Another kind of merger
Piehl, Mel
diplomat who'd done what Young had would have met the parison, Jackson's style often parallels that of white Southern same fate. Landess and Quinn charge that the media...
...rather, he But it can be argued with equal force that practical coopera- lets his weight tower over you, almost veering toward the tion is continually limited and threatened by the still-real camera from the slope of his long, spindly nose to the base of religious divisions among us, and that the substitution of his six-foot frame...
...Round Midnight is an One is almost bedazzled by the forest of ads each day in the insider film with little attempt made to draw outsiders in...
...For them, the containment, while a cosmopolitan metropolis would sym- quota proposal is symptomatic of the whole merger operabolize their intention to act on a larger stage...
...these must be female, and that 10 percent must be "persons of The church headquarters issue was both the silliest and most color or whose primary language is other than English...
...This protestantizing inclination showed up on the eve of the A final critical issue for ELCA Lutheranism concerns its merger in the controversial decision of the ALC presiding ecumenical self-understandings and future relations with the bishop, David Preus, to seek pulpit-and-altar fellowship with rest of Christianity...
...And Robert Jenson complains that "those to be 'inin: Milwaukee's symphony and museums were third-rate, and cluded' are exclusively ethnic and class-defined factions the airport connections even worse...
...Landess and Quinn charge that the media ac- populists like Theodore Bilbo and George Wallace...
...The international dialogue has even suggested some traditionally pious folk in the pews and some of the intellectual clever strategies for overcoming such divisive matters as the guardians of Lutheran orthodoxy, this represents a new threat Lutheran bishops' lack of apostolic succession (by Catholic to the church and to Luther's "Two-Kingdom" theology, standards...
...The director is usually a master of Screen understatement, but this time it masters him...
...Especially Children of a Lesser God, Cactus is an intelligent, noble in America, active Christians have worked out plenty of ways attempt to focus on a handicap, but has even less commitment to practice their faith across "denominational" lines, and that to the subject...
...But no one not madly in love with jazz can lighted in bright, alluring reds and oranges - name bear the monotonous first hour of performances in the disdirectors, famous international stars, "adult" themes...
...PAUL: Too provincial...
...As a result, he is perfect for roles involving practical or "spiritual" cooperation for the visible unity of the a kind of awkwardly sweet menace, and he has two here...
...But the party will be somewhat damp- shuffling of its bureaucratic parts is very much a question, not ened because of who isn't showing up: the Lutheran Church- least for those who are becoming part of it...
...The idea of pan-Lutheran union was in the air...
...These Missouri "exiles" became social and cultural history of American Lutheranism and Cath- the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches - one of olicism display many similarities, including ethnic diversity, the three merging bodies...
...the masses," much of the left, with the notable exceptions of And perhaps that is Jesse Jackson's most serious problem...
...It will fulfill it because the MEL PIEHL, who .teaches history and humanities at Valparaiso Uni- merger culminates the long historical process by which the versity in Indiana, is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Ecumeni- numerous Lutheran bodies in the United States (at one time in cal and Cultural Research...
...The speculative discussions about such matters might at Cactus, with Isabelle Huppert, suffers from benign neglect least raise the same question for other Christians that have at the hand of its director, Paul Cox...
...Every- but rather by discerning the gifts which the Spirit so generously thing that an up-to-date and ecumenized American Luther- distributes among the people without regard to such distincanism was supposedly putting behind it...
...The Australian scenery is world threatened by war and poverty...
...Since then Missouri's leadership the process of gradual assimilation to American life, and the has marched the Synod closer to the broader conservative apparent threats of various kinds of "Americanism" to reli- evangelical Protestant camp, and the gap between Missouri gious tradition...
...This symbolically important because it reflected Lutherans' uncer- has naturally aroused sharp controversy, with critics contendtainty about who they are, or ought to be, in the larger world, ing that quotas will politicize the church and alienate people in as well as carrying the emotional freight of the merging church the parishes from the leadership...
...demic politics...
...movement within the one holy catholic church," as the (Non-Lutherans deserved condemnation, not admonition...
