Living Theology
in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Volume 8, Number 2
Summer 2003
Human Sexuality in the ELCA:
Perspectives on the Struggle
Gerald
L. Lundby responded to Frank Senn’s column “As I See It … The Need to Observe the Rubrics”
in Volume 7, Issue 2 as follows:
Pastor Senn’s comments on
the proper use of the liturgy were scholarly and appreciated. I sometimes find that the “contemporary
liturgies” popping up all over our synod congregations leave much to be
desired. Whenever I volunteer to preach
at my local congregation, I do with one proviso: that I will pick the hymns, almost
always from the LBW, which I remind the powers that be, “have some meat on
their bones.” Since I preach pro bono I am granted that
privilege. Frankly some of the songs
from our “Praise Hymnal” leave this musically deprived pastor wondering when we
have begun and when we have completed a verse or chorus. Sometimes one line is repeated three or four
times. We could call this “musical
stuttering.”
Pastor Senn made it quite
clear that he looked for and found liturgical purity and integrity when he
visited Lutheran churches in Europe and that he would wish to find this same
purity in our American Lutheran congregations.
However, he left out an important fact: the pews of most Lutheran
congregations in Europe are nearly empty.
One would hope that churches that cherish their “apostolic succession”
and traditional liturgy would be thriving but I have seen for myself and heard
confirmed by recent visitors that the Lutheran churches in Europe are
dying. Perhaps a revival of the older
liturgies and the Roman Catholic order of apostolic succession in our ELCA may
well bring decline rather than renewal.
Those who have struggled for years to have the ELCA pattern its church
order after our Catholic brothers and sisters would do well to ask themselves
if this model of order and worship is what our church wants or needs.
Frank Senn
replies:
I thank Pastor Lundby for his remarks and
sympathize with his situation. I just want to enter a clarification and make an
observation in response to his response.
The clarification is that I do not regard the
Lutheran liturgies in Europe as "purer" than American Lutheran
liturgies. I simply pointed out that European Lutheran liturgies and the
pastors who lead them are under a code of canon law governing worship practices
that cannot be considered to be at odds with evangelical freedom, properly
understood. The point in my article was that our American notions of
evangelical freedom, especially with regard to worship, are influenced by the
individualism of our culture.
The observation is that in
my visits to Sweden I have encountered full churches on Sunday morning. Perhaps
not surprisingly, these are parishes where liturgy is done with great care,
even with a "high church" character, and the liturgical role of the
bishop is welcomed. For a fine example, check out the Parish at Doderhult:
http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/doderhult/dodere.htm. Rather than driving people
out of the pews, a strong liturgical renewal has countered the secularism that
has contributed to the depletion of worshipers in Europe as well as in America.