Christians may differ, radical Republicans on the right and noodle-headed Liberals on the left, notwithstanding about birthright citizenship. They can have honest disagreements – without compromising their confession, Scripture, or America. You may disagree with the 14th Amendment being used to establish the so-called anchor baby policy which leads to a lot more people gaining citizenship than just the one born here. You may agree with the 14th Amendment’s intent to protect those born here regardless of their race or whether their parents are citizens. But to paraphrase the famous words of Seinfeld’s Poppie’s: “Birthright membership is absolutely wrong; about this there can be no debate.”
Birthright membership in a church wasn’t invented in America; in fact it was the way it was in Europe. You were automatically a member of the church in the place you were born. In Germany, this meant for awhile you could be a Lutheran or Catholic based on where you were born.
In America among the mid-18th century Quakers, it had a particularly deleterious effect, according to this respected historian. He observes this: “But as numbers increased [among Pennsylvania Quakers] spiritual life seemed to decline. This condition was inevitable with the establishment of what is known as birthright membership. This meant that increasing numbers of Friends became members of the Society through birth rather than through any conviction of their own” (Sweet, Religion in America, 99).
This is where Lutherans – actually almost all of the mainline churches – have been since I don’t know when. You were considered Lutheran if you were born of Lutheran parents. If you got confirmed at the tender age of 14, and everyone did back then in a Lutheran school, you were good for life. So what if you rarely went to church as a teen, only came to church when home from college, moved off, married and were churchless or even joined another faith group, you were still considered “one of us” certainly by your parents and had better be by your pastor.
I always told confirmation students that their parents can and should make sure they attend Confirmation instruction, or teach them at home and let me examine them, but no one could make them be confirmed. They could wait till the very last moment, before God’s altar and the whole Church, and when I asked them “Did they believe this?” or “Wish to be confirmed thus?” all they had to do was say, “No.” That was it. No confirmation. No birthright membership. No Lutherans by virtue of something other than confession of faith.
Over 40 years, I had three confirmands, who said, “Nope.” Not at the last minute but at the end of the three years of instruction. One wouldn’t have been confirmed regardless. He did none of the work. The other two did all the work, but didn’t want to be confirmed.
Over those same 40 years I tried to show the very people who considered themselves Uber Lutheran based on lineage, heritage, Germanic name, or attending Lutheran grade and/or high schools, and especially Lutheran college, that they were the ones John the Baptist was talking to when he said, “Do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” My efforts were to little avail for the most part angering not repenting people.
But I was right to try and so is your pastor. Birthright membership is what led John the Baptist to calling “good church people” snakes and to Jesus calling them hypocrites. In our day it leads to bloated rolls and not discipling those who flagrantly despise “preaching and His Word” and manifestly do not “hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”
Who and who is not a citizen of your country is ultimately a kingdom of the left issue not of the right. Who and who is not a member of your church is a kingdom of the right issue. About which there is an abundance of disagreement when there never should have been a debate in the first place.
