the causes of organized labor, racial justice, and peace (even pacifism), and he urged clergy and congregations to be involved in both rural and urban issues (Hultgren 1987).
Mattson emerges more clearly as a forceful and dynamic leader for his times and church than as a voice crying in a barren wilderness. With the death of a seminary dean who stood for orthodoxy in 1930, there had been a shift in focus. The new professors, including Conrad Bergendoff and Mattson, "fostered the use of biblical criticism and new theological resources from Europe (primarily Sweden) and America." When Mattson arrived, "the ground was fertile. He and his colleagues provided masterful theological leadership." Though Mattson had his opponents and had to tough it out, he was also able to gain wide support. He had an ability to lead and over the years "affected the synod and particularly his students (some 1,100) profoundly." (Ibid.)
There were many sides to his character, however. "On the one hand, he was the social prophet and critic of priestly religion and ministry. On the other hand, he was the custodian of canon law, since he taught the required course at the seminary on church administration and polity…" Though he could be highly critical of pietistic, other-worldly religiosity, on the other hand, he had "lively interests in parapsychology, the psychology of religion, and the writings of Teilhard de Chardin." Though he is known for his emphasis of urban racial justice and labor rights, he was a nationally recognized leader in addressing issues in rural life and rural ministry. (Ibid.)
Mattson is known for his emphasis on the concept of the Kingdom of God. However, he found in Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms doctrine, (on the separation of church and state) a resource for speaking of the rule of God in society, but was critical of those who abused it in order to contend that the church should have nothing to do with the social and political order (Ibid.). He was developing his themes at a time when German Lutheran quietism was under attack. The growing ecumenical movement was organizing around the kingdom of God concept in the 1925 Stockholm Conference on Life and Work. (Hultgren 1999, 142-143) A.D. Mattson’s prophetic challenges to oppressive customs brought him rebukes by "powerful church and social leaders, threats against his life, times of doubting, and ultimately renewed efforts to stir students, the church, government officials, and societal leaders ‘to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God’" (Almen 1999, 139).
Bergendoff and Mattson were just two of several key figures in the history of the Augustana Synod in its evolution toward greater social activism which Dr. Louis Almén discusses as contrasted from the failure of the German Lutheran church to challenge Hitler’s National Socialism. Almen describes Augustana as a pioneer in breaking from the "American Lutheran practice of preparing the individual for Christian citizenship as the only obligation of the church for social improvement, to becoming an institutional challenger of negative social practices through public pronouncements and legislative and executive branch contact" (1999, 150).
Almen distinguishes Augustana as having classic Christian theology as contrasted with liberal churches which were also socially active. On the other hand, "most theologically conservative churches did not get involved in social action." Augustana stood out because it was evangelical—holding the Bible to be a holy book and stressing the importance of personal faith lived out in one’s life; confessional—confessing the traditional Lutheran faith in worship and in outreach work and missions; liturgical—with a practiced awareness of the holiness/otherness of God and an emphasis on family and daily devotions; as well as being socially active (Ibid.).
I get the distinct impression from Almen and other Swedish Lutherans, that they believe the Augustana Synod had a key role in shaping the social dimension of the Lutheran church bodies that merged and the ELCA that exists today. The debate between the Kingdom of God theology versus the Two Kingdoms theology continues. To simplify, the debate is whether the Kingdom of God will be realized in our lifetime or we should just separate between church and state and leave well enough alone. Though, there needs to be a certain objectiveness in government in order for blind justice to prevail, a religion that believes in forgiveness and caring can provide guidance through many real life problems. The right wing Moral Majority don’t seem to have a problem mixing church and state.
I remember Rev. Vincent Hawkinson often quoted the verse by the German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out — because I was not a
Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out — because I was
not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out — because I was
not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me —
and by then there was no one left to speak out
for me.
Today at Grace University Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there is a Vincent Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice which honors him by recognizing and giving scholarships to those committed to cause of peace and justice.
