There have been some impressive releases from Augsburg Fortress recently - though not the sort of books I normally write about in here. Still works that I'm glad to have read, and think you should read as well. They're very accessible introductions for how "progressive" theology (a term I use warily - since I suspect they're far more orthodox than most folks give them credit for) can shape the life of churches.
I've been lucky to pick up two of them: Emmy Kegler's One Coin Found and Lenny Duncan's Dear Church. The first is an autobiography of encouragement - Emmy Kegler writing about her pathway to ministry as a lesbian woman - opening up her best and worst experiences to welcome others and show you that you too - the reader of this very blog - has a home in Christ's church with her and all of us. The is styled as a love-letter by Lenny Duncan the the same ELCA. In function it's more akin to Paul's Letter to the Galatians - It's filled with deep frustration and deeper love; ever-abiding hope, and Christly conviction that the ELCA can be something incredible, but is at a critical moment and it cannot stumble in confronting the systemic evils of the modern world.
I think I'll be writing about Emmy Kegler next time - but today I'll focus on Lenny Duncan's book. So let's start with a really compelling quote:
"We stand at the edge of a theological civil war. I don't say that lightly. The Christian church in America, in its slow and often lurching way is taking cues from its members. Right now, its members are at their most divided in modern political history. Right now, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is being called "fake news" by one person, while another calls that same person a Nazi. No one is calling each other sibling.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want a church of false unity. And some fundamental truths are worth fighting over. I don't think we need to apologize for formally widening the tent for our LGBTQIA siblings in Christ. Nor do we have to justify welcoming sojourners from distant lands. I will never apologize for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or calling for the abolition of prisons. I'd rather stand with the prisoner outside, thank you.
I shouldn't need to apologize for or tone down the fierce declaration you made to me when I fell in love with you ELCA: "Jesus made no restrictions on this table, so neither do we."
... The gospel is a call for liberation. It infects the hearts of those it has been presented to like a wildfire that scorches away hatred. When did we become so damn afraid of it? Dear Church, we are cowards."
Lenny Duncan Dear Church: A Love Letter From a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. (Fortress Press, Minneapolis MN: 2019) 4-5
Now that is some Grade-A Law that builds to an even mightier Gospel.
I've said before that I think if the great theologian Oswald Bayer were to have been born in the late 70s/early 80s as a black, LGBTQIA+ kid in Philadelphia (instead of a white German born early in the Second World War and coming of age in a church defined by grasping for hope following its utter moral failing and infidelity in the rise of Naziism) he'd look and act a lot like Lenny Duncan.
Duncan's always challenging, critiquing, and empowering through the fundamental Lutheran patterns. You don't get fancy innovations from him. He's mostly exploring the consequences of Lutheran theology for our daily practice. But unlike the quietists of past generations of Lutheran thinkers (and more akin to folks like Luther, Bugenhagen and in a certain way some of the good Pietists), Duncan puts focus on how the Gospel actively liberates our thought and our communities from destructive, power-obsessed patterns. Our world is lousy with fear, and our church is seldom better. In reading this book, I definitely feel the sting of my own cowardice. Mercifully, as G.R.R. Martin puts it (and Lenny certainly makes clear as well) cowardice is the best occasion for bravery. And in Christ we have exactly what we need to counter it with the Lutheran faith.
In daily living in the USA - Lenny Duncan sees patterns of destruction at work in particular in actions against people of color, and against the LGBTQIA community. That has personal stakes - because he's part of both of those communities. He's seen the hate, he's experienced it directly. He talks about how he'd been used and abused, neglected, imprisoned, abandoned, and hated. He even knows its self-justification in acts and relationships of tokenism that make an exception for him, but only in contrast to the wider community. But in the experience of radical welcome in an ELCA Church, in the uniquely Lutheran proclamation of forgiveness amidst Holy Communion - he found a home he never experienced. It transformed him, and led him into a ministry that subverts the hatred he's experienced. If we're Lutheran - shouldn't that matter in daily life - for us and for our communities? Shouldn't liberation be part of our daily bread?
Why then, the book meditates, does the Church seem so afraid of the welcome he experienced within it? Why does it imitate the patterns it's meant to overturn? Why does it seem more interested in not offending the voices that hurt his communities than it does in embracing his communities?
Duncan points out that this isn't a new phenomena. After all, the ELCA's predecessor bodies failed to fund Jehu Jones' ministry in the early 19th century. They were often tepid in response to slavery. They were been less than responsive to systemic inequalities and injustices. But that didn't stop Jehu Jones from preaching, and that didn't stop the ones who DID speak up from doing just that. Our sin does not negate the Holy Spirit's promise, and the Holy Spirit's work - which true to the Gospel remains active and at work and calling us to the life we seem so afraid of.
That's precisely the hope that Duncan has for us. For every heavy (and true) charge that Lenny reveals about the Church in her/our sin - the love that builds it is so much stronger. And the book is fundamentally a love-letter by a man who "gets butterflies in [his] stomach when" when he thinks about it. Love endures disappointment and struggle. Love likewise builds us and makes both lover and beloved stronger. And the Lenny notes that the ELCA provides countless signs of God's love. The gauntlet he lays down is a challenge for us to believe, and do in kind. The result would be nothing short of a revolution in the American religious landscape. The Holy Spirit's already doing it: "Dear Church, you aren't dying; you're being refined. Like precious metal you are being poured into a new mold. These times are heating you up, forming you into shape. You are being sharpened into a fine edge." The Church will survive this challenge. Let's be part of it. Let's do the Jesus thing.
So if you're interested in how the theology of the Church and the practice of the Church influence one another - this is a great book to pick up. Or perhaps more pressingly - if you yourself are having a hard time seeing yourself in the church due to having a marginalized identity (due to race, sexuality, politics, etc.), well here's a powerful voice in the modern ELCA telling you that they've found themselves in the ELCA - and would love for you to be here too. Still more - if you're struggling with LGBT+ rights, or conversations about race in the context of church this is a great book that shows how to talk about it, and how these talks are done well in the church, as well as just who is at stake and what good we welcome in welcoming the stranger. There's also a lovely discussion guide at the end for group conversation that will make it a valuable book to read in a group.
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