Worshipping God as "She" at Luther Seminary

4/25/2015

The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook (here) and twitter (here.)

On April 9th the “Sex, Gender and the Old Testament” class put on the chapel service at the largest (though shrinking) seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can watch the service under “chapel archives” at luthersem.edu.

The service begins with the reading of a Psalm: “…God my Savior, she is the God who avenges me…she gives her great victories…she shows her unfailing love…”

Thus the Old Testament Scripture was changed from the correct reading “he” to read “she” for God. Then came the sermon. It was about the slave Hagar being told by the angel of the Lord to return to Sarah and Abraham.
“This text troubled us…who is this God who sends this abused woman back and tells her to submit…why would God send Hagar back into oppression?…I don’t know what kind of God doesn’t deliver her from oppression…”
But the preacher ended the sermon teaching that God is nevertheless present in human suffering.

The service concluded with the benediction. No “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” blessing here. Instead the worshippers were blessed in the name of the “Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier”. God the Father was nowhere mentioned in the service.

I’m afraid it may get worse on April 23 when Luther seminary chapel will be led by students in the “Feminist, Womanist, Mujerista Theolasian, and African Women’s Theology” class.

This kind of thing has been happening for quite a while at Luther. Thirteen years ago I attended a Luther chapel service when a male quartet got up to sing the 23rd Psalm. They sang “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, she maketh me line down in green pastures, she leadeth me beside the still waters, she restoreth my soul…”

So, sadly, it appears people are free to change the Bible if they don’t like how it reads at Luther Seminary.

2 Comments

Didaskalos link

4/25/2015 01:49:37 am

Among Martin Luther’s favorite Bible verses [ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2015/03/luthers-favorite-bible-verses/ ] were these two: Psalm 55:2: "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” and 1 Peter 5:7: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

Contrast Luther’s faithfulness to the Bible (not to mention his lack of reticence to quote it as it’s correctly translated) with the masculine-pronoun paranoia of two ELCA “shepherds”:

** ELCA Ex-Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson (in a statement to the ELCA News Service): "You can bet your life that God will be faithful to God's promise, because God bet the life of Jesus on God's faithfulness…'

** ELCA “Pastrix” Nadia Bolz-Weber (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2015/03/sermon-on-john-316/ ): "God so loved the world that God gave God’s own breath to speak into existence that which was not – and then God so loved the world that God gave God’s breath another time, breathing into dust to create humanity."

A request of Hanson and Bolz-Weber: can we buy a masculine pronoun, for His sake? If your abandonment of the Bible’s clear language weren’t enough, your ELCA's masculine-pronoun pogrom surely makes for a lot of ridiculously infelicitous prose.

If only the ELCA’s feminism-uber-alles Bible revisionism were its worst departure from the faith. A host of other soul-damning heresies — documented on Dan’s website — make it abundantly clear that the ELCA has not been for a long time a denomination any confessional Christian can support, whether by formal membership or offering dollars.

2 Cor. 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? . . . 17 Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. . ."

John MacArthur: “The Cost of Compromise” [ http://www.ligonier.org/blog/cost-compromise/ ]:

“. . .Infiltrating churches under the guise of tolerance and cooperation is one of Satan’s most cunning ploys. He does not want to fight the church as much as join it. Undiscerning believers who partner in a common spiritual cause with unbiblical forms of Christianity or other false religions open the door wide to satanic corruption. The appearance of unity, no matter how enticing, is not worth sacrificing the clarity of the gospel.

"Furthermore, embracing those heretical systems falsely reassures their followers that all is well between them and God, when actually they are headed for eternal damnation. Partnering in a spiritual enterprise with unbelievers helps Satan muddy the doctrinal waters, and it cripples our ability to preach the need for repentance.

"Scripture is clear about how we are to respond when the very foundations of the Christian faith are under attack: our duty is to contend, not compromise."

Kathy S.

4/25/2015 03:39:10 am

This is absurd to the point of becoming comical. I know it is a serious problem, but it is hard to take seriously when you consider a few things: If the feminists want to change every male pronoun and reference to God as male in the Bible, they have a big job, especially when it comes to the New Testament. "Tomorrow is Good Shepherdess Sunday. The Good Shepherdess lays down her life for her ewes."

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Worshipping God as "She" at Luther Seminary

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