One of the members I knew at Grace Church in Minneapolis who was involved in peace activism is Hilvie Ostrow. Hilvie’s father was Oscar Benson, a colleague of A.D. Mattson in Augustana’s development of the theology of church and society. His Ph.D. dissertation on Swedish Americans and problems adjusting to American life, details the "long-term involvement" of the Swedish church in "providing and overseeing welfare activities and the development of the Swedish welfare state."
Another anecdote is that he had such strong social convictions as a Christian citizen, that "in his first parish he had spoken out so forcefully on behalf of pacifism, even before World War I ended, that his parishioners had to hide him in a haystack to keep him from being painted or tarred and feathered by a mob." He was president of the Augustana Synod during the 1950’s and he gave top priority toward social ministry and action. In his own background as an immigrant, he explained that he had lived in "unpropitious areas" and was thereby "sensitive to the needs of the inarticulate poor." (1999, 146-7). Benson was outraged by the McCarthy hearings and the curtailing of civil rights and led the Church in adopting a statement in response to this (1999, 148). In 1957 the Commission on Morals and Social Problems was changed to a Commission on Social Action. The latter declared itself against racism, drugs, "curtailing of civil rights," TV ads for hard liquor, militarism, capital punishment and "for academic freedom, improvements in welfare, women’s rights, a national referendum prior to declaring war, and a responsible role for the church as conscience of the state." When Augustana merged with other Lutheran bodies in 1962 to form the LCA, Benson "proclaimed proudly:"
No Lutheran body has been more articulate in denouncing the evils that threaten the well-being of society. Augustana has been a perennial crusader for civil rights. Its program of welfare is comprehensive and best of all and to a degree uniquely, our church has insisted on keeping its social work agencies strictly under its own administrative control. Apparently the climate in the new church will be agreeable to these policies" (1999, 148).
I don’t believe subsequent church leaders had as socially active concern as Benson and I am only now learning some details about his legacy. He had to have made an impact, though probably not as pervasive as he would have liked. I do make the connection, however, that both his pacifism and study of socialism in Sweden and Mattson’s concerns for social justice and Kingdom of God theology mirror my own interests and studies. I am, however, a little mystified as to why I didn’t sort more of this information out earlier in my life.
Edgar Carlson is another Swedish Lutheran of the mid 20th century who Dr. Louis Almén writes about in his essay on the role of the Lutheran Church in society. What seems most interesting about Carlson, is his work in analyzing the "Swedish reinterpretation of Luther," He published The Reinterpretation of Luther in 1948, in which he described the results of years of in-depth Swedish Luther research and analyzed its relevance to American and ecumenical Christianity. He showed how Swedish Luther research accomplished the integration of religion and ethics without confusing the two or attempting to validate religion in terms of ethical implications. Another publication, The Church and the Public Conscience, grew out of his preparation for the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois in 1954, where he was one of several theologians who prepared materials on the themes of conscience and hope. Almen writes that it was applied Swedish theology to help clarify current issues in the United States. Much of Carlson’s influence on issues of church in society, Almen writes, was in the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), which the Augustana Synod merged into in the early 1960’s. He was active in shaping several social statements for the LCA, particularly in church-related higher education (1999, 145-146).
Almen writes that A.D. Mattson was a shaper of Lutheran theology applied to society during the depression, when there were changing views about the causes of unemployment and new demands on the federal government. Edgar Carlson came to positions of leadership with a theological ethic when
the clouds of a counter-culture movement were beginning to gather, when post-modernism removed the capital T from Truth, and authenticity in religion was not sought in objective motif research but in idiosyncratic individual religious experiences.
Almen continues by saying that Carlson’s work will be consulted in years to come, particularly as Swedish Luther research continues to be useful in ecumenical dialogues, and as sociologists and others attempt to uncover the "spiritual source of the exemplary Scandinavian system of social welfare" (1999, 146).
