Gottesblog

Yes, after years of engaging in a cryptozoological search for actual Romanizing Lutherans, I have finally bagged my first specimen of the mythical (but elusive) creature.

I have found actual “Romanizing” Lutherans!

If you are unfamiliar with Anthony Esolen, he is a modern Roman Catholic scholar and thinker, and friend of the LCMS who was given an honorary doctorate by Concordia Theological Seminary. His writings on modern culture, art, hymns, and liturgy would make him an honorary member of The Gottesdienst Crowd as well. His book Out of the Ashes is one that I recommend to all Christians.

Today we call to mind our Lord’s ascension into heaven.  And the Ascension is more than just our Lord vanishing into the skies.  This is the hasty graduation, ordination, and call service of the Eleven rolled into one.  And Jesus begins by rebuking them “for their unbelief and hardness of heart.” 

Subversive movements often take perfectly good words and redefine them, spin them, and change them into something else.

Our latest Gottesdienst conference in Fort Wayne (May 5-7, 2025) featured the Rev. Joshua Schooping, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Russellville, Arkansas. Fr. Schooping spent five years as an Eastern Orthodox priest. In his presentation, he explains his journey to confessional Lutheranism and shares with us his reasons - both from the Orthodox and Lutheran confessional documents.

A pastor recently made the argument defending his own personal bona fides as a Lutheran. This was used to support his assertions about what it truly means to be a Lutheran…

The Rev. Zach Zehnder has recently posted this video in which he makes an argument for changing the way we train and form pastors based on his experience as a businessman.

Here is why I think he is wrong.

There are many reasons: historically, liturgically, and also as a general cry for help.

Our Lutheran identity is not merely some kind of tribal identification. Rather, the hymnody from our own tradition confesses our own theology - which is often missing when we borrow hymnody (or even worse, “songs”) from outside of our tradition…

In response to Dr. Eckardt’s advice to seminarians to “Show yourself a man,” a younger pastor disagreed. He said that it would be better to tell them to “Be humble.” I found this perception of incompatibility between manliness and humility illustrative, both of generational disagreement about masculinity, as well as differences as to how we see the office of the holy ministry.