Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Missouri Synod's 'Godless Orthodoxy' Ignores Compassion
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
August 2002Shortly after September 11, 2001, area religious leaders gathered on the municipal plaza in Bethlehem. We are close enough to New York that most of us knew someone touched directly by the tragedy. Indeed, some area commuters had themselves been victims.
Among the religious leaders present were Muslims and Jews, both defying a stereotype, along with mainline Christians, including myself and the bishop of the Northeast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We each tried to bring a word of hope or comfort, and a prayer.
With over two hundred million Americans grieving and frightened, we did what we could. We also witnessed to that fact that, while treasuring our own tradition, we shared the common ground of creatures turning to the Creator in a time of profound pain.
In the nation's largest city, at a ball park only a few miles from Ground Zero, a similar meeting took place, but with proportionately larger numbers and many more who were personally involved. Again, a wide spectrum of religious traditions were represented at Yankee Stadium in a ministry in time of disaster. There was a Lutheran "bishop" (president) there as well. But things have become very different for him.
The Lutheran group to which the Rev. David Behnke belongs, the Missouri Synod, officially holds the view that for one of their clergy to pray with other kinds of Lutherans, let alone other Christians, not even or ever to mention Jews and Muslims, is a betrayal of Christ, and something entirely forbidden by one or two "proof text" verses in the dustier corners of the scriptures.
This man, who stopped on the way to Jericho, Long Island, to have compassion on a grieving multitude, may be defrocked.
Jesus was constantly in trouble for breaking the rules at precisely this point. He thought the Sabbath law must bend to human need (as other rabbis did and still do). He thought the compassionate Samaritan (an outsider of the worst sort) was worth a hundred religious leaders who failed to help the victim of a mugging. He sent cantankerous Saul of Tarsus to preach in both synagogue and pagan assemblies.
I hasten to add that many Missouri Synod Lutherans do not agree with the stand taken by the more rule-oriented among them. The head of the Synod is among them, as is an elderly lady who told me at a family picnic that "we are just so embarrassed" by the negative witness her fellow Missouri Synod members are giving.
They have no idea how petty they make the Christian message appear as they hound a man who was simply compassionate and respectful of members of other faiths who were themselves grieving.
Most of Behnke's persecutors are in the middle of the country. Some are in the southwest. For them, 9/11 was something they saw on television. It is easy to be objective and play strictly by the rules when the subject is a two-dimensional image on a television screen. I say this not accuse them of insensitivity, but perhaps to lessen the enormity of their sin.
I have come to call their attitude "godless orthodoxy." Whenever any of us thinks that the principles and systems are worth more than the people they serve, we commit godless orthodoxy.
Rules and theological or philosophical systems have a great role to play. Without them, we would have to reinvent the wheel each morning. C. S. Lewis, however, asks the question, in "The Great Divorce," that each of us must ask: do I most love God or what I say about God?
I'm afraid that in the present situation God lost. How is God doing in your judgments of others this week?
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