Belief in Hell Among Mainline Lutherans

11/2/2016

Lets take a look at the failure of ELCA leadership and pastors to teach Scriptural truth to their congregations and see how liberal teaching in the church could be affecting the church members beliefs. This is the first in a series of blogs Exposing the ELCA will post sharing the Pew Research Center's findings.

God's Word is clear that there is a hell. But only a little over half of Mainline Lutherans believe in it. This is an indictment of the ELCA leadership. Congregants need to understand the danger of sitting under Bible-denying spiritual leaders.

This Pew Research Center survey questioned "Lutherans in the Mainline Tradition." I believe the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is the only Lutheran denomination considered to be in the Mainline Tradition.

Here is a link to this survey.

6 Comments

Bryan Anderson

11/3/2016 02:31:19 pm

Actually, I'm surprised that many still support this biblical teaching...

John

11/3/2016 09:52:17 pm

I too am surprised over half of mainline lutherans believe in hell. I think the NALC, LCMC, and some independent lutherans are still considered mainline, which probably counterbalances the ELCA a bit. I am not surprised that over 10% are other / don't know, meaning that even in an anonymous survey they can't give a straight answer.

Don

11/4/2016 09:13:35 pm

In our ELCA church we never hear about Hell or Heaven. Maybe heaven at a furneral. No wonder the younger people don't recognize the concept of Hell. Actually most younger members never hear about sin the way we older members remember being taught. Today there really is no definition of what sin is.

Ken

11/5/2016 10:40:39 am

"The demand that God should forgive [a wicked] man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness....

"[T]hough Our Lord often speaks of Hell as a sentence inflicted by a tribunal, He also says elsewhere that the judgment consists in the very fact that men prefer darkness to light, and that not He, but His 'word', judges men (John 3:19; 12:48). We are therefore at liberty--since the two conceptions, in the long run, mean the same thing--to think of this bad man's perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is. The characteristic of lost souls is their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves....

"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the INSIDE. I do not mean that the ghosts may not WISH to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man 'wishes' to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.

"In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does." (C.S. Lewis, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, chapter 8)

Dave N.

11/8/2016 01:05:38 pm

All Lutheran denominations are considered mainline, not just the ELCA.

Dan

11/8/2016 01:32:52 pm

You maybe right, Dave but I''m not finding that in my research. See these links. The only Lutheran denominations they speak of are ELCA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant

https://gotquestions.org/mainline-denominations.html

http://www.theopedia.com/mainline-church

I called Pew Research Center and asked them last week and they never returned my call or email.

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Belief in Hell Among Mainline Lutherans

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Dan Skogen

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