Dear Editor: Just a brief note of appreciation for the Let’s Talk (Lent 1998) issue devoted to the important topic of the mission of our Synod and its congregations. It was interesting to get to know the viewpoints of some key members of our Synod Council. I wish there had been a clearer statement of […]
Are We So Right We Can’t Be Saved?
Several years ago I received a brochure promoting a very conservative Lutheran seminary. Among its boasts: “This seminary is founded on an inerrant interpretation of the Bible.” Was that simply a syntactical slip? Do these people rely on God’s inerrancy or their own? As long as the Christ has been around, he has been “a […]
9.5 Concerns for Confessional Renewal
When I was first asked to comment on the confessional renewal movement in general and the 9.5 Theses specifically, I could not imagine what I would say. To me it is a no-brainer. I am all for confessional renewal. It goes without saying. It’s what Lutherans do. It is what we are. I’ve been honored […]
The Theses, Confessionalism, Me, and My Congregation
How surprised I was to receive an emotional phone call from an acquaintance at the ELCA Churchwide Office asking how I could endorse such an attack on the ELCA! At first I didn’t know what my caller was talking about. But the 9.5 Theses had arrived by mail on Higgins Road; I hadn’t received my […]
The Reception of the 9.5 Theses: An Exchange of Letters
Wayne Cowell, one of the editors of this issue of Let’s Talk, wrote to Louis A. Smith, one of the authors of the 9.5 Theses, with questions about the reception of the theses in the church You and your fellow authors of the 9.5 Theses have addressed the people in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in […]
The 9.5 Theses
These theses were written by a group of pastors from New Jersey and published in Lutheran Forum (Vol. 29, No. 4, November, 1995) with commentary by Ronald B. Bagnall, Mark Hoffman, Phillip Max Johnson, Linda Larson, John David Larson, Richard J. Niebanck, Beth Schlegel, and Louis A. Smith. Preamble To the people of the Evangelical […]
Renewal Movements in the United Methodist Church
In recent months more and more voices are calling for the United Methodist Church to split into two churches. So serious has this issue become that our General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns has published a booklet entitled, In Search of Unity. Note how the first paragraph states the problem: In recent years […]