Thoughts
on Demographics, Higher Criticism, and the Future of the LCMS
May
8, 2024
By
Joseph D. Klotz
We
members of the LCMS are delusional. I have suspected that for years. Now,
however, there is a survey to prove it.
Lyman
Stone, an LCMS layman and demographer, conducted a survey last year entitled
"The 2023 Lutheran Religious Life Survey." According to the
description, the purpose of the survey was to collect information on the
attitudes, characteristics, and views of LCMS members. The section
"Perceived Congregational Growth" gives some astounding insights.
According
to the survey, about half of the approximately 2,000 LCMS members surveyed think
that their congregations are staying about the same in terms of growth. Over
30% of LCMS members believe that their congregations are growing. Just under
20% of LCMS members think that their congregations are shrinking (Stone, 2024).
The
reality is quite different. Over 70% of LCMS congregations are shrinking,
approximately 20% are holding their own, and fewer than 10% are growing (Stone,
2024).
This
should be obvious to anyone who has not been living in a cave for the past 40
years. Reports concerning our demographic crisis have even been discussed in
convention in 2016.
The
fact of the matter is that we have stopped having babies. That may not be the
only problem we have where membership is concerned, but it certainly is a
significant one. Getting married, starting a family, and having children is the
surest way to grow. The other side of that coin is, if our members do not have
families, if they do not procreate above the replacement rate, then we will
shrink. During the last several generations, the LCMS has imbibed many
progressive philosophies from our pagan culture here in the United States. The
most destructive one, after the introduction of Higher Criticism and Gospel
Reductionism, are the effects of the sexual revolution. We at least attempted
to fight against the higher critics hijacking our seminaries. We did not do
nearly as well resisting the sexual revolution.
We
can see the trends if we look at some other statistics. According to reports
published by the LCMS School Ministry between the school years 2014-2015 and
2021-2022, the number of children baptized in Synod increased by a moderate 2.6%.[1]
That sounds OK until we look closer. In 2014-2015, 1,756 children were
baptized. The number peaks in 2016-2017 at 2,486. From that point onwards,
however, the trend is downward, to 1,794 in 2021-2022, the latest available
statistics.
Instead
of sending the children we did have to Lutheran schools, we sent them to
progressive government schools. We thought that having extra-curricular
activities in which they could participate was more essential to their
formation as a person than keeping Christ at the center of their education. But
it turns out that weekly Sunday school and catechism class just is not enough
to combat the onslaught of the godless Leftist culture which is offered to them
at every opportunity.
Over
the past eight years, the number of LCMS schools has declined by approximately
12%.[2]
In 2014 there were 2,111 LCMS schools. In the 2021-22 school year there were
1,855 schools. Because of inconsistency in the number of schools reporting
statistics each year, the student enrollment data is less straightforward.
Overall, the trend was downward from 2015. In 2015, the reported enrollment for
LCMS schools was 191,340 with 81% of congregations/schools reporting. By 2021,
that number was 162,074 with only 73% of congregations/schools reporting. It is
likely that, had the number of congregations that reported statistics for the
2021-22 school year been similar to the 2015-16 school year (approximately 19%
non-reporting rate) the decline would be less severe. It would, however, likely
still be a decline.
At
the government school, they were given a feeling of belonging and purpose. They
are, after all, kept there, on average, around eight hours a day, five days a
week. They were taught a secular anti-catechism that is a mix of moral
relativism, Marxism, sexual perversion, and radical environmentalism. They were
taught to worship the planet, to worship the culture, to worship their
feelings, to worship themselves. They were taught what to think, to conform,
and that such conformity was really tolerance. All the while, we parents were
in denial. We told ourselves that stuff might be happening in the big cities or
on the coasts. But it is not happening in my hidden little Mayberry, USA.
But
it is. It happens anywhere a teacher who was trained at a secular Leftist
university is teaching children. They were all trained in progressivism.
And
we were surprised that, when our kids returned from college, they no longer
confessed Christ and Him crucified as the atonement for the sin of the world
and claimed to be the opposite sex. But we should not be surprised when, to
paraphrase Voddie Baucham, our kids return to us Romans, after we have sent
them to Caesar for their education.
