Canaanite Lutheranism

A former student sent along a link to Ebenezer Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in San Francisco, which bills itself as "Her Church." The church's website announces it as "welcoming and affirming," and advertises works by feminist theologians from Carol Crist to (former) Southern Baptist Jann Aldredge-Clanton.

The events of the month include an invitation for women to participate in spiritual exercises like this, from a church member's testimony:

Pastor Stacy reminded us of some of the discounted feminine images of God in the Old Testament—probably none of which were the products of female imaginations—and invited us to form our own images in clay of Asherah, the mother goddess of the Canaanites familiar to early Jewish inhabitants of Canaan. I am no artist. Warming and working the clay with my hands, I wondered whether my goddess would look anything like the photograph of an Asherah figure Stacy provided as a possible starting point. Almost immediately I forget all about the picture. I began to form, as well as I could, my own breasts and hips, my own hair and face and arms and belly, my 52-year-old self, an Asherah with a sacred body just like mine. I can't tell you how healing that was.

It is no surprise that in forming an idol this poor woman found herself forming herself. This is precisely the root and basis of idolatry (Rom 1). What is tragic is that she is being led to form an Asherah, "familiar to the early Jewish inhabitants of Canaan" (!), rather than being pointed away from herself to Jesus in, of all places, a Lutheran church.

Activities such as this confirm my suspicions that "renewal" groups in some of the mainline communions have now waited too patiently for too long. There's a time to fight for a restoration of one's church to fidelity and orthodoxy, and then there's a time when one no longer has a communion of churches, but a sub-Christian organization. Sometimes it is hard to tell when that transition has been made. When you get to Asherah worship, I think the ship has sailed.

Nonetheless, let's pray for Lutheran brothers and sisters who will have the courage in this era to "familiarize" themselves with Baal, Asherah, and all such principalities and powers...in the same way the prophets of old did. Let's pray for Lutheran churches that preach Christ and him crucified.

And that whirring sound you hear is probably a boisterous German table-talker, spinning in his grave.

Comments

[Terry Bohannon]

So, it's beyond reason for the ELCA to suggest that the church follow Christ rather than Asherah?

[Christopher Hathaway]

It's seems too outlandishly heretical not to be satire. But alas, our modern heretics outstrip our ability to satirize them. There is no foolishness that will not seem wise to them.

But I did not see any identification as an ECLA parish. Of course such identification probably doesn't matter as much to those who pray "Our Mother who is within us, we celebrate your many names..." and who claim to be interested in thealogy.

[S.K. Davis]

Ebenezer Lutheran Church is listed in the church directory on the ELCA website (www.elca.org)

[Kathy Hanneman]

How disappointed I was to see the name of Sr.Miriam Therese Winter as part of that travesty. I used to like her music such as "Joy Is Like the Rain". Has she just gotten into this "goddess" thing or was I just naive enough not to see it back then?
If these people wish to "worship" in this manner it is their right to be wrong but they should at least be honest enough not to call themselves Christians.
Their "goddess rosary" with its naked woman image is a blasphemous insult to Christ and His blessed Mother.

[Daniel C.]

All this starts, of course, at "seminaries" like the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley where social and political posturing is far more important than theology.

[Terry Bohannon]

The 'God within', sounds like recent embraces of Gnosticism. But it's the religious universalism suggested in "we celebrate your many names" that bothers me the most. The absolute individualism idealized in some circles, the feminist who's in no need of a man, the Christian who's in no need of a Church, has in this case ballooned itself to absurdity. With their eyes focused inward, they become barriers to God's love, and refusing to be Christ's servants they are blind to that light God "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4-6).

(I also didn't see a professed link to the ELCA on their website.)

[Terry Bohannon]

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I just looked at the essay below their goddess Rosary, and it's argument is rather vitriolic:

The incarnated Word in Jesus and the scriptures makes clear the certainty that God/dess resides with the oppressed. And so must we. Exclusively male God-language undermines human dignity for woman, and ultimately men as well. The result is a fractured community.

If the scriptures make their claim so clearly, it would have been a common belief for nearly the last two thousand years. Since, intellectually, there have been far wiser meditations on scripture than Dalyn Cook's, whoever (s)he is.