Louis Almén quotes a fifty year seminary graduate, Eric Wahlstrom, who spoke to the successor seminary in, Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in 1974 (when I was 16 and after the Viet Nam war). He noted that fifty years earlier he saw the world as static and unchangeable and now saw it from a dynamic point of view, due to a more intense study of the Bible. The living God of the Bible is the God of history.
Since the Renaissance and the Reformation the static metaphysics of the medieval world has been changing from ‘essence to existence, from permanence to progress, from worship of property to a concern for man, from a future righteousness in an eternal order to a this-worldly concern for justice, righteousness and peace now in this world.’… According to the Bible, the talk to establish justice, righteousness, and peace does not belong to evolution but to human initiative and creativity. This is the message of the creation story and the psalmist’s view of humans as little lower than the angels and as given dominion over the earth….The new order, even if it be called the Kingdom of God, is not a gift prepared for us without our knowledge or consent. It is a drama in which we are to act (1999, 149).
The latter, to me, is the most inspiring and motivational statement for the unfolding of creation which I would think that anyone could grasp, Lutheran or not.
Rasmussen on justice, for humans and earth alike…
The drama of environmental justice and activism has not been realized to the extent that there is concern for human justice. When I first attended Augustana College, as I wrote at the beginning of this paper, I wanted to major in environmental studies. They did not have a program then but I understand they do now. Swedish Lutheran theologian Conrad Bergendoff , discussed in the previous section, was an early environmentalist and hiker and helped establish parks in the Rock Island area. Many people enjoy and extol nature but don’t have a clue about what to do beyond not littering and recycling, though appreciating it is really the first stage to motivate one to do something to change things. However, Larry Rasmussen is critical of the tendency to romanticize nature without doing something effective to stop the devastation that is happening. The how to of environmentalism is something we need to learn in a technological age to bring about an environmental age.
Rasmussen affirms throughout his book that when we talk about peace and justice for humans, this is closely related to justice for the environment. Findings by researcher John Gowdy, say that "highly stratified societies controlled by a relatively small elite generate institutions that aim to keep social arrangements intact even when the cost is obvious and there is progressive environmental deterioration." In other words, "where maldistributed power and inequality reign, powerful forces usually continue to benefit from the depletion of both peoples and the land – until it is too late." C.S. Lewis has made a similar statement that "human power over nature is actually the power exercised by some people over others, using nature as a tool….the outcome is the same: injustice is a great instability." In addition, "the rise and fall of civilizations are usually linked to environmental components." Issues of sustainability and abuse of power have been perennial since the rise of agriculture. The difference is that now, instead of local issues, there is enough concern world-wide to make these global issues (Rasmussen 1996, 42-43).
Whites, or Europeans, have been implicated as the cause of a lot of these problems and for good reason. Apparently, Europeans have "swarmed as population" in two senses. The highest population growth rates in recorded history are those of Europeans from 1750-1930, about three centuries. The number of Caucasians in Europe, apparently, increased 5 times, over twice as much as the next population group, Asians, At 2.3 percent in this period. However, in "neo-Europes," where Europeans settled while "leapfrogging" around the world, their population increased more than 14 times. Over fifty million Europeans migrated between 1820 and 1930 to establish neo-Europes abroad, approximately one-fifth of the entire European population at that time (1996, 45). Most Europeans believed of themselves as a civilizing force and brought Christianity with them. They let go of their ancestors’ land base and centuries of wisdom of the land. The majority, I assume, brought with them a brand of Christianity with little emphasis on taking care of the natural environment.
In the last section of his Rasmussen’s book, "Earth Action," he begins to map out some thoughts on what to do about the environmental crisis, beyond understanding it, creating international statements and giving it spiritual importance. Rasmussen quotes Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce, who says that we need to learn anew how to say grace before meals. We need to "know that we do take and harm as we live…that life is always a moral question that lies before us sweetly." Life is "dependent on our gratitude and constant struggle to cause as little suffering as possible to all and everything around us" (1996, 319).