Knowing
us, we will grab onto whatever the hottest trend was 20 years ago among
American Evangelicals to try and grow our congregations. I’ve seen us do it. We
will probably also continue to blame traditional liturgical practices,
chanting, vestments, "dead orthodoxy," and not being
"loving" (otherwise known as being doctrinally uncompromising). All
the while, we will continue to ignore the fact that the
Marxist-Leftist-racist-environmentalist religion has also infiltrated our
Synod, particularly our Concordia university system, and dismiss those who try
to warn about this danger as "mean."
Ironically,
the so-called conservative, confessional, and traditional congregations are
among the ones actually showing growth (Stone, 2024).
Don't
get me wrong: I would bet that the LCMS is less far gone than most of American
Christianity. We can probably attribute that to three things many in our Synod
also dislike: our theological foundation, which is justification by faith in
Christ alone, our high view of the Holy Scriptures as established and protected
in the Book of Concord and by theologians such as Walther and Pieper, and our
tendency to isolate ourselves from the broader culture because of our
"German-ness."
It's
just too bad we also have some kind of theological/cultural/academic
inferiority complex to go along with all those things.
Since
the early to mid-20th Century, our theologians and professors have wanted to be
seen in a more favorable light by mainstream American academia. We wanted our
schools, universities, and seminaries to be taken seriously and our professors
to be accepted as serious scholars. We did not want to be seen as crazy
immigrant fundamentalists who ran some backward Bible colleges. And, as we shed
the German language and cultural customs, we looked less and less like
outsiders. The more we engaged in academic debate, the more the ideas of
mainline American academia and Protestantism began to gain traction in the
Synod.
Rev.
Dr. Scott Murray describes this situation well in his book, "Law, Life,
and the Living God: The Third Use of the Law in Modern American
Lutheranism."
Murray
explains that the LCMS was seen as old-fashioned by the Lutheran theologians
and academics in Germany. They derisively referred to the LCMS repristinators
of theology from the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy. When LCMS theologians met with
them in the late 1940s, they were surprised that the Germans had little regard
for the Book of Concord, except for the Augsburg Confession. They particularly
dismissed the Formula of Concord, which they saw as Melanchthonian and a
corruption of Luther's theology.
The
Luther Renaissance influenced theologians in Germany to focus on Luther and his
writings rather than on the Book of Concord. Consequently, the status of the
theologians and writings from the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy was diminished. As
Murray points out, the problem with this is how do we know which Luther is the
real Luther. As is well-known and documented, early Luther was a much different
theologian than older Luther. He developed into a Lutheran out of
Augustinianism over time. There is a danger that writings from Luther's various
periods could be used to support views held by modern theologians but that
Luther had grown out of.
The
LCMS participated in ecumenical meetings in Germany in 1947-48. This was the
LCMS theologians' first significant contact with German Lutherans, who had been
heavily influenced by Kierkegaard and Existentialism. Murray says that the LCMS
theologians were particularly enamored with Werner Elert. While the LCMS would
continue to claim their orthodoxy and so-called repristination theology
following the meetings, they did bring back certain existential Lutheran
influences. Among those influences, writes Murray, was a distaste for the Third
Use of the Law. But that wasn't the only thing.
Existentialism
in Lutheranism comes from Soren Kierkegaard. To the existentialist Lutheran,
faith is an existential communication between God and man, where man encounters
God. Faith is more than just knowing the right doctrines and how to express
them using the correct formulas of jargon (Murray, 2002). To them, Murray
explains, faith is a subjective experience for each person.
Pieper
and Walther were the prime examples of LCMS repristination to the German
Lutherans. This was, Murray explains, because they primarily cited sources from
the age of Orthodoxy, chief among those sources being the Book of Concord,
rather than adding their own insights. Pieper and Walther held the Formula of
Concord in high regard. At the Bad Boll meetings in 1947-48, the German
Lutherans criticized Pieper and Walter, and accused them of holding Biblical
inerrancy as more important than the Doctrine of Justification (Murray, 2002).
Here, we see the beginnings of what would develop into Gospel Reductionism in
the Missouri Synod in the coming decades.