[Mephibosheth]

The links page does include a link to ELCA, and the staff page mentions the full name of the denomination.

[The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS]

Ebenezer Lutheran once had the proud heritage of being the "mother church" of the west coast congregations of the (Swedish-American) Augustana Synod, on the ELCA's predecessor church bodies. Like most Lutheran "city churches," it died a slow death as parishioners moved to the suburbs and the new neighbors were, uh, "not typical Lutherans." When I was a seminarian at PLTS 1988-1992, the worst example of that death in the Bay Area was when I attended an Oakland congration one beautiful August Sunday morning where I was one of 7 worshipers (counting the pastor) for their one Sunday service. A classmate of mine was assigned that church as his "teaching parish" that fall. Clearly it was the endowments keeping the place open. Such congregations struggle to the very end, finally consolidating with neighboring parishes or -- in a fit of absolute desperation -- throwing out everything and completely re-tooling to see if a "new" ministry can be built. It appears that Ebenezer, most certainly with the encouragement and support of the Sierra Pacific Synod ELCA, has taken that complete re-tooling course -- but taken "complete" to a new extreme.

While I was at PLTS, Pastor Boorn (then serving another San Francisco congregation) proudly wore the claim as the last official graduate of Christ Seminary-Seminex, which had been originally formed by the Concordia Seminary students and faculty who'd departed in the Missouri Synod split. I didn't know her except by sight (most local pastors are part of the exptended PLTS community). One could see, though, that many Seminex grads (and even some of the re-deployed faculty) had abandoned their Confessional Lutheran moorings sunk in St. Louis and, now rudderless, were eagerly sailing in the liberationist waters. It was only a matter of time that someone finally go completely off the deep end.

There continue to be many, many faithful pastors and congregations in the ELCA, and faithful seminarians can get through our seminaries (of which PLTS is not the worst). Alas, we have gotten used to ignoring what is happening with our neighboring congregations, and our leadership has proven incapable of any form of discipline of public offense (with the possible exception of some heterosexual "sexual misconduct.")

Then again, as long as we do not hold our leaders accountable for helping maintain theological discipline in the light of such obvious paganism, perhaps we are being less faithful than we believe. Ebenezer's website has been the fuel of considerable discussion over at the ALPB Forum since it's discovery over the new year. But whether it will get beyond that remains a question.

[Luthien the nasty den mother]

'The incarnated Word in Jesus and the scriptures makes clear the certainty that God/dess resides with the oppressed. And so must we. Exclusively male God-language undermines human dignity for woman, and ultimately men as well. The result is a fractured community."

What??? How does "exclusively male God-language" undermine women??? For crying out loud, Our Lady is the role model for all people...and she's a woman! Furthermore, even the most die-hard ultra-Patriarchalists agree that women are made in God's image, as are men, and are equal with men in humanity and dignity. In fact, the real sexism in the modern West belongs to those who claim that all men are nasty oppressive brutes who enslave women.

[Scott Walker]

My goodness. I thought it was bad when my former ELCA parish took a stab at liturgical dance. I thought it was worse when my former pastor at another ELCA parish prayed to "God most motherly" in the prayers before communion. This, however, goes beyond bad. The fashioning of idols in a Lutheran-sponsored retreat is nothing short of demonic. It does seem as if those who desire to love and serve Christ have little choice but to leave the ELCA and the goddess worshippers to their fate.

[Timothy Ruscher]

My age: 22. Why I'm still in the ELCA: Just as one of the earlier comments noted, there are still a great deal of faithful parishes, and especially parishoners, within the ELCA. Though I do not desire to call many clergy within the ELCA "collegue," and would much more gladly kick the dust off of my feet while I myself leave the denomination, I would be abandoning some of God's people, many of whom are too old and familiar with their Lutheran heritage to do what's best for themselves. SOMEBODY must be a shepherd to these sheep who do belong to Jesus.

[Donrita Reefman]

Good for you, Timothy!
If only Luther had stayed with the sheep also, Christ's Church would today perhaps be truly "One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic". It's hard to stay when all seems in chaos, but, as you say, someone who is still listening to the voice of God should stay with the lost sheep.