The Lord be with you
Earlier this year Concordia Publishing House released the Bryan Wolfmueller book, Has American Christianity Failed? There are two assumptions in the title: 1) there is something that can be identified as “American Christianity” and 2) there is some standard by which it can be judged.
A friend of mine, who is a retired ELCA pastor, laughed when I showed him the book. He said, “Of course American Christianity has failed, it is filled with sinners.” He is right, naturally. However the book is really more about how Wolfmueller feels “American Christianity” has failed.
In order to perform his analysis, Wolfmueller begins by defining what he means by “American Christianity.” These are broad trends that have influenced Christians across denominational lines. However, to be honest, there is nothing uniquely “American” about these trends. They are things the Church has battled from the beginning. (Yes, I mean from the beginning. How else could the Bible address these issues if they were not issues during the days the documents were written?)
Still, they are also issues in American Christianity.
Now I’m going to boil down the rest of the book to a simple quote: American Christianity preaches the Christian instead of the Christ.
The standard Wolfmueller holds up is whether or not the work of Christ is proclaimed, shared, exalted, etc. He looks at numerous areas, like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Second Coming of Jesus, sanctification, and so on.
Wolfmueller writes with the zeal of a convert. That makes his book a fun read. He cut his theological teeth in “American Christianity” and found something like the historic Lutheran worship services and teachings to be “dead.” However, the Holy Spirit won him over through the Word and he has now become a Lutheran minister.
A real gem in the book is that it ends with a quick description of the Lutheran Confessions. For many Lutherans, I fear, we don’t even know the names of the various documents in our confessional writings; much less have an idea of what they cover.
The only real caveat I would give comes when he is writing about worship. He has embraced the idea promoted these days in liturgical circles that the Church’s worship service is all about God serving us, like in the Lord’s Supper, the Scripture lessons, the sermon, etc. So our new hymnal calls our Sunday morning service the “Divine Service,” meaning the Divine serves us in word and sacrament.
While this thinking is true we should not forget that we respond in a worship service as well.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
(Psalm 103:1)
Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!
(Psalm 100:1-2)
Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”
(Matthew 4:10)
Also check out Psalm 104. Indeed, the very passage Wolfmueller quotes from the Augsburg Confession to substantiate his point as being the Lutheran position also includes the sentence, “However, we can offer nothing to God unless we have first been reconciled and born again.” Such a quote obviously anticipates that once we have been “reconciled and born again,” we will offer the worship spoken of in the rest of the passage.
Again, this is a minor objection and should not keep anyone from reading Has American Christianity Failed? It is an enthusiastic and well written, 250 pages, look at American Christianity. It will give anyone (including Lutherans) something to seriously think and pray about. It has also given me any number of quotes that I will sprinkle on this blog over the next year.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor Rickert