Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Oh WELS

My recent affiliation with a conservative wing of the Lutheran denomination called the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod was a hangover from my earlier tendencies toward charismatism, which eventually landed me and my young family in a cult led by one Rev. Beatrice R. Hicks. I left the cult because it disappointed in innumerable ways, but when I moved with my second wife and family to our current locale in Maryland, this WELS Lutheran church was handily only a few miles away. We joined and were functionaries through many years. Now, it's time to grow up some more.

I have to draw a line on the matter of creation and the WELS' literal interpretation of the Genesis story. In reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I've come to understand the implications of allowing oneself to ignore the question of evolution and prehistoric man. I've also read an irrefutable volume by David Cunningham on the geological evidence for an ancient Earth called, The Rocks Don't Lie. I've always figured evolution and geologic aging to be true, but suspended judgement so as to not rock the boat. I avoided the issues because they seemed irrelevant.

These issues are important enough that I must walk away from WELS. Quinn surmises that the whole mess that the world is in today is a result of the growth of agro-industrialism. Yet, the Genesis story, taken at face value, would posit that there was never any other way of dwelling on the earth (except for the first family before their fall). Only when you factor in the millions of years prior to the rise of agrarianism does it become clear that agro-industrialism was a relatively recent curse from which so many of today's problems were spawned.

For a while, I thought I could hang around and try to convince others and possibly even the pastor of my former congregation to open up their minds to the evidence of science, but after reading an article in the church's rag, Forward in Christ, by some numb-nuts Ph.D. (in "creation science", I'll guess) spouting biblical literacy as the only standard, I realized any efforts to change this church would be hopeless. Time for me to let go, leaving them to amble toward extinction utterly blind to the disservice they do to the planet.

Whatever is next in my religious journey may be presaged by the evening assembly we attended last week at the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C. Reclaiming Jesus was the theme. The service and subsequent demonstration in front of the White House gave us a chance to listen to other sects' take on current issues. The formal declaration, which I mainly support, is more in tune with reality than the deliberate ignorance of fundamentalist sects like WELS.


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