THEN COMES THE STORM

 The sea was calm and benign before Jesus entered the boat, but then afterward it became a threatening storm.  Luther equates this tumult to the rancor of Satan whenever a person follows Christ.

As soon as the teaching about faith is in the picture and Christ steps into the ship, then, as the saying goes, it won’t be long before there’s threatening weather; the sun won’t shine any longer and the sea will rage and storm…. This all works together, if you want to be a Christian and follow this Lord, and step with Him into the ship, resigning your heart to Him and composing your soul in patience.  For as soon as you commit yourself to this Lord and come with Him into the ship wind, storm, and buffeting will surely ensue…. But don’t despair….do not be afraid because of that but think rather; I didn’t get into this to gain the world’s favor; and I’m not going to give it up because of its rancor and raging.

Christians should expect persecution; we may be ridiculed for our faith, discriminated against, harassed, mistreated, tormented and, in some countries today, killed.  Only in Christ can we weather these many assaults with faith and courage.

AS LONG AS HE IS FAITHFUL TO THE WORD

 

• 

  That’s how it is with little sheep; its very life depends upon hearing.  If it doesn’t hear the shepherd’s voice, the wolves will soon be there.  Without the shepherd’s voice, all joy and assurance vanish and only fear and trembling remain.  That’s how it is also with a Christian.  If he loses the Word, all comfort is gone.  As long as he is faithful to the Word, he will behold Christ, his shepherd, and therewith everything Christ has earned and promised him, namely forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

--Martin Luther

LISTEN FOR THE SHEPHERD’S VOICE

 

I am certain that He knows me, and even though I must suffer death

and all kinds of misfortune, I will not let that thwart my faith; I know and hear and stay close to His voice!  For even as a shepherd tenderly calls his little sheep, so Christ also encourages me:  I am your shepherd, I have laid down my life for you.  I died for you!  This is the word I hear and believe.  This is my one sure guarantee:  that he knows me, and I know him.

 --Martin Luther

THEY WISHED CHRIST DEAD

 

Many are offended by the church, which is subject the scandals, charlatans, and divisions.  If the church
were worthy, it would be pure, holy, unspotted, and of one will.  Because they see none of those things, they have nothing but contempt.  But they do not see as God sees.  They see thieves, liars and hypocrites.   Worse, they see the bride of Christ.  Like Christ, hacked to pieces, marked with scratches, despised, crucified, and mocked.  Just as they hate Christ, they hate His Church.  They wished Christ dead.  They wish no better for His church. 

 

LETTER FROM AMERICA

 

Requests!  Oh, i get requests.  Busy littles bees around the world make nuisances of themselves wanting some reliable field intelligence concerning happenings in the “States”.  (By the way, nobody here calls this country “the States”.  You will hear “America” or “The United States”….but never “the States”.  There’s a whole boatload of historical rigmarole behind our usage which is important to us and sure to bore you so:  let’s just take it as it is.)   Back to field intelligence.

Europeans of all stripes are genuinely puzzled by the phenomenon of Donald J. Trump in America.  They are not so much surprised he actually exists as that such a person could be elected President.  I myself have a high degree of understanding for their point of view.  Indeed, when the original seventeen Republicans took to the first party debate to slug it out to win the party’s nomination to run against Hilary Clinton for the Presidency (given the nature of the Democrat Party and the Clinton’s complex history of wheelin’ and dealin’, even at the beginning of the primary season, it was clear Hilary had her party’s nomination in the bag), Trump was my seventeenth choice.  It was widely assumed at the time Jeb Bush was destined for the party’s nomination and the big concerns in conservative circles was 1.) Was the continuation of the Bush “dynasty” desirable and 2.)  should we do anything to stop it?  Trump pretty much was off the radar at this point.

He was on no one’s radar except…the people who live in the heartland, mountains and plains of America.   A lot has been made of the fact that for several years Trump had been the host of a popular television program watched by millions.  At first, the insinuation was that these silly people were showing up in the primaries and voting for a TV character.  That was the analysis of a LOT very intelligent people (both left and right) and a fair-sized minority still hold a modified version of this line of thought.

The first set of primaries totally rearranged the field.  One republican candidate after another saw their champaigns stall and then fail.  By the time the Republican convention came, there was little real doubt Trump had the nomination.  The path was laid for him to battle it out with Hilary Clinton.

Oh, yes!  Clinton.  Hilary Clinton.  Remember her?  I contend one can’t understand the Trump phenomenon without her—yet many write about 2016 as if Trump just sorta rose to the surface of the pickle barrel.  “One day we woke up and somehow we got Trump as President.”

 This comes as a shock to some on both sides of the Atlantic, but Hillary is not popular with a large segment of America.  Rightly or wrongly, she is perceived as a lying crook.  Now being a crook is bad enough but THE FEELING was that she simply didn't care or LIKE much of America.   She made disparaging comments in the past about all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and lifestyles, how they cooked, hunted and read their Bibles.  She also made direct appeals (threats) for ending people's livelihoods such as coal mining or gas exploration.  (Some realize these people have to make a living somewhere.  So where do they go?   “Well, silly, they go to the other side of town and work at the windmill or solar power manufacturing plant.)  Then there is an issue with what she would do with the rights of those who got in her way—particularly religious rights.  There is certainly the perception that, while she may not directly threaten the religious liberties of many, if others in her administration undermined religious liberties one way or another, she would not stand in their way.   Now, one of these two of these things may not mean a lot in a lot of peoples’ estimation but taking altogether as a whole they present an ugly picture for many in America to vote against.

Trump was representative of a much larger cultural problem.  There is the widespread perception that our institutions and the leadership of both parties were either incapable or unwilling to solve the basic problems that faced America.  For many years people have crossed the southern border.  Immigrants by the thousands came and they took jobs the meant for the poor and created neighborhood displacement.   (For many Americans, they are not upset all these brown-skinned, Spanish speaking people are here so much as they have the fundamental notion that the law must be followed.)  The idea to build a wall across great expanses of the South had been making the rounds for several decades.  But not one plank had been set place.  The national debt has been building up steadily since the Second World War but there seems to be no resolution on how to solve the heavy borrowing.  (In the back of most Americans’ minds is the notion that at some point the bill will be due and at that point America will have to pony up to the bar and pay.  When that day comes, the average wage earner will find a new deduction on their pay stub.  Yet, the wealthy will still have ways not available to the common wage earner to shield their gains from the new tax exposure.)  The health care system is accessible and expensive with an insurance system that is hard understand-- one doesn't have to believe in socialized medicine to think that some kind of reforms could have been set in place.  But it seemed that each of these problems had been left unattended for reasons that were not apparent. 

These are problems America faces with great deal of frustration.   The suspicion was that they hadn’t been resolved because it was to some nameless, faceless but powerful person’s benefit. 

Of particular horror to many Americans was the thought that small children were being trafficked across the borders from city to city for the sexual pleasure of those who could pay.  It is well known that young girls are often raped on their trek to America.  Once here, some are sold to drug gangs for a life of prostitution.  Such a business is in constant need of “new flesh” to attract its customer; so a continuous supply of new girls is in “someone’s” interest.  The gang itself does all the dirty work; but a continuous supply of money flows up to those who write the laws and direct where the public treasury will spend its money

The reason why Donald Trump was elected is not hard to discern.   You don't have to strain your eyes over the subject.   And we don’t have to entertain vague theories about this or that population.  You don't even have to agree with the people who voted for Trump.  But one can understand their point of view.

America has been racially and politically divided at least since the 1960s.  I say, at least…  In truth, factionalism has always played a huge role in our national intercourse.  We have simply forgotten a great deal of our old animosities amongst ourselves.   Perhaps, this forgetfulness has benefits all to itself we don’t readily recognize.  If we can’t bring ourselves to forgive, maybe forgetting is the balm that preserves the union of the nation.

 It is said that for the average person history began the day we were born.  Indeed, for the majority of us, we really take no interest in what came before us unless it has relevance to a problem we are dealing with now.  So, as our elderly day by day pass away, real “lived” memories are lost; the unwritten page is wiped clean of the faint ink which seeped through from the previous leaves.  Thus, the story begins again afresh with seemingly new dramas and passions we cannot imagine having been experienced before—and a past more peaceful and refined than the present.

I myself was born in 1953—about in the middle of the infamous “baby boomer” generation.  The 1950’s were ostensibly a peaceful time.  Of course, now I know the 50’s wasn’t so irenic.  It had problems and concerns all its own.    But in terms of a little boomer, we took it as it came to us and we hated it.  Except rock and roll was born.   Somewhere around 1954, new expressions came out our radios.   There is a lot to enjoy in our parents’ music—but even now it is exactly that:  our parents’ music.  Rock and roll had a polarizing influence between the generations.   The effect was much the same wherever one went.  Whether in Europe, the Americas, or the United Kingdom, differences in lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language were fairly consistent.  Unfortunately, Elvis got on the train and Buddy Holly got on a plane and rock and roll dried up for a time.

The 1960’s started off with Kennedy defeating Nixon only to have Kennedy botch an invasion of Cuba.   Two years later, the whole world shook as Kennedy and Khrushchev drug all of us mere inches away from nuclear war.   A year later, President Kennedy is killed by a left wing extremist on the streets of Dallas.   (This was an event whose ripples and aftereffects we still can’t account for.  A great deal of wrath was unleashed that day.  The unthinkable became possible and the possible became acceptable.) What followed was a decade of unsettling demonstrations and violent riots.  Martin Luther King is killed.  Then mere weeks later, Robert Kennedy is assassinated[1].   Even here in the heart of America there were serious questions even then whether democracy could survive.  The fact that we have survived might give us some pause--but the fact that we cannot seem to address essential questions of citizenship, health care and then the national debt does not bode well. 

I was born in the 1950s.  In the late 1980’s, I had buried my grandparents and my father.  Driving home from my grandmother’s funeral, my mind wandered around assorted memories involving each of them.  Abruptly.  I grasped that the places my memories revolved around also were no longer on the map.   It was then I knew that the country I was born in was gone.   It was then I understood how my parents and grandparents felt  when us “boomers” started to rearranged the world to our satisfaction.  We were so hard on them.  We were so certain that the world wouldn’t have been in the mess it was in if they were only more like…us.

Well. We got our way and slowly the ways of the world and the levers of power were passed to our hands—and what do we have to show for it?  The world is not a safer place.  In many ways, it is not a cleaner place.  Wars continue to rage in every corner of the globe.     The living conditions of our poor may be better than in most places of the planet; but they are by several measures worse than they were fifty years ago.  I can only imagine what our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren will make of us will make of us in the successive decades to come.

Trump’s successful 2016 election surprised a great many of us; but even for those of us who weren’t exactly wild about him took pleasure with the cries of grief and gnashing of teeth which arose from the denizens of the left.  That pleasure turned into contempt as those cries and grinding teeth continued and grew louder with each passing week.  The bizarre dream of subjecting Trump to an impeachment trial over purported conspirings with Russia was perceived as a vicious insult by the right.  The idea that someone on the right would sell out his country begged all reason yet even to this day many on the left regard it as proven gospel that only fools would deny in spite of the lack of objective evidence.

Months would go by and the divisions across American society intensified.    Families became embattled open grounds which often times resulted in depleted or cancelled Thanksgiving and Christmas feast gatherings.  Politics became a forbidden topic at work.  A stranger might choose to pick an argument with you over a political sticker on your car.  Members of the Trump administration would be spitefully harassed by leftist mobs walking to their car or while taking their family out to eat.   One would have thought this would have abated somewhat with Trump’s 2020 defeat; but Bidden seemed to have loosed a few demons himself.

The thought that burrows beneath the skin of the left that the right does not appreciate is that in spite of it all:  Trump almost won.  Indeed.  Had the Democrats committed acts of gross voter fraud?  Oh, yes.  Enough to make a difference?  On this part, I remain an agnostic.   I simply don’t have all the evidence before me to make a fair pronouncement.  So, for the sake of the Union, I accept the determination of Electoral College.

And the Electoral College says Joe Biden won.  For a conservative such as myself:  bummer!  Also for a conservative such as myself: relief.  I don’t have to “deal with” everything which proceeds from the mouth of Trump.  Indeed, for so many of us on the right, if we just rode on the results of Trump policies instead of the majesties of his personhood, our country would be better for it.

At this remove, America is so much the worst after one year of Biden.  Gas casts more.  Food costs more.  Homes cost more.  Inflation is high.  China threatens Taiwan.  Now, Russia has invaded Ukraine.  This is not at all the calm, boring Biden who campaigned from the basement of his house.

Most Americans of most political strip don’t like thinking ill of the man that sits in the White House.  Some may be more foolish than most; but none serve without some deep love of the same country we share.  ow how some come out so much wealthier does make one wonder; nevertheless, at some point, all eventually rise above politics—beyond Democrat and Republican—to a place of pure Americanism.  The process may take a while.  One thinks of the rancor and resentment that followed Ronold Reagan as he flew back home to California after George Bush won office.  Then one thinks of Bill Clinton speaking so well of Reagan at his funeral—twelve years after Reagan walked out of the Oval Office.

Neither do we really want to think ill of Biden—even after all the bone headed moves he’s made.  But no one else made those choices.  In the first year of Biden, we are no longer the world’s largest energy producer.  Inflation is no longer a theoretical concern.  Afghanistan is lost in humiliation.   Ukraine seems doomed.  Taiwan by inclination may fall as well.  The world is a less peaceful, stable place.

 

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[1] In August of 1968, John Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party was also killed.  He is not remembered nearly as well as the two Kennedys and King for obvious reasons.  When Dion sings of Abraham, Martin and John, the “John” he refers to is definitely not John Lincoln Rockwell.  Nonetheless, the cycle of violence was hitting out in all directions.

ON HAVING A HALLMARK CHRISTMAS

 

In recent years, one of the most popular TV channels has been the Hallmark Channel.  Actually, there are three Hallmark channels:  the flagship regular Hallmark channel, the Movies & Mysteries channel, and the relatively newer Hallmark Drama Channel.   Yet of the three, the original Hallmark Channel remains the most popular.   Movies & Mysteries places a close second while the Drama Channel trails way back in the pack.

The secret of Hallmark’s success isn’t that much of a secret—but one the networks are unlikely to follow.   Hallmark is the premier champion of family friendly programs.  Violence is kept to the absolute minimum.  (If you don’t count the occasional snowball fight as violence, then one will search in vain for anything pugnacious.)  Sex is barely suggested and there are no bedroom scenes of either the married or premarital kind.  The unassuming TV watcher should be forgiven if he came to conclusion that the standard plot’s entire aim is to get the two principals to share a kiss.  All mild stuff indeed.  As one commenter has said:  all “g” rated fair one could watch with your children without the possibility that something blue or otherwise off-color will pop up which require sensitive explanations latter. 

The reality of death is recognized on Hallmark; but no one dies on camera.  For the most part, death usually involves the principle’s parents or spouse sometime in the past which she or he may struggle with to some degree.  Nevertheless, the real object of Hallmark plots is finding love for their principles with a lonely male and a hapless female winding their way to a chaste, romantic relationship—perhaps even marriage.  Often the principles were sweethearts in high school who become separated after graduation by college, a job, or military service and now circumstances put them back together after a significant number of years.

Religion is never far away from a hallmark story.  The Christian moral cord is assumed.  When religion does make an overt appearance, it is usually in the form of a minister or generic church.  No particular faith tradition is named but seems to be vaguely Protestant.  Whatever it is, it is certainly not Lutheran—much less Catholic or Orthodox.  At times, ones gets the notion that the faith that guides of the makers of the program was not Christianity but Mormonism.  But like I say, it is only a notion.  As for living out their faiths in the stories, one will get references to prayer or an occasional hymn—rarely more.  Occasionally one of the principals is seen either entering a church or leaving a religious service.  It is far more likely the interior of the church will be the setting for marriage.

Of late, Hallmark has broached the subject of homosexuality in its storylines.  So  far, none of the main principles of the plot are gay.  Gay couples are recognized in the narrative but in truth are purely tangential to the storyline.  This is pretty small potatoes and is unlikely to satisfy gay activists who want homosexuality normalized with a greater presence in conventional programing.   While open homosexuality is indeed a reality of modern life, it is unsatisfying to an orthodox Christian that there isn’t even a discussion of its morality.

All the same, the introduction of homosexuality into Hallmark’s shows is a step that challenges its family friendly status.  On a more positive note, Hallmark has introduced multiracial couples into their stories.  At the present time, I have not seen a black man romance a white female nor any other racial combination.  Nevertheless, I expect to see a multiracial romance on Hallmark sooner than later.  I’d say the days when it was controversial when a blond blue-eyed girl of solid New England stock became engaged to a black-haired brown-eyed son of Italian immigrants are over.

 

 

 

 

 

It being the Christmas season, Hallmark carpets its broadcast schedule with Christmas movies.  Christmas. Christmas. Christmas.  No war on Christmas here.  Indeed, Christmas is treated with abundant respect by Hallmark.  A good half of the plots involve one of the principles gaining the Christmas spirit while pursuing romance and realizing their love interest.   If you can appreciate Christmas movies 24 hours a day, every day, for six weeks out of the year, then all is well and good.

All is well and good…until one stops ponder one of the things said fairly consistently in one way or another in Hallmark’s Christmas programs.   The subject “What is Christmas all about?” comes about fairly often.  This is fairly simple, but interesting question.  One you’d like to hear what friends and family have to say.  Hallmark has a clear idea.  Sometimes its answer merely suggested.   Other times it is left unanswered.   But often---maybe not often enough—Hallmark’s answer is clear and direct.  Christmas is a time to gather with one’s family together along with other loved ones and friends to share to enjoyment of each other’s company and the good time of this special occasion.

The gathering of kin and kind has a lot to be said for it; but, while it is certainly healthy and commendable, it is not the meaning of Christmas.  It is an admirable aspiration among the unchurched and otherwise nonspiritual.  The truth is far too many families are broken and a regrettable number of the old spend the Holy days alone.  The reasons span chasm of human experience:  drugs, alcohol, greed, vicious disagreements…all the way to callous neglect.   As for drugs and alcohol, Hallmark rarely deals these realities.  It’s favorite subjects revolve around a man and women—often high school sweethearts-- separated by years of different paths in life and finally coming together for a purpose in the hometown.  In other tellings, two opposites are put together by circumstances.  They spend an unusual amount of time together.  Then, after several sessions of wine and/or hot chocolate, both realize they are in love.  There are usually complications with various elaborations but, in the end, our smitten couple bond in love.

Hallmark’s most successful series, “When Calls The Heart”, while it centers on the town’s lone school teacher, Elizabeth Thatcher, follows the lives of a wide set of characters in a fictional Hope Valley somewhere in western Canada.  While  “When Calls The Heart”  can be a bit more serious than Hallmark’s typical fare, it still follows the network’s family-friendly, feel-good formula.  The series has had a few Christmas specials.  All well received and popular.  But “the meaning of Christmas” remains much the same.   A baby may be born.  Kindness may be extended to ill-fortuned strangers or hermits living in the wild nearby.  Still, the message of love and second chances comes through.

Hallmark is basically innocent, light fun.  We should not fault it for what never claimed to be—which would presumably be “The Christian Channel”.  While many of its characters across its many programs do make references faith and prayer and we may see characters going into or coming from a church service, the particular contents of their faith are never discussed.  Which is what one would expect if you were wanting the widest audience possible.  Nevertheless, in such a case, one would think Hallmark would be more circumspect when it comes to telling the world “What Christmas is all about”.

Truth be told, it is not just Hallmark which equivocates on this point.  Think about all the Christmas movies you have seen and ultimately almost all do the same fudging.   Short of those film expressly made about the Nativity; the storylines are driven by engines that don’t have anything to do with “What Christmas is all about”.  The two come to mind are revenge and romance.  Revenge.  I think of BEN HUR.  Not exactly a Christmas movie, although it does begin with the birth of Jesus.  But certainly, the engine that drives Hallmark movies is romance.  Hallmark understands that women have an abiding longing for romantic stories.  Stories which provide an uplifting respite from everything else on television, factual or fictional, and for most women, an always welcome dose of romance.  Romance with no bedroom scenes or even a suggestion of a sleep over.  The Hallmark Christmas movies span the scope in quality-- with none reaching any dramatic height although one may come upon moments in which the interaction between actors may transcend the format.  But then the makers at Hallmark aren’t going for KING LEAR and won’t be mistaken for it.

Which still leaves us with the original issue of “Just What Is Christmas all about?”  For all the right tones Hallmark makers hit in their Christmas movie, “love and the gathering of kith and kin” would only satisfy you if one were determinately secular and revisionist.   The modern celebration of Christmas—if one were the proverbial man from mars—is a confusing menagerie of cut evergreen trees, mistletoe, garlands, stringing lights on houses, Tiny Tim, Ebenezer Scrooge,  the North Pole, Santa, elves, wrapped presents, oceans of alcohol, a wide range of local customs, and this baby born in a barn.  The Christmas soup is a problematical delicacy from which the major ingredient is barely discernable.

Yet, for the Christian, it all come down to that pesky baby born in the barn.  Personally, I love Christmas.  I love everything about it and I don’t see any purpose in getting all superior about it.  It does seem like every time you turn around there a hand stuck out wanting your money.  But even that can become a positive feature of Christmas.  Santa doesn’t confuse me and didn’t confuse me as a child.  Santa, like all the saints, is an example of something about Christ.  In the case of Santa Claus, it is his freely giving nature which reflects Christ’s generosity to all.

But Santa doesn’t consume Christmas.  Instead, he is only a beginning which can lead one to the true meaning of Christmas.  Admittedly, imperfect as it is, Santa is a glimpse—and only a glimpse—of the “God-Among-Us”.  For this Lutheran, as much as I might appreciate tradition, my impulse is to always dial direct.  For that, among tv specials, one stands out above all others.  First broadcast December 6, 1965,  A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS told its story when toward the end it suddenly tackled the question of what Christmas was all about.  And they hit it dead on.

Crestfallen, Charlie Brown loudly asks if anyone knows what Christmas is all about; Linus says he does, walks to center stage, asks for a spotlight, and recites the annunciation to the shepherds:

2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ² (This was the first census that took place while^[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ And everyone went to their own town to register.

⁴ So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵ He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷ and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
 and on earth peace Good will to men

Linus then goes to Charlie Brown and says:  "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

 

Christmas isn’t about good homemade food—although good homemade food on Christmas day is great.  It isn’t about family—although the gathering of kith and kin warms the heart.  It isn’t about being nice—although a nicer world would be agreeable every day of the year.  And Christmas isn’t about finding  romantic love—although only a heart of stone would find fault with two people falling love while sipping hot chocolate together after Santa’s nocturnal visit. 

 

No.  The meaning of Christmas is a person.   That person being the baby laid in a manger.  Our Lord and God, who dwelt among us and rescued us by going to the cross.

 

 

Are Lutherans conservative?

 

All depends on which Lutheran denomination one is speaking of. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is generally regarded as liberal. The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) is said to be fairly moderate as Lutherans go, but in reality it is fairly conservative in anyone’s book. The Missouri and Wisconsin Synods are even more conservative.

If one is looking for a Lutheran denomination where the LBGT+ movement is seen positively, then the ELCA is it. Although, each individual ELCA congregation will differ. Some hold to traditional sexual ethics while others will openly decorate church property with assundry “Pride” flags and colors. The other three Lutheran denominations hold to the traditional sexual mores of classical Christianity.

If one is talking politically, things get a bit messier. But one will find far more liberals in the ELCA than in the other three “Lutheran bodies combined.