Several people have sent the following response of Mollie Ziegler Hemingway to President Kieschnick’s “letter to the editor.” Here is my reaction.
The Issues Etc debacle brings up three other issues.
1) We are kidding ourselves if we think the world is dying for confessional Lutheran theology, i.e. if we just get it out there people will beat a path to our door. No, it’s not popular. In these latter days, it will not draw the numbers needed to impress the world.
2) Those who are impressed by the world and want to impress the world have won, carried the day. They have done so since the 2004 Synodical convention. The point at issue is how many of the confessional Lutherans will they carry away with them?
3) From the “winners” point of view, there is seldom anything seriously wrong.
Posted on April 3, 2008 by Mollie
I just sent the following note to President Kieschnick. Since he sent his “letter to the editor” to every member of the LCMS Council of Presidents, the LCMS Board of Directors, LCMS Corporate Entity Presidents, LCMS Corporate Synod Executives, LCMS Concordia University System Presidents, LCMS Seminary Presidents, I went ahead and copied them in my response.
Dear President Kieschnick,
In your letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, you wrote that I paint a “false and misleading picture” of the LCMS “as a deeply divided church.”
Respectfully, I take issue with what you wrote.
The first article in the January 2008 edition of Board Briefs talks about the plan to restore harmony coming out of Resolution 4-01A of the 2007 convention. The article describes how members of the BOD and COP “met in small groups to identify those issues in the Synod thought to be causing the greatest discord.”
While the entire list of 20 issues proves my point, I might direct your attention to this item listed as one of the major problems in our church body:
“Failure to recognize the severity of the division in our Synod.”
In Christ,
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway
P.S. The Board Brief is available here:
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=10184