Rasmussen points out that though we may have a religion with all the right values, it won’t matter if our actions don’t act out our values. "To foster one interior world while living another is to court frustration, alienation, even madness." East Asians, he says, have a traditional, powerful and beautiful cosmology. In it, "All of us together belong, modestly, to a harmony grander than we imagine" (1996, 320). However, there is a disconnect when the Japanese "deforest the tropics in the interests of a lead role in the global economy" and foster a fossil fuel, automobile and high-tech world of expanding markets and consumption. If the ancient wisdom is not applied to modern techniques, it will not save us (1996, 321).
This is not to say that cosmologies don’t matter, he writes, as we know and act through guiding symbols to a great extent, how our actions manifest is the most important. Here I could bring in Martin Luther’s manifesto that we are saved by grace and not by works, but who could deny that if we don’t do what we need to do to save ourselves, we haven’t come very far. So perhaps what is needed is to go deeper into our faith and believe that the motivation is there. Certainly, the technological world and global economy do not appear to resonate much if any spiritual base. This perhaps brings us to the two kingdoms doctrine, which has separated for many, the priorities of their faith and those of the world. There needs to be a connection, however, between individual spirituality and outer life. This is the Kingdom of God approach, discussed throughout this paper.
Rasmussen also says that just as the inner shapes the outer, so the outer can shape the inner world. He asks, What on earth is to be done? How do we shape both the outer and inner worlds to make the change for a sustainable earth-based society? The place to begin, he suggests, is the simple prayer, "Dear God" (1996, 321).
Larry Rasmussen describes a project by school children in a small city in Denmark. In 1990 three children were given the assignment "to produce a model in environmental studies showing how industrial wastes were being exchanged among several local companies." They found out that several local industries had formed a closed system by trading waste, including a coal-fired plant, an oil refinery, a biotechnical pharmaceutical company, a sheetrock plant, concrete producers, a producer of sulfuric acid, the municipal heating authority, a fish farm, some greenhouses and local farms. These industries found it beneficial to think ecological, or sideways and circles, to integrate the community with their livelihood and the land and water. They have modernized in an ecological manner (1996, 322-323).
I can’t help but wonder what the popular education system in Denmark, which I wrote about in my essay attached to this paper, had to do with the level of sophistication of evolution of community in this town. This points out that the knowledge we need is already here. We need to be able to communicate with each other about the urgency to change and problem solve to develop it into shared knowledge applied to viable systems.
I found Larry Rasmussen’s book to be an environmental education in itself. The extent of the perils upon us due to environmental abuse were impressed upon me, even though I was already concerned. His analysis is deep and contains rich information on how we need to think about dealing with this crisis. It occurred to me while reading his book that each department in schools should have at least one class in environmental studies in light of this crisis that will only get much worse without drastic change.
I have heard it said that Gospel songs were coded hymns and though the common theme had to do with going to heaven, there were other meanings, often about slaves escaping to the North from the South. Soon and Very Soon is a great one in the supplement to the main Lutheran ELCA hymnal called With One Voice (WOV), but I believe heard it sung elsewhere led by African Americans before WOV. In Christ there is No East or West has always been a favorite. As I was looking for a particular hymn in the index of WOV, I noticed that there are categories of hymns. There is a category called Creation, Preservation. When I looked for Justice it says to see Society. There is a song there called Oh Day of Peace that is new to me, as well as Let Justice Flow Like Streams. An intense newer hymn I have sung, could be interpreted as a missionary song, but it also focuses on commitment to living out one’s faith in the world.
HERE I AM, LORD
Chorus:
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
Verse 1:
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in deepest sin
my hand will save.
I, who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright,
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
Verse 2:
I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people’s pain.
I have wept for love of them,
They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak my word to them,
Whom shall I send?
Verse 3:
I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them,
My hand will save.
Finest bread I will provide
till their hearts be satisfied.
I will give my life to them.
Whom shall I send?
This is a very inspirational hymn with missionary zeal. It inspires one to give of oneself in service of others for a good cause. This is a common Christian theme and a common Lutheran one and one of the better illustrations of the process of responding to a religious call to do something in response to one’s beliefs.