By
1960, LCMS theologians were criticizing the "dead orthodoxy" of
Pieper and Walther. They were moving toward a theology that was "personal
and dynamic" (Murray, 2002). This movement, influenced by existentialist
thought, leads to a weakening of objective truth. In existentialist theology,
only subjective experience is of value. Such thinking, suggests Murray, would
eventually lead to abandoning the Third use of the Law (Murray, 2002). It would
also develop into Gospel Reductionism.
Gospel
Reductionism is a term coined by John Warwick Montgomery in 1966 to describe
how theologians in the LCMS were using only "Christ and the Gospel"
as the rule for determining doctrine rather than the whole council of the
divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God as we have it in the Bible
(Harmelink, 2024). These professors viewed the Bible through the lens of Higher
Criticism. They believed that the Bible, rather than being the Word of God,
merely contained the Word of God. Our job was to sort out which bits were God's
word and which were not. They reduced everything down to the Gospel. Doctrines
that did not impact the Gospel did not need to be kept.
Harmelink
explains that Gospel Reductionism abandons divine inspiration, inerrancy, and
the authority of Holy Scripture. Instead, doctrine is subject to the Gospel
only. This might sound okay on the surface. In reality, it is a way to grant
permission not to believe in difficult or troublesome teachings.
Gospel
Reductionism makes man the judge of Holy Scripture when it should be the other
way around. The Bible is not subject to our reason (the magisterial use of
reason); instead, our reason should be subject to the Word of God (the
ministerial use of reason).
Gospel
Reductionism uses "Christ and the Gospel" to do away with other
teachings the Gospel Reductionists see as problematic while keeping the Gospel,
or so they claim. Without a divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God as a
foundation, as Harmelink says, it is impossible to hold on to the Gospel. The
Word of God delivers Christ and the Gospel to us.
Thankfully,
with the Walkout of the faculty majority who taught these things from Concordia
Seminary in St. Louis 50 years ago this past February and the firm line taken
by the faithful and confessional leadership of Synod at the time, Lutheran
Orthodoxy decisively won the Battle for the Bible.
But
we must realize that, though we may have won the battle, the war is far from
over. It will continue as long as Jesus tarries and we live in this fallen
creation.
What
must we do to stop the theology of the world from regaining a foothold and
regaining ground? I do not have the answer. I can tell you what we absolutely
must not do, though: drop our Bible and Books of Concord so we can embrace this
world's philosophies. The instant we forsake the preaching of Law and Gospel,
and the authority of Scripture, we are finished as a church body. We will no
longer be part of Christ's body; we will have fallen from grace.
We
must realize that this stance might mean some uncomfortable times for the LCMS.
We might have to shrink the scope of what our Synod does. We might have to
endure some ridicule from the culture at large. We might have to think about
our priorities in terms of funding, in terms of where mission work is done,
what it looks like, and how we train our pastors. Our institutions may need to
get smaller. Maybe our universities are not accredited through secular
institutions, and they focus on church work. Maybe we spend more effort encouraging
our families to choose the one thing needful and send their children to
faithful Lutheran schools instead of the government schools, so that they may
grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe we should start
by encouraging Lutherans to get married and be open to having the number of
children that the Lord will bless them with; to be fruitful, and multiply; to fill
the earth and subdue it.
Yes,
embracing these things may mean rejection and persecution by the world. But it
will mean that, if those children we have and raise in the church persevere in
the faith, they will receive a crown of life when Christ comes again.
And
He is coming soon. ###
Works
Cited
Harmelink, D. (2024, February 19). It’s All
About the Gospel . . . Isn’t It? The Lutheran Witness. Retrieved May 26, 2024,
from https://witness.lcms.org/2024/the-walkout/
Murray, S. R. (2002). Law, Life, and the Living
God [Kindle]. Concordia Publishing House. http://books.google.ie/books?id=L3XuNAAACAAJ&dq=Law,+Life,+and+the+Living+God&hl=&cd=1&source=gbs_api
Schmidt, R. (Director). (n.d.). Lutheran School
Statistics. In LCMS School Ministry. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://www.lcms.org/school-ministry
Stone, L. (n.d.). Those Who Are Being Saved:
Report on the Results of the 2023 Lutheran Religious Life Survey.
https://www.lutheranlifesurvey.church/. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://www.lutheranlifesurvey.church/