...Some theologians fret that the growing lics and Protestants: "In the larger picture of ecclesial reconinfluence of social-issue groups in the ELCA merger commit- ciliation," he says, "Lutheranism has a most particular opportee and within the church bureaucracy reflects the tendency in tunity, responsibility, and destiny to heal the breach of the activist Lutheran quarters to regard the church as just another sixteenth century between the Reformation and Rome...
...Many of these acclaimed films are spectacularly promoted through prestige festivals in Toronto, Boston, and the R OUGE BAISER (or Red Kiss) places jazz in a more lively venerably pop New York Lincoln Center extravaganza...
...Everything seems the film's music...
...A lay defender of the quotas, Andrew restoring the unity of the church broken in the sixteenth cenBouman, contends that "what seems 'legalistic' to persons tury...
...Depardieu never seems to stand still...
...The new ELCA will have to reconsider this matter for itself...
...first century...
...delegate from Corinth or Alexandria that he's got to Those favoring the quotas respond that the church as the spend three days getting to a council in Podunk...
...Missouri's absence virtually guarantees that Since it joins the small but influential band of AELC the goal of complete Lutheran unity will be permanently frus- "exiles" and their Christ Seminary-Seminex with the two trated, as the 5.3 million-member ELCA and the 2.7 million- larger bodies' seminaries and academic traditions, the ELCA member Missouri Synod polarize American Lutherans into will include almost all the theologically sophisticated Lutheran two theologically disparate camps...
...This process is deeply absorbing to the church sions of Christian faith and the more institutional manifestaprofessionals involved, mildly interesting to observers and tions of the church is not exactly one-to-one...
...Too ethnic...
...dullness, parochialism, and ethnic pietism of much Midwest- The most articulate objections to quotas come from some of ern Lutheranism...
...Many of the merger issues, including sticky questions of polity and ministry that were settled only at the last minute, S IMILAR concerns have also appeared in the debate over essentially involved these different church styles...
...There is also a smaller intellectuals who write books and articles, publish newsletters, conservative body, the Wisconsin Synod, closely aligned with and represent the Lutheran tradition in ecumenical dialogues Missouri...
...But whether the ELCA becomes a vital new represents a triumph of churchly unity, and can be celebrated expression of Lutheran Christianity or simply a ho-hum reon that ground alone...
...For such ecumenically minded theologians institutional structures, where they obviously do...
...While not versed itself and recommended Chicago, and the choice was exactly anti-theological, the average ALC pastor or narrowly upheld in the August conventions...
...But a fundamental difference is that Catholics and other Lutherans on a host of issues - from biblical faced these issues while standing under a single ecclesiastical criticism and ecumenism to, especially, women's ordination umbrella, while Lutherans experienced their own institutional - has grown so great that reconciliation is, unimaginable...
...That drains the political But even more destructive and disingenuous than the media, nervous system of resilience in the long run by attenuating the Reed argues, was the left, and his analysis is devastating...
...activities take place...
...As in his magnificent A Sunday in the A HARVEST FESTIVAL Country, Tavernier is drawn to the subject of the aging artist, and here displays keen enthusiasm for the 1950s Parisian jazz craze in recreating "The Blue Note" club, filled with real jazz notables such as Herbie Hancock, who also composed much of FALL FILMS come and go like foliage...
...Her choice is affected by the presence of a Christians to be spending their time as they enter the twenty- blind artist (Peter Menzies) all too handy for plot purposes...
...And a measure infatuation with the symbolism of the presidential campaign it of the media's sentimental racism, the left's woozy desperacared not a whit about the consequences of Jackson's charis- tion, and the black community's awful vulnerability that matic hoo-hah for actual black political development...
...PETER: Besides, the roads into the place are awful and Eastern communions there will be lots of such bishops, the theater is laughable...
...An autobiographical film by French writer, Nevertheless, most of the films at such festivals are not director, producer Vera Belmont, it reminds one of Diane worth seeing, and will hardly last the autumn...
...garners...
...Martin Guerre...
...fifties context...
...Lutheran denomination, however many buST...
...ful and effective...
...a few small publications and groups, was pathetically gulled Given the PUSH record of bolting a broad-based boycott of the by the media's own distortion of Jackson's opportunistic re- Coors Breweries several years ago in exchange for a few black cord and by television's "inability to distinguish between a franchises and sinecures gladly granted by management...
...American and international Lutheran/Roman Catholic The quota issue is only one indication that Lutheranism is no dialogues have already achieved sufficient doctrinal agreelonger immune to the divisive effects of political controversies ment to make ecclesial reunion thinkable in the not too distant over war, sexuality, and a host of other matters...
...We save on moving case for just so long as we keep rebuilding a North costs and stay close to the grassroots...
...church involvement in controversial political questions, and But this catholic tendency within Lutheranism remains they are bolstered by neoconservatives whose objections to the largely confined to rarefied theological circles, remote from church's taking political stands seem to rise in direct propor- the ordinary world of American Lutheranism...
...In base for liberal politicking...
...Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) will, apart from cutThe decision this August of three Lutheran bodies to merge ting down on acronyms, both fulfill and frustrate the longtime dream of American Lutheran unity...
...Louis, the Missouri Synod repre- as embodied in a given human community of believers is sented the most self-confident and self-contained traditions of always considerably more (or considerably less) than any German confessional Lutheranism...
...By requiring as George Lindbeck, Richard John Neuhaus, and Carl participation of those previously excluded from ecclesiastical Braaten, there is no reason to form the ELCA unless it represtructures, quotas will serve as a goad to the church to live by sents a vigorous confessional witness and movement toward its Gospel professions...
...While Carl Piepkorn, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Martin Marty, began to formal theological disagreements among the merging bodies engage the Synod with the larger Lutheran and Christian were few, there were substantial differences of piety and worlds...
...course...
...But the most quotas...
...Is in- accident, which forces her to choose between losing one eye or volvement with these messy ecclesiastical issues the way for going blind in both...
...Lutheranism contains religious energies and spiritual insights Amidst blizzards of paper and gales of rhetoric, two or of great significance for American Christianity, but as Luther more closely related church structures clumsily reshape them- was wont to point out, the correlation between vital expresselves into one...
...The defenders of Lutheran sophistication and cosmopolitanism, while some quotas respond that this is precisely why quotas are needed, Eastern Lutherans, including the LCA bureaucracy headquar- and that promoting minority leaders will encourage greater tered in New York, feel an equal distaste for the alleged Lutheran mission among Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians...
...These theologians emphasize that the again at the constituting ELCA convention in April 1987...
...But Lutherans feel good will toward American Catholics, there are more and more Lutherans have discovered good Lutheran and still plenty who fear Rome, if not Catholicism, and even more biblical reasons for the church to take political positions on who feel more comfortable with mainline American Protessuch issues as Central America, nuclear war, or the farm crisis tantism than with Catholicism, no matter what the theologians (where rurally-based Lutherans have been especially thought- say about the Eucharist or other matters...
...and that will most assuredly continue to be the ST...
...JAMES: So why not Jerusalem...
...Bratwurst...
...Highlights Kurys's 1983 hit Entre Nous...
...new ELCA will be the dominant voice of American Compared to the American Lutheran past, then, the ELCA Lutheranism...
...One LCA bishop said, within American society- Moreover, it is not the church they "I've been there three times, twice in the wintertime, and I are to be included in, but the power structure of the new could hardly get out . . . " And another observed that "I don't Lutheran denomination...
...In the church leads, eventually, to a loss of full religious motivation first, he plays a cop in the standard type of French crime for social action or any other venture...
...Lutheran confessionalists, the establishment of the ELCA as just another mainline Protestant denomination, rather than a dynamic new force within American Christianity, would confirm the subLutheran quality of the merger...
...I keep telling you, reaucrats we appoint in charge of minority recruitment...
...I call it dead...
...Complaints flowed tions...
...get some focused attention...
...Round Midnight is a painfully slow tribute to jazz in 1959 Paris by Bertrand Tavernier...
...But Belmont has a tale to tell, included the opening features in New York (Down By Law) and the closing (Peggy Sue Got Married...
...Such arguments still carry weight this way we Lutherans also make our greatest ecumenical with the many Lutherans whose piety and theology resist contribution to all who share the Reformation heritage...
...In the second, he plays a tians realize what they have been missing by being separated homosexual petty criminal who seduces a couple (including from one another and create a truly effective witness to the Cannes Best Actor award winner Michel Blanc and Miouworld, especially in our religion-drenched but spiritually im- Miou) and reduces their life to farce...
...The LCA, headquarters could affect a church body in some ways...
...But for the ecumenical...
...At Misflect, however, the much ' lower importance that issues of souri's convention this summer, one seminary-sponsored reso"external" church order and unity have often had in Lutheran lution sought to declare that other Lutherans are no longer tradition than in Catholicism...
...The quotas, they say, movement within catholic Christianity, and the practical do not apply to the church's divine essence, where these evolution of Lutheranism as another Protestant denomination distinctions do not matter, but only to its humanly established in North America...
...even in seeming to transcend them...
...and social movement and a group of people shouting in a church...
...Both resolutions failed, but they suggest why including matters of church order, tends to be seen as American Lutheranism will likely remain divided...
...But this ecclesiology that were all the harder to deal with for often bright bubble burst after 1969 when word went out to Mis- being invisibly rooted in cherished ethnic-religious traditions...
...Proclaiming that the new church should be "incluinteresting issues - church headquarters, quotas, and the sive," the merger committee has proposed that all boards, ecumenical direction of the new ELCA - also involved some- agencies, staffs, and policymaking conventions of the ELCA thing else: Lutherans' struggle to define their identity and their must include 60 percent lay people, that at least one-half of role within American Christianity and society...
...Are you going to tell some and draw the obvious conclusion...
...Other good foreign films Christmas include Rouge Baiser, which was only shown at the Boston Commonweal: 598...
...But the church merger process has provided From the time of the 1839 "Saxon migration" to its "Zion a sharp reminder, if anyone needed reminding, that the church on the Mississippi" in St...
...Some see the minority quota bodies' competing self-images...
...The ally rich, theologically intense, the Missouri Synod long stood dynamics of the merger process highlighted the cultural and proudly apart in semi-sectarian isolation from the rest of Amer- historical peculiarities of these 5.3 million American Lutherican Lutheranism, which it continually admonished for having ans as often as it displayed Lutheranism as "a confession fallen into various deviations from Luther's "pure doctrine...
...The ALC and the LCA were themselves Missouri's theologians were selling out the Synod's birthright the products of complex earlier mergers between different of pure doctrine and Scriptural truth (i.e., old Missouri's rigid synods of Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and theology, now heavily laced with American fundamentalism) others whose spaghetti-bowl connections and mergers can for a mess of "liberal" pottage...
...Tightly knit, institution- theological or confessional statement proclaims it to be...
...the mid-nineteenth century there were over forty) have graduCommonweal: 594 ally fused together...
...Missouri Synod...
...Milwaukee...
...The other Concordia colleges...
...Beer...
...Again, this involves a tension between two Reformed denominations (the Presbyterians and Resome theologians' lofty view of Lutheranism as a confessional formed Church in America) - a move that many Lutheran theologians considered incompatible with further reconciliation with Rome...
...LCA churchmen, who had barely recon- and leadership of the church shall not be dictated by the ciled themselves to exile in the wilds of Chicago, were categories Christ has made obsolete in the Kingdom of God, shocked...
...divisions as an additional obstacle to full participation in While there is still a moderate minority among the Missouri American religious life...
...In the 1950s and the 1960s Missouri briefly emerged from Lutherans' quirks and warts were so visible partly because this comfortable pattern, as the church leadership, prodded by the whole merger negotiation has been courageously carried a brilliant generation of theologians and scholars like Arthur out in public, with everyone free to kibitz and criticize...
...now only be understood by masochistic church historians...
...If America is a nation with the soul of a church, then Luther- WITH MISSOURI out of mind, if not quite out of sight, the anism is a church with the soul of a monk...
...in between came the marvelous Therese, a study of Saint Therese of Lisieux, which Give Commonweal for will not be released until December...
...Like and narrow preoccupations of many church people...
...practice often creates more real unity than trying to resolve the Police and Menage star the tall, angular, massive Gerrard secondary issues that preoccupy the institutional guardians of Depardieu, the unforgettably lovable faker of The Return of ecclesiastical order...
...insinuate themselves into this media chimera, which ended Jackson supporters on the left should be acutely embarrassed with little more than the four modest platform demands so by the pointed dedication of Reed's book: "To the members of readily scrapped by Jackson at the convention...
...tinctly unfriendly medium of film...
...American the less inspiring features of American church life...
...newspaper, and the cornucopia of critical raves each film Many who like this film call it "elegaic...
...They also point out that even if establishing a relationship with Lutheranism were high on Catholicism's agenda - a dubious propo7 November 1986: 597 sition - Rome would not look any more favorably on the festival and has been held back from release until now, when, Lutheran ordination of women (to be followed soon by female like a single red maple leaf on an increasingly bare tree, it can bishops) than does the Missouri Synod...
...While most tion to the degree of disagreement with their own politics...
...I say, go spiritual body of Christ may be freely governed by the Gospel where the action is, where all roads lead to...
...So far, the quotas remain part of the pro- ing some sort of new relationship between worldwide Lutherposed charter of the ELCA, but they will certainly be debated anism and Catholicism...
...It is a measure of the seasoned dignity of Reed's argument The real indictment of the left, Reed feels, is that in its that he doesn't stoop to underline "concrete...
...Synod's members, the young pastors now graduating from the Lutheranism's longstanding institutional divisions also re- Concordia seminaries are extremely conservative...
...students of American religion, confusing to the folks in the The merger of the American Lutheran Church (ALC), the pews, and largely a matter of indifference to the religious Lutheran Church in America (LCA), and the Association of community at large, not to mention the world outside...
...For such ecumenists as Neuhaus, Lutherans are which has traditionally justified Lutheran quietism on political ideally positioned to serve as a crucial bridge between Cathoand social matters...
...As Reed's and Landess' and Quinn's arguments have yet to Landess and Quinn argue in an extended and instructive com- achieve the impact they deserve...
...member that in the Roman Catholic and Pentecostal and ST...
...practice of genuine interracial cooperation, ultimately underEnchanted by Jackson's siren calls because given to anticipa- mining the populists' own crusade by failing to build on tory flutterings over every real or imagined stirring among foundations of mutuality...
...if this church is ever going to amount to anything, we've If we uptight Germans are rightly alarmed about the got to stop looking like we just emerged from a kosher deprivations these lacks impose on us, we might redeli...
...If the Lutheran merger proves to be even too mechanically amoral, especially Menage which director a small step in that direction, it will be worthwhile...
...Many Lutherans in the rural as especially artificial and distorting, since only about 2 perand small-city Midwest harbor a suspicion of alleged Eastern cent of ELCA members are minorities...
...The result was the Great Missouri Purge of the early sevenThis historical development reflects the fact that American ties, in which self-proclaimed defenders of orthodoxy drove Lutheranism, like American Catholicism, has evolved largely the "liberals" out of Concordia Seminary and Missouri's out of the great European immigrations to this country...
...The plot concerns an elderly and alcoholic black musician (played by saxophonist Dexter Gordon), a Parisian admirer (Francois Cluozot), and the young daughter this Frenchman neglects in AUTUMN FILMS his near idolatry...
...Everything else, salad days...
...given the Rainbow Coalition's current unprincipled pandering Left academics, hoping to put their ideas across, tried to to selected interest groups like independent oil producFrs...
...The headquarters parishioner considers doctrinal concerns as settled long ago by issue seems trivial in itself (although perhaps the location of Luther and safely ensconced in the catechism...
...Sauerkraut...
...To both the future...
...Others, however, who also have an ecumenical vision, recognize that as a practical matter the ELCA will have plenty to do getting its own house in order, without taking further controversial ecumenical steps in the near future...
...Perhaps only by making thriller, in which moral distinctions between police and crimithe difficult effort to fulfill Christ's call in John 17 will Chris- nals are increasingly obscured...
...Huppert is injured in a car arisen for some Lutherans during the merger process...
...Both films, however, are poverished America...
...Energy devoted to internal church concerns Cox seems too embarrassed by his story to tell it straightforseems to detract from the urgent tasks of living the Gospel in a wardly, but his detours are fruitless...
...In that case, ELCA would not be an expression of Lutheranism's religious vision, but rather "the perfect and monogamous marriage of LCA curialism and ALC low church pietism" and "the perfect union of headquarters and religious individualism...
...souri's hinterlands, via a cadre of grim Torquemadas (Mid- The ALC, heavily concentrated among Germans and Norwewest German edition) and ambitious church politicians, that gians in the upper Midwest, tends to be pietistic, democratic, 7 November 1986: 595 lay-oriented, congregational, and non-liturgical...
...LUTHERANS TAKE A LEAP Another kind of merger MEL PIEHL into one "new" church on January 1, 1988 - to be called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) - could DENOMINATIONAL MERGERS generally constitute one of turn out to be an exception, but probably won't...
...It relieves quiesced in many such misplaced black resentments (with a pent-up racist fears and resentments mainly by stroking them, few notable exceptions like the New York Times, which did catering to them with double messages that legitimate them not hestitate to probe Jackson's murky PUSH operations...
...At its heart, Lutheranism has Lutheran, and another sought to force congregations to revoke always been a spiritual or "confessing" movement that tries to women's right to vote, a privilege granted back in the liberal uphold a particular vision of the Gospel...
...American...
...and other forums...
...Focus on churchy mat- beautiful, and affectingly linked to blindness, but like other ters offers new excuses for the already rampant complacency elements in the film its use never jells with the plot...
...tion's failure to think in a truly catholic rather than denominaTorn between heartland Minneapolis and cosmopolitan tional way about the church...
...peripheral, and hence subject to a wide variety of influences...
...who enjoy the rights and privileges of the dominant commu- As a practical matter, this means giving high priority to nity may be 'good news' to the persons who have experienced relations with Roman Catholics, with the clear goal of achievdiscrimination...
...Bertrand Blier has structured mainly to shock...
...A smaller-city headquarters in the Lutheran those theologians who have vigorously promoted the recovery heartland would supposedly symbolize Lutherans' self- of Lutheranism's catholic confessional heritage...
...A sad parody of Local 34 and 35 of the Federation of University Employees [at a Faustian bargain for the professors, superior though it un- Yale], who, while this book was being written, acted with doubtedly was to the famously low stakes of their own aca- great courage to advance a concrete vision of human dignity...
...Jenson also argues that quotas will necessarily see Milwaukee as the kind of key city where confirm rather than overcome Lutherans' parochialism...
...diplomat who'd done what Young had would have met the parison, Jackson's style often parallels that of white Southern same fate...
...Writing in the Lutheran theologiChicago, the merger committee came up with a surprise com- cal journal Dialog, Carl Braaten asserts that "the governance promise: Milwaukee...
...But stronger in urban areas and in the older "American Lutheran" the discussion reflected popular Lutheranism's concern about regions of Pennsylvania and Ohio, tends to be more hierarchi- the meaning of its supposed "emergence" from provincial and cal, liturgical, clerical, theological, and ecumenical, at least ethnic traditions, and its doubts about its future identity and among its visible leadership...
...without regard to sexual or racial distinctions, but the church Taken aback by the objections, the merger committee re- as human institution has so far pretty well managed to avoid Commonweal: 596 living out the meaning of Galatians 3:28...
...theologians love to describe...
...There are indeed few Black or Hispanic - or Thai or (One imagines a first-century council deciding on church Bulgar or . . . - bishops in North American Lutherheadquarters: anism...
Vol. 113 • November 1986 • No. 19
