LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1986, Sheet 110

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

GREETINGS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE LATVIAN EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA 109

5. Greetings of the President of the
Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Dr. Bohlmann, delegates and guests, sisters and brothers
in Christ, ladies and gentlemen:

I bring you greetings not only from the Latvian Evan-
gelical Lutheran Church in America but from the entire
Lutheran Church of Latvia in exile and its head Archi-
bishop in Toronto. On June 26 of this year, the Archbishop
and Pope John Paul II in the Vatican led an ecumenical
worship service in memory of the Augustinian monk Mein-
hard from Holstein, who 800 years ago became the first
bishop of what later was Livonia and now is Estonia and
Latvia. Meinhard came in peace, but his successors
brought the Brethren of the Sword, who Christianized with
the sword and with fire if the Word of God was not suffi-
cient. And where Russian missionaries had been first, they
even burned down Orthodox churches and rebaptized the
people. Now who am I to say that violently imposed Ca-
tholicism was, or even Lutheranism that came to Latvia
already in 1521, better than Orthodoxy which had reached
the Latvians, apparently peacefully, even earlier? The Ger-
man knights grabbed all land, eventually made serfs or
virtual slaves of the fallen Latvians. But they did not im-
pose the German language and did not Germanize the Lat-
vian people. On the other hand, Russians always tried to
assimilate their neighbors.

And so Bishop Meinhard and his successors tied Latvia
to Western Europe and thus greatly helped to preserve the
Latvians as a people. But for him and for his German
knights I would probably today be a Russian Orthodox,
maybe a dissident or an underground Baptist, but defi-
nitely I would not be here and the Latvians would not be
among you here in the free world. So we might say that
Bishop Meinhard, that German missionary, wished me
and the Latvians who are here upon you. We feel that God
in His providence has kept the Latvians alive and sent a
good number of us into exile at this particular time on a
twofold mission and to strenthen us in that mission, not
only the Lutheran Latvians but also the Roman Catholics
and the Baptists. As far as we know, it was the first time
in history that the Roman Pope conducted the worship
service jointly with a Lutheran Archbishop, as it did hap-
pen in the Vatican on June 26.

Now one part of that mission that we feel God has given
to us is to warn the West, and to warn you, the churches
in the West particularly, of the danger of Marxism, of god-
less communism, and Soviet expansionism, empire build-
ing. I know that our job is not pleasant. Most people don’t
like to hear this type of thing. They want to talk about
peace at any price. But we have to remind you, for example,
that goodwill can not be built on half truth such as prop-
agated by “you got problems, I’ve got problems.” Where is
Turner and his announcers who do not even mention that
the place, for example, where yachting competition is tak-
ing place is not in the Soviet Union but in occupied Es-
tonia? Or that where tennis is being played in so-called
goodwill games is not in the Soviet Union but occupied
Latvia? Our mission is to ask why church people in the

West use what they call Marxist analysis instead of the
Biblical prophets, to find the root cause of injustice and
poverty. Aren’t the prophets enough? Aren't they speaking
clearly enough on these issues? Christians certainly can
not say that man is materialistically and dialectically and
historically determined, can they?

The other half of our mission is to help the churches in
Latvia, to help them survive. And survival really is the
issue. They need all the help, legal and illegal, spiritual
and financial, that we can possibly give them. There is no
church building, for example, repaired or renovated since
the second world war in Latvia, that has been done without
help from the West. Whether the Lutheran World Feder-
ation, German Church, or us here in the United States,
one way or another every church has been repaired or ren-
ovated with our assistance and with our help and could
not have been done without this. If not repaired, buildings
are closed and the government takes them away since the
congregation is permitted to function only within the walls
of the church. This is a Soviet law. Taking away the build-
ing means disbanding the congregration, and thus our help
is essential.

Equally neccesary are Bibles and theological literature.
Therefore, for example, for one thing I plead with everyone
of you who as a tourist or on business for some reason will