Today is Reformation Day. 502 years of re-formation in the church. And yet. Today a student who works in an ELCA congregation shared with me that members of the congregation were upset – some to the point of tears – because the congregation sang the “wrong” version of A Mighty Fortress on Sunday.
This is one of the great ironies of being a Reformation church that exists in a constant state of “that’s not how we’ve always done it.” I regularly hear pastors, and lay folks, lament that the universities and seminaries aren’t teaching the same texts they “used” to teach. The program I teach in – in fact the position I hold – has been criticized for focusing less on teaching historical theology (read, dead, white, men) than it did at some imaginary past golden age (when only old white men taught?) and more on contemporary, constructive and liberationist theologies. As a friend and colleague recently quipped, “I mean, why would you teach students how to think theologically about God when you could instead tell them what the theologians of the past thought about God?”
We Lutherans want our Reformation. We want the pom-poms and the red paraments. We want the processions and the organ music. We want to know that we are part of the “right” tradition.
But, we often want our Reformation to stay stuck in the 16th century.
However, the Holy Spirit – thanks be to God – refuses to be complacent. She is alive and well and working in the world. She is alive and well and working in the church. So, on this Reformation Day it seems absolutely fitting for the ELCA to publicly recognize the continued movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst.
For the past year and a half (has it really only been that long?!) I have been a joy and an honor to work alongside some of the most amazing, brilliant, funny, loving, and faithful women I have ever known. And for that same year and a half we have been fortunate to work alongside our bishops who have wholeheartedly embraced our dreams for a church that values the gifts of women, have spent time listening and praying with us, and have been willing to use the privilege (all but one of the ELCA’s Region 9 bishops is white and male) and power that they have to make some substantive changes to the way the church does ministry in the world.
May the mischief-making continue.
Mindy Makant 