One Highway
ONE HIGHWAY FROM almost every point of view the Lutheran World Convention, now in session in Copenhagen, constitutes an interesting moment in the history of religion. The layman is accustomed,...
...Plans for a similar accord with the evangelical churches have already been announced and will, no doubt, be underwritten soon...
...Other matters have, however, been taken no less seriously...
...Then, some say, with God's help and at the appointed moment in the world's development, the larger cleavages will grow evident in all their ghastliness...
...It was Rome which "expelled him from fellowship with the worldly papal power...
...It will be discerned that, for diverse reasons, humanity has allowed itself to tear asunder the great integral Mystical Personality of its Master and His sons...
...This idea might well seem attractive to many Lutherans, far in advance of all the other groups save Anglicanism in their appreciation of the intellectual aspects of religion...
...One may well wonder if all recent "turning to Catholic externals"—incense and vestments, plainchant and sainted images—has really meant, in any profound sense, a return to the Church...
...Lutheranism wants a centrally established authority and a unified 284 THE COMMONWEAL July 17, 1929 intelligence...
...The layman is accustomed, of course, to identifying Lutheranism with Germany, and must therefore be especially attentive to the situation in Prussia, where the Diet recently signed an agreement with the Holy See regulating the status of Catholic organization...
...Too much must not, of course, be written into these words...
...And so the several branches of Protestantism might well succeed in effecting, within themselves, more of that life...
...How then can Lutheranism take advantage of this situation and achieve greater unity and international solidarity...
...We hope that the Copenhagen Convention is one little step toward that ultimate goal, to be reached only through charity...
...This question has been approached from three points of view...
...May it be that, in our generation, the grace of heaven is guiding those who struggle to effect, inside Protestantism, a greater unity, a steady surmounting of arbitrary individualisms ? The times exact of no one a perfunctory, enforced adherence to any church...
...It would be an excellent thing, and the sign written above religion in our age is manifestly not "union between the churches" but "peace between the churches...
...Luther, he said, had not intended to break away from Rome when he nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg cathedral...
...This virtue is not without its own symbols, the most important of which are not identified with outward rites...
...But one cannot well doubt that a hunger for unity, for the corporate life of Christendom, revealed in the desire for a common authority and a common practice, is an eminently hopeful sign...
...Those who do wish to belong, however, seek that "community life" which is one of the most permanent aspects of Christianity...
...Nathan Soderblom, archbishop of Upsala, addressed to the Convention...
...That many evangelicals are worried about this has long since been no secret...
...First came the suggestion that an international organization—a world bureau—be founded to give advice pertaining to matters of discipline, pastoral activity and doctrine...
...The matter has been discussed earnestly at Copenhagen though normally in a temperate way...
...But they are the climax of yearning and of insight which is added unto the discernment, so widespread and profound, of the needs of Christianity in modern life...
...Lutheranism is now profoundly conscious of the circumstance that, regardless of all rampant sectarianism, it is one of the four great non-Catholic societies in western Christianity...
...How much reference these suggestions have to Catholic Rome is perfectly obvious...
...That both these have been conserved in the "old Church" from which the burly Augustinian friar of the late middle-ages broke away is a fact which is as undeniable as it has been immeasurably beneficent...
...Next was heard a plea for intellectual unification, possibly through the medium of a central university or institution for research...
...This is no mere exhorter, no unlettered man, but one whose studies have been carefully weighed even in Catholic circles...
...They presage no spectacular conversion, no startling Catholic springtime in the North...
...Possibly, even, it is merely the assault upon all religion in the name of a neo-socialistic materialism which has prevented their anxiety from evoking a crisis...
...If it should be written over Lutheranism, centuries of history might ultimately be rewritten constructively and understandingly...
...It will grow clear, as He wills and as men deserve, that the Church is one thing and the world simply another, between which choice is an all-determining "must...
...Ultimately, therefore, relations between church and state in Prussia must find themselves upon an entirely novel basis...
...One speaker declared that he could keep on "for hours" enumerating problems about which there was no consensus of opinion, and in the treatment of which a habit of "temporizing with the spirit of the times" was evident...
...The extent to which it has entered the Lutheran consciousness was reflected in the thoughtful speech which Dr...
...Then the question followed: "Would the Rome of today, with its clear understanding of spiritual values, have done the same...
...Something like legal parity between Catholicism and Lutheranism will be established in the traditional stronghold of Los-von-Rom Christianity...
...The others are Calvinism, Anglicanism and the churches dissident from Anglicanism...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 11
