'Can These Bones Live?' Dr. Laurence White Evaluates The LCMS

By: Rev. Jack Cascione
The following are a list of salient quotations from an important paper by Dr. Laurence White.  Reclaim News will email the entire paper upon request. It can also be found at:    
http://concordtx.org/cpapers/white.htm

"'Can These Bones Live?'  The Dilemma of Missouri's Confessional Remnant" is the title of the essay Pastor White delivered at the free conference.  Dr. Laurence White, pastor of our Savior Lutheran Church, Houston Texas, told the Texas Confessional Lutherans meeting at a Free Conference at Grace Lutheran church, Brenham, Texas on August 3."

"The time has come to face these grim realities and admit that the conservative crusade to reclaim Missouri has failed.  The church that Missouri once was, where doctrine and practice was the Synod's foremost priority is no more.  'Unserer gliebte Synode is tot' Our beloved Synod is dead,"

"'John Q.  Average Pew-Sitter' and "John Q. Average Pulpit Stander' are not greatly interested in what transpires at a synodical convention.  All of the fuss and fury is largely confined to the convention hall itself."

"Fifty years ago, if someone said, 'I am a Roman Catholic!' you were safe in assuming from that denominational label what that person believed.  The same thing would have been true with someone who claimed affiliation with the Missouri Synod.  That is no longer true in this church or in any church in the United States of America.  Americans today feel perfectly free to belong to a church and then to pick and choose which of its doctrines they will personally subscribe to."

"The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is fast becoming a federation of quasi-independent districts, each ruled as a personal fiefdom by increasing powerful and independent district presidents.  Each district establishes its own character and identity - a reality that also extends to their theology and their theological practice in a way, which, until now, would have been unthinkable in Missouri."

"The sad reality is that the LCMS is a shrinking, aging denomination that seems to have lost its theological vitality and is increasingly preoccupied with its own institutional structures and internal power struggles."

"Our liberal friends typically use these sad facts to argue for the further abandonment of our historic doctrine and practice.  Their constant refrain is: 'We got to get more flexible.  We got to become more modern and catch up with the world around us.  We got to get rid of all this stuff that is so controversial and get in step with what is happening in the culture.'  That is exactly the WRONG advice.  I would suggest to you today that precisely the opposite is true.  We are shrinking and increasingly impotent and irrelevant because our confession of the truth of God has grown hesitant and timid.  We do not need to be less Lutheran.  We need to be more Lutheran to make a difference in the world today for the Lord Jesus Christ."

"We have become a church where much of what passes for Bible study is little more than the shared experiences of self-obsessed consumers who want the chance to talk about 'what God is doing in their lives.'"

"We have discarded the great chorales and hymns of the church for superficial praise songs and mind numbing ditties which reflect the intellectual poverty of generations weaned on TV's 30 second sound bites."

"The LCMS is faltering today because it has traded its precious heritage as a confessional church where doctrine reigned supreme which existed for the sole purpose of offering the good confession for the worthless worldly porridge of trendy, politically correct, modern denominationalism."

"Al Barry was a good and a decent man.  He was an orthodox Lutheran who tried to do the right thing whenever he could.  But he never really held the power in this church.  That power is held by the Council of District Presidents.  The fact is that an overwhelming majority of those district presidents opposed Dr. Barry and his vision of the Synod at every turn. Ironically, Texas District President Gerald Kieschnick, all of his protestations of theological conservatism notwithstanding, was one of the key leaders of Barry's opposition in the COP.  He was a constant thorn in Dr. Barry's side."

"Dr. Gerald Kieschnick is Missouri's first 'post modern president'.  He is a deliberately non-theological individual."

"Liberal strategists are already gloating that conservative fury over Benke's syncretism will alienate the center and serve to further marginalize the Synod's confessional remnant."

"By and large, our people no longer know or care to know the distinctive theology of the Lutheran Church."

"As the Benke Brouhaha continues to escalate it would appear that a time of crisis for Missouri has come again.  That may well prove to be a good thing. Perhaps the furor of this controversy will become that catalyst which forces us back to our Bibles and compels us to do theology as Lutherans once more."

"Rumbles of schism have begun to reverberate across the church as conservative fury and fear increases.  Such talk in our present state of theological disarray is premature and irresponsible.  We conservatives must first set our own theological house in order.  We must honestly confront the issues which divide us from one another and resolve them on the basis of the Word of God.  Until we do, we are not in a position to offer theological leadership to the church.  It would make little sense to endure the travail of leaving one confessionally ambiguous church simply to form another one."

"The spectacle of an LCMS District President praying with Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs is only the most recent manifestation - albeit a most prominent and dramatic manifestation - of the theological enervation which has been under way throughout our church for many years.  One incident, particularly an incident so clouded by emotionalism and patriotism, cannot by itself provide compelling basis for action.  It must be emphasized and documented again and again that these events serve to signal the reality and the enormity of our church's doctrinal disintegration."

The entire paper is found at:

http://concordtx.org/cpapers/white.htm

September 12, 2002