We now make a leap into the following year, 1941, and come to a sermon on 1 Peter 5:6-11, which Elert preached on June 29, a week after the beginning of the Russian campaign. Thereby, he interprets the well-known verse 8. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

For Elert it is clear that this passage relates to the epic battle between the German army and the army of the atheist-Bolshevist Soviet Union—a world-historical struggle in which he recognizes “the mighty hand of God” (v. 6) as a “clenched fist” of the Lord against His mortal enemy. The war is certainly not a crusade, because rightly it is not being waged in the name of Christ and the Kingdom of God; it is not an eternal but a temporal war. However, as Elert emphasizes, Hitler still fights a holy war on God’s behalf against the satanic power in the East:

“[When] we look with a large dose of sobriety at this major war that is now raging in the East, we know that it is being waged for earthly things; on our side it is being waged for peace, order, rest and to support the life of the European people. The leader of our people (der Führer unseres Volkes; Adolf Hitler) has clearly stated as much, and we thank him for it. He holds a sacred office; God has placed into his hand a sacred sword.” It is “not a crusade, but self-defense against the intrusion of a satanic overpowering will of God’s enemies. And the sword that is drawn against it is a holy sword.”

Berndt Hamm. “Werner Elert als Kriegstheologe.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 11(1998):214-215.

In this non-sentimental but theologically-programmatic way, Elert experienced and interpreted the German army’s winning campaign against Poland as God’s violent act of war against Germany’s enemies. If our fathers, he asked in February 1940, had once judged correctly about the defeat of Napoleon and his army—“With man and horse and cart, God has defeated them!”—is that not valid today?

“May and must we not also judge so today, if not otherwise by chance, that God Himself is seated in the regiment? Does it not truly give God glory if the leader of the people (Führer des Volkes; Adolf Hitler) has so pronounced what everyone feels, including Christians?”

Here Elert invokes Hitler’s speech, delivered on September 19, 1939 in Danzig (Gdansk), in which [Hitler] utilized the old national-religious verse of the Napoleonic era, “Mit Mann und Ross und Wagen hat sie der Herr geschlagen.“

Berndt Hamm. “Werner Elert als Kriegstheologe.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 11(1998):213.

In Germany the modern Lutheran theology was developing into a nationalistic theology strongly influenced by Lutheran tendencies. It could be characterised as a Theology of Creation, taking such elements of creation as the blood, the race, the state, as God-given elements on which the nation, the church, and theology have to build. It was most characteristic that a statement of the Lutheran faculty of Erlangen [most likely the Ansbacher Ratschlag, or Ansbacher Memorandum, signed by Werner Elert and Paul Althaus on June 11, 1934] and other statements coming from Lutheran theologians like Hirsch, Wobbermin, and theologians in Leipzig came very near to such a Theology of Creation, which was criticized by Karl Barth from his Reformed point of view as a mere natural theology having lost any distinctive features of the original Protestant faith.

I’ve translated a few snippets from Nürember racial purity laws, enacted two years earlier). (p. 9)

Therefore, the truly epoch-making and liberating National Socialist (Nazi) system of government… is drawn from this experience and [its] conclusions (the “special interest groups of the Weimar Republic, which Elert has just condemned), [and] has stepped forward first to restore a uniform will of the German people. (p. 11)

For several years I’ve argued, in a way, that we have a theological crisis within broader Lutheranism.

That crisis consists of a tendency to “theologize” using Lutheran systematic categories for illicit ends.

As I’ve learned through my study of natural law within the Lutheran tradition, I was not the first to discover this. I’m happy to report that C.F.W. Walther and Franz Pieper came to similar conclusions way before I.

Further evidence of this crisis can be found article that I’ve only recently discovered, entitled “A New Vision of Marriage as Vocation for the Lutheran Tradition.” According to the pro-gay Lutherans Concerned-North America Web site, Dr. Laurie A. Jungling’s (ELCA) article, which appeared earlier in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics,

argues that an approach to sexual ethics and roles based on considerations of biological forms as determinate of relationships is inadequate. Such an ethic should be succeeded, she maintains, by a well-developed understanding of marriage as a calling from God grounded in relational, rather than biological, forms. We are called to serve one another in life-giving relationships, she argues, regardless of the form of the relationship or its participants. Those relationships should manifest “right relationship,” shalom, and justice. Marriage is a particular calling involving three inter-connected kinds of relationality — interpersonal contextual relationality, socio-communal relationality, and erotic relationality — in and through which marital partners serve one another and others in the world.

Having read Dr. Jungling’s article, I can tell you that her deceptive term “biological forms” corresponds to male and female. She writes,

I argue in this article for another more helpful criterion for defining marriage, one which maintains the honor and function of this foundational social relation yet does not exclude or limit persons from it according to their “form.” This criterion emerges out of an understanding of the Lutheran concept of vocation which is grounded in a relational vision of God, humanity, and creation and leads to a newly envisioned understanding of marriage. I submit that God’s call ought not to be determined according to a static, preexistent social order presumably designed by God and defined according to human understandings of physical form. Instead, the link between the social order and vocation ought to be reversed. God’s call to serve with and on behalf of our neighbor informs, influences, and finally is the final Lutheran criterion in structuring the social order and the many relationships in which humans live, including marriage.

While undoubtedly coming from a feminist/relationalist/non-physicalist perspective, articles like this are disturbing in that they contend formal adherence to the legacy and teachings of Martin Luther.

Dear friends, may I remind you that, just because an author invokes Luther or appeals to a Lutheran systematic category, does not mean that the author or the author’s argument is orthodox?

“Conservative,” “orthodox,” and “confessional” Lutherans are guilty of this as well.

If you want to ensure that what you’re reading is truly Orthodox Lutheran, then try to determine whether the argument can be derived from clear passages of Scripture according to the analogy of faith.

The standard, touchstone, and norm of our Holy Faith is Holy Scripture.

That’s Orthodox Lutheran.

Just remember, über-values are very dangerous things.

[The Baby Boomers] became more concerned with [their] own emotional well-being, whereas to older generations that was considered soft and fluffy.

Hmmm … An entire generation addicted to fabric softener?

Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65, a pattern that will continue for the next 19 years.

From this Baby Boomer: Please, dear fellow Baby Boomers, take advantage of your retirement especially from government and the Church. We can handle it from here on out.

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord“, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.

You can read the rest here.

From The Hill:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized dozens of domain names over the past few days, according to TorrentFreak. ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags. The sites are replaced with a note from the government: “This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.”

Oh, boy.

The U.S. Senate yesterday approved spending $4.6 billion to settle two lawsuits: one by black farmers who alleged racial discrimination by government lenders and the other by 300,000 American Indians who said they had been cheated out of land royalties dating to 1887.

Passage of the measure, by voice vote, unblocks a legislative logjam that has thwarted payouts, negotiated by the Obama administration, of $1.15 billion to the black farmers and $3.4 billion to the American Indians.

“We are one step closer to ensuring that the black farmers and Native Americans in these suits are fully compensated for past failures of judgment by the government,” U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a statement after the Senate vote. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said he hopes to seek a vote after Congress returns from a week-long recess on Nov. 29.

President Barack Obama praised the Senate action and urged the House to move forward with the bill “as they did last year.”

Of course, I’m still waiting for reparations following General Sherman’s 1864 “March to the Sea.”