LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 336

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336

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

not be interpreted as in any way compromising the integrity of the
church’s message. They are, rather, a reflection of the church’s desire to
avoid misunderstandings and petty, fruitless controversies.'* The church
may well find it prudent to heed the axiom suggested to the CTCR by
Richard John Neuhaus: “When it is not necessary for the church to speak,
it is necessary for the church not to speak.”

In the final analysis, the church’s message must always be drawn from
God’s Word, which is its only authoritative speech. But in drawing from
God's Word a specific message for a particular time and circumstance, the
church must carefully identify the principles it considers most relevant, the
purpose for which it is speaking, the priority of the message it is bringing,
and the most prudent way to frame and deliver that message.

The Messenger

To say that the “church speaks” is to beg the question of who exactly
it is that speaks. Individual Christians speak for themselves. But when and
on what basis do pastors, officers, or congregational assemblies speak for
congregations? And on what basis do officers, staff, and conventions speak
for the members of church bodies? The answers to these questions are not
self-evident, and may even vary considerably between church bodies on
the basis of both theological and organizational differences. What is impor-
tant here is that we become conscious of the ambiguities and intentionally
address them when pondering the role of the church as public messenger.

“Who speaks for the church?” surfaces the fundamental ambiguity in
the term “church.” It makes a great deal of difference, for instance, whether
the term church is used to refer to the universal, spiritual body of God’s
people; a national or international church body; a congregation; or indi
vidual Christians generally. It also makes a difference whether one is refer-
ring to distinctively spiritual and ecclesiastical functions or to an institu-
tion that operates under secular law as property holder, employer,
deliverer and purchaser of services, or investor.

™ David Liefeld writes of the need to handle highly charged social issues with pastoral
sensitivity: “Pastors do not need to compromise their personal convictions, or the truthful-
ness of God's Word, in order to listen sympathetically as people describe their personal
odysseys of wrestling with the moral dilemmas of our time. In fact, pastors can be much
more effective by entering into that struggle with them, sympathetically, than by only stand-
ing over and against them, judgmentally. ... Pastors can incorporate controversial issues
within sermons in ways which acknowledge both God's truth and the fact that listeners are
wrestling with an extremely complex social problem. Effective pastors will also rely most
heavily on dialogical dlassroom situations and one-to-one conversations for the most con-
troversial, and most easily misunderstood, elements of the problem.” David R. Liefeld, “A
Pastoral Approach to the Politics of Abortion,” Concordia Journal 17, no. 3 July 1991): 256.

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This church, grounded in Word and sacrament, works in society from
the “bottom up.” It is the individual Christian, both as member of the
church and citizen of the state, who is duty bound to become the primary
“speaker” of the church’s many social concerns. It is the individual Chris-
tian who works from the “bottom” in the public square, guided both by
God's Word and by the principled persuasion of the institutional church.
Therefore, individual Christians can, and must, learn to translate the con-
cerns of God’s Word into arguments appropriate for civil government.
And the institutional church needs to provide opportunities for believers
to study and discuss the application of their faith to the issues that confront
them in daily living.

Also of great assistance to the Christian in performing the duties of cit-
izenship in the modern nation-state are the mediating structures of volun-
tary association (such as public interest groups and para-church ministries).
The modern world has an unprecedented dichotomy between public and
private life. Without mediating structures, “the political order becomes
detached from the values and realities of individual life.”'” Yet, in address-
ing values, mediating structures often cut across ideological and political
lines. They help to develop the compromise and consensus that is so essen-
tial for democratic government, without compromising the integrity of
either political or religious institutions: “Mediating structures are essential for
a vital democratic society. ... Public policy should protect and foster mediating
structures and Wherever possible, public policy should utilize mediating structures
for the realization of social purposes." The advantage is precisely that Chris-
tian citizens can work together on common social concerns with non-Chris-
tians as well as Christians outside their church body—and can even work
against fellow Christians of the same denomination—without their church
body itself entering into such potentially destructive conflict.

The Means

When analyzing the message to be proclaimed and the most appro-
priate messenger to proclaim it, it will be helpful also to consider the man-
ner in which the church relates to the world. Robert Benne has described
the four “possible connections” for the institutional church and politics: the
ethics of character (indirect and unintentional influence), the ethics of con-
science (indirect and intentional influence); the church as social conscience
(direct and intentional influence); and, the church with power (direct and

™ Peter L Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empouxr People: The Role of Medaating
Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Poli-
cy Research, 1977), 3.

“Tid. 6.

We have already seen how, for Lutherans, the church is fundamentally
spiritual. With Luther, Lutherans confess in the Smaleald Articles of 1537,
“Thank God, a seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely, holy
believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd” (SA XII, 2). The
voice of this Shepherd is heard by means of “the office of the ministry, that
is ... the Gospel and the sacraments,” through which God “gives the Holy
Spirit, who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the
Gospel” (AC V, 1-2). Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, therefore,
defines the church simply as “the assembly of all believers among whom the
Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are admimistered
according to the Gospel” (AC VII, 1). This church asks publicly for the free-
dom to proclaim the Word and to administer the sacraments.

But the church is also a social organization—in the Missouri Synod,
congregations, districts, and Synod. While it is tempting to assume that
these groupings are synonymous with that church defined by Word and
sacrament, they actually have one new characteristic: they are also institu-
tions of the temporal kingdom. They usually incorporate, adopt constitu-
tions and by-laws, and conduct business according to Robert's Rules of
Order. While the church of the Word is not subject to civil law, since even
in totalitarian societies that Word can still be preached or read “under-
ground” and cherished in faith even in the isolation of a prison cell, the
church as an institution of society is subject to civil law. The church as insti-
tution can be created and abolished, it can sue and be sued, and it can
address other legal entities, including government, regarding its institu-
tional interests or concerns.

The institutiona! church will be concerned about zoning laws that
affect the location of church buildings and church schools. It will be con-
cerned about legislation that may encourage or discourage the work of the
church (such as tax exemptions, tuition tax credits, or voucher plans for
child care and private education). The church as an institution of society
has as much right as any other institution to make its concerns known to
those who enact legislation, and law-makers should be as concerned about
the impact of their legislation on churches as they are about individuals
and for-profit corporations.

Between these two understandings of church, of course, lie individual
Christians pursuing their vocations (“callings”) to serve God in all things—
the church also in the broad sense of the word. Here there are numerous
social concerns: for civil and human rights, for economic and political jus-
tice, for world peace, and so on. And Christians must address these sub-
jects in order to avoid the kind of social quietism that resulted in the sub-
mission to Naziism of the German churches. But this understanding of
church actually involves an intersection of the two kingdoms, because it is
the individual Christian who lives simultaneously in both kingdoms.

intentional action). Benne’s four “connections” are especially helpful con-
siderations for implementing the Lutheran two-kingdom distinction."
Benne’s first connection is indirect and unintentional influence. This
means, according to Benne, that the church as an institution does not get
involved in public, political decision-making. Its influence on politics is
indirect, through the members of its congregations. Furthermore, its influ-
ence is unintentional. It has no specific design for society, no social policy.
What it does is simply to preach and teach the Word of God, letting the
Word speak for itself and accomplish its own purposes. In this connection,
the church relies upon the power of God’s own Word, the work of His
Holy Spirit, to shape and direct believers as they work out their calling to
serve God in the neighbor. It is a powerful connection with great potential:
Affecting people in this way is arguably the most important, fundamental,
and potentially the most effective way the church influences the public
order—its politics, economics and social life ... religious communities are
capable of forming a powerful ethos among people who participate. These
people then shape the world about them, as political leaders but also as
those who condition the political climate around them.'¢

This is the connection between religion and politics that has predominated
among Lutherans and is, in fact, most congenial to the two-kingdom
model and to Luther’s teaching on Christian vocation.

Yet, no one supposes that the institutional church has ever been bound
to merely reading God’s Word, as if it were somehow inappropriate to
explain or apply it to practical problems and issues of everyday life. The
preaching of a sermon, the teaching of a Bible class, or a conversation with
a fellow citizen, presume prior training at the hands of other Christians—
usually through the work of the institutional church. In other words, even
teaching about the two-kingdom model or the Christian’s call to exercise
faith through love, is based on intentional influence by the institutional
church. It is difficult to conceive of the church ever operating only with a
model of indirect and unintentional influence.

Therefore, Benne’s second possible connection between the church
and politics, indirect and intentional influence, has also been an impor-
tant part of the Lutheran two-kingdom model, since the Lutheran Church
is self-consciously a “teaching church.” This second connection adds inten-
tionality to the first connection. Here the institutional church mobilizes its
biblical and confessional resources deliberately, aiming “to form the con-

“\In addition to Benne’s article “The Church and Politics,” see also chs. 8 and 9
(184-224) of Benne’s book The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-first Centu-
ry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995)

'? Benne, “The Church and Politics,” 28

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