Although this is supposed to be a weed-smoking, pill-swallowing age of perfect calm, people still get angry.
What makes people angry is a good metric of their character, lives, values, and doctrine.
Luther, the Book of Concord, and justification by faith have one thing in common - they make Lutheran church leaders furious.
Crimes against their own laity, even their children - that does not bother the Lutheran Church leaders. They are happy to spend everyone's money to claim in court they are innocent, that nothing has happened.
But question the infallible and immaculate Holy Mother Synod? As Luther said, the Lutheran leaders are ready to tear up trees by their roots, they are so angry. They cannot suppress false doctrine, but they can exert all of their limited talents on silencing members and pastors.
Holy Mother WELS has two felons in the docket, highly paid staffers.
Holy Mother Missouri has a known sex offender in Minnesota and another active legal case in Pennsylvania. Either one should be good for $10 million, because high profile LCMS leaders knew all about it. One professor was an eye-witness.
WELS is no better, because "everyone" knew about DP Ed Werner before he went to the Big House for preying upon children in his own congregation. WELS admitted prior knowledge of some kind with Hochmuth. Fred Adrian admitted to knowing about Scott Zerbe and the girl in his congregation, but Fred is back in the ministry. DP Seifert has such high standards!
Every single aspect of this ongoing debacle is funded by members and pastors, voted with approval by members and pastors.
Step back and examine ELCA's history for the last 25 years. Did they make their famous 2009 decision suddenly, or was it with the passive approval of the pastors and laity ever since the organization began in 1987? How did all those pastors and laity manage to miss the agenda, the quotas, the lavender district displays and proposals, all those years?
Some people think the answer is to have dissenter groups meet. They really should gather and talk about the issues, but they should also know that Holy Mother has minders there to monitor, to report, to help in finessing the final result. Let the boobies blow off steam. There are all kinds of ways to let that happen without changing anything. The synods put a little spin on the leader of dissent and soon he sounds just like them.
