The Commonwealth, the Common Good, and a Common Lutheran Mission in Pennsylvania

The Rev. Dr. Philip D. W. Krey Addresses Lutheran Day at Harrisburg, sponsored by the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania

Texts: Romans 13: 1-7, 1 Tim.

"What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?" (1Cor. 4:7).

This was one of St. Augustine’s favorite verses.

From left: Dr. Krey; Craig Staller, Associate Director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania and a 1980 graduate of LTSP; and Anna Mercedes Setzer, LTSP field student at Lutheran Advocacy Ministry.

Lutherans have traditionally had a Pauline and Augustinian understanding of the relationship between the Church and the State. Centralized governments are understood in terms of that for which we profess about creation in the first article of the creed. According to Martin Luther, when we say I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and Earth, we are professing that: "God has given me and constantly sustains my body, soul, and life, my members great and small, all my senses, my reason and understanding, and the like, my food and drink, clothing nourishment, spouse and children, servants, house and farm, etc. Besides, he makes all creation help provide the benefits and necessities of life—sun, moon, and stars in the heavens; day and night; air, fire, water, the earth and all that it yields and brings forth; birds, fish, animals, grain, and all sorts of produce. Moreover, he gives all physical and temporal blessings—good government, peace, security." Luther continues, "Thus we learn from this article that none of us has life—or anything else that has been mentioned here or can be mentioned –from ourselves, nor can we by ourselves preserve any of them, however small and unimportant. All this is comprehended in the word, "Creator."’ (Large Catechism First Article, Book of Concord) p. 432.

Good government is a gift of creation -- not a necessary evil.

A Lutheran Theological Perspective

Dr. Krey and Bishop Roy Almquist, Bishop of the Southeastern PA Synod.

The problem for Lutherans in the Pauline tradition in this environment is that we were very comfortable in the modern world in which strong centralized governments active for the welfare of all their citizens were the norm. Lutherans have a two-reign theory that makes a distinction between the Church’s primary function to proclaim the Gospel and the Government’s primary purpose to provide for justice and protection for all. Our two-reign theory does not separate God from the government and the secular. "Secular" for Lutherans does not refer to a realm where God is absent and therefore where matters of faith have no place, but where faith is informed more by reason than the other way around. Thus we have a passion for justice in the secular order. Secular refers to "this age," to temporal earthly life that also is subject to the will, rule, and benevolence of God.

The Church has to be careful, according to our Lutheran perspective, about translating what is Christian into a secular program of action, because the Gospel is non-negotiable, based on revelation. We advocate for an ideal justice, and when things do not go the way we think they should we demonstrate prophetically, as you may recall in the civil rights era. According to the Lutheran understanding, when religion runs the government without being modified by reason it quickly becomes tyranny. It is what one of my teachers called "the Ayatollah principle."

In practice the Church is generally good at charitable work. It is organized on the basis of volunteers and quick response to emergencies and disasters. By definition volunteers cannot provide resources in a broad and consistent fashion. It is hard for the church to provide programs and structures that will affect the economic, medical, and general welfare of citizens. Lutherans have created mediating institutions such as our all- important social ministry organizations, but these work best on a local or regional basis and are strongest where Lutherans are the strongest. These important institutions can also select which public funds they want to administer. They cannot provide for the needs of the general public. Thus by definition and location we serve our own better than the general public. Lutherans in this country have parochial schools, but these schools do not and cannot serve all children in need of education. We have our fraternal insurance organizations, but they are limited to Lutherans.

Good government on the other hand is based on reason, compromise, legislation, deliberation, and negotiated justice. If secular government continues without the prophetic role of the Church, it loses its way in the status quo and cannot see beyond what is to what can be. What is reasonable takes the place of what is possible from a perspective of justice. Lutherans, of course, rejoice when a fellow believer is elected or appointed to office, but here affirmation of the Gospel is not the chief criterