Lutheran ministry with poor becoming
more vital, former Bishop tells seminarians

PHILADELPHIA, PA (February 17, 2003) -- Many people today "look somewhat scornfully" on the word "charity" because it has come to imply a "supercilious attitude of tossing dimes to the poor," the Rev. Dr. H. George Anderson told the community today at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP). But the translation of charity from Latin means "love" that the Apostle Paul speaks of in First Corinthians…"and the greatest of these is love."

"In that sense charity is the highest of Christian virtues," Anderson said. Anderson, the immediate past Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, spoke on the theme "Alms and Advocacy: Lutheran Ministry with the Poor." Anderson is the St. John's Summit Visiting Professor at the seminary this spring semester. He described how he believes Lutheran ministry with the poor is becoming increasingly more vital, particularly with regard to matters of advocacy and social justice, ingredients that have not always received the kind of emphasis by North American Lutherans that they receive now.

H. George Anderson, right, with Dean J. Paul Rajashekar

Anderson, an historian, traced the development of the notion of charity from the Reformation to current times. He said the Reformation in the days of Martin Luther always intended to carry on the long Christian tradition of charity. But it had a hard time adjusting to the new patterns of wealth it had created. During the early Reformation one of the beneficiaries of the income gleaned from church properties was the poor. Pious Christians had created charitable foundations to support monasteries, which orchestrated works of mercy. Up to 30 percent of the populace was destitute. But rulers of the day often confiscated such properties and took the income to fund wars, wiping out a major source of charitable support. Luther dealt with these consequences by helping cities of his day forge agreements creating community treasuries. Overseeing the treasuries were committees consisting of nobility, members of city council, common townspeople and representatives from the rural peasantry. No single group could open the community chest without the consent and presence of others. "The Reformers always had a healthy respect for the power of sin," Anderson quipped.

Luther descried the practice of usury -lending on interest, Anderson said, calling it an "odious practice because it benefited the rich and further obligated the poor. The common treasuries challenged usury practices by rejecting endowments that had grown through profits from usury. Luther and others also took the position the poor should be cared for adequately so that begging would be unnecessary.

Fast-forward to the American colonies, where in the 1700s "it could be argued that most Lutherans were themselves among the poor." For example, the oldest continually worshiping Lutheran congregation is in the Virgin Islands, where Danish mission work among African slaves had borne fruit, he said. By 1800 the 1,000 Lutherans there were about equally divided between slave and free. In Pennsylvania, many German immigrants who arrived before 1800 were indentured servants who had agreed to work as virtual slaves for up to seven years in exchange for the price of a ticket to the New World. "Lutherans should not forget their own history when they consider why people are poor and how hard it is to break the cycle," Anderson said.

H. George Anderson, left, and seminary president Philip D. W. Krey

As time went on most of the immigrants improved their lot in the new land and within a few generations joined the middle class. In the beginning they tended to support interdenominational causes such as the American Education Society, which provided scholarships for the "indigent." They also sponsored efforts of anti-slavery societies, worked for the organization and establishment of public schools, raised the status of women and provided orphanages.

They took a big step when pioneers like William Passavant began leading Lutherans to form institutions of their own. Passavant founded four hospitals, introduced the work of deaconesses in America, established several orphanages and founded a college and seminary. When it came to matters of social justice or political action, Anderson said, Lutherans saw little role for the church. A report of the General Synod in 1913, for example observed "that the church can best contribute its share to the solution of various various social problems …by holding itself strictly to the faithful preaching of the Gospel." Anderson noted other sources which acknowledge that "Christ is the Savior of the soul. His relationship to society is through the individual soul and the community of saints. He is not an abolisher of outworn forms of society, a reformer of its evils or an adjuster of its economic distresses."

The two world wars of the 20th century stimulated Lutherans to create a new method - the national funding appeal -for meeting human need. Money first went to Soldiers and Sailors Welfare and then through Lutheran World Service to helping Europeans with dollars and clothing. Lutheran World Service efforts were so successful after World War II that it became a regular part of church life. Lutheran World Action, the fund-raising program, traces its roots to 1939. Lutheran World Relief, a vehicle for material aid, began in 1945. In its first 20 years, Lutheran World Action raised $80 million. These efforts, Anderson said, have also spawned concern for refugees, first in Europe and later around the world. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has now provided homes for 300,000 refugees in the U.S. and participated in the resettlement of many others overseas.

"It is strange that the Depression of the 1930s did not evoke similar efforts for suffering people here at home," Anderson said. He noted the church devoted its fund-raising efforts to salvaging imperiled institutions, keeping its own programs operating "and seemed to have no energy left over for poverty in general. Nor did it speak out on social issues like collective bargaining, minimum wages, or even prohibition. It pursued social change the old fashioned way - one Christian at a time." Anderson said to point out this omission should not be to disregard the crucial work of the social welfare department of the National Lutheran Council, which in 1945 was working with 461 social ministry organizations, contacting more than a million people with services and spending $16.5 million annually. (Some 250 Lutheran social ministry organizations exist today.)

The year 1957 marked a turning point with a symposium that introduced two innovations - "corporate church involvement in social action and moral justification for civil disobedience to unjust laws," Anderson noted. The twin strands of the Reformation tradition - care for the poor and advocacy for social justice - were united, Anderson said. "And just in time because the 1960s were a decade of social upheaval" with civil rights, the war on poverty and Vietnam and the questioning of established authority, which "stirred up emotions and called for new solutions." Anderson said the church was finally ready to participate fully in the social climate of the day. Lutherans in two traditions, the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America, predecessor bodies of the current Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, spoke out on race relations. They began issuing social statements on topics such as capital punishment and criminal justice. Both church bodies raised funds to address the crisis in urban America. Church wide staff and congregations took an active part in the Wounded Knee confrontation in the 1970s. The churches also made difficult decisions on divestment of holdings doing business in a segregated South Africa, he said. In the 1970s, Lutherans launched a Hunger appeal, which has since become the chief means of generating support for needy people in the U.S. and overseas. The churches began to establish Lutheran advocacy groups on the state level.

Anderson said the ELCA has continued the double emphasis of the predecessor churches. Its Division for Church and Society has received a constitutional mandate to respond to human need "through direct human services and through addressing systems, structures and policies of society, seeking to promote justice, peace and care of the earth." The division has shepherded its social ministry organizations by establishing an umbrella organization, Lutheran Services of America. It has created statements on economic life and promoted programs addressing the needs of "Women and Children Living in Poverty" and of other groups.

More recent initiatives have focused energy on poverty and its causes and an approach to poverty attempting to empower persons living below the poverty line. This focus has led the church toward faith-based community organizing and a "Help the Children" program seeking to change the attitudes of middle-class Lutherans to those living in poverty. Bishops of the church's 65 synods have appointed a committee to make sure that the causes of the poor remain central to planning and budgeting.

"The (Lutheran) church has the possibility of recovering the holistic attitude of Martin Luther toward poverty and its causes," Anderson concluded. He also sounded a note of warning and a challenge to present and future generations of Lutherans: "I believe God judges the rich not by the money they have but by the concern they express for the poor, the widow and the orphan," he said. "If our church does not fulfill the mission God has provided it, then God will find organizations which are in solidarity with the poor to fulfill that mission. I hope we will live into the mission that God has given us."