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Interfaith Is No Faith
The Missouri Synod is right to reject ecumenicalism.
Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110002011
BY MOLLIE ZIEGLER
Friday, July 19, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
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Apparently the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod deserves our special concern. In late June, the church suspended the Rev. David Benke, the president of its Atlantic District and the pastor of a Brooklyn church, for praying with clerics who don’t share the Christian faith.
Naturally, the suspension caused all hell to break loose. From the New York Times’ editors to FoxNews’s Bill O’Reilly, pundits and commentators chided the Lutherans for their intolerance. Mr. O’Reilly, not otherwise known for theological expertise, even accused the church of “not following Jesus.” A column in Newsday said Mr. Benke’s accusers were “advocating religious isolationism.”
But what exactly had the church done wrong? What if it had a point?
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To participate in an interfaith service is, as the synod announced upon suspending Mr. Benke, “a serious offense” strictly forbidden by tradition and church law. But the source of the prohibition is Christ’s own words. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). As the Rev. Charles Henrickson, a Lutheran minister in St. Louis, explains: “The gospel is not served, it is not confessed–indeed, the gospel is eviscerated–when Jesus Christ is presented as one of many options from which to choose on a smorgasbord of spirituality.”
Mr. Benke has stated in his defense that the gathering was a “civic event,” not a religious one. But even Rudolph Giuliani, who was present, insisted on calling it a “prayer service.”
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Mr. Benke has argued as well that the “Prayer for America” was a response to an extreme situation. “Not to make the primary human connections at a time of civic, national and global tragedy,” he wrote in his defense, “would be a great pastoral error.” But only a few years before, in nonextraordinary circumstances, he had taken part in a service with clerics from other faiths–and been reprimanded by the church for it. After apologizing, he declared: “I assure the Synod that I will not repeat this error in the future. ” Amazingly, three months after the Yankee Stadium event, with charges against him pending, he joined in yet another interfaith service.
Such renegade behavior runs against the grain of the Missouri Synod, whose system of belief is firmly grounded in Scripture and an intellectually rigorous theology. Preserving its doctrine is a key aspect of the faith.
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Critics should think twice before elevating their love of patriotic ecumenism above the distinct beliefs that, even today, separate one faith from another.
Ms. Ziegler, a layperson in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, reports on the music industry from Washington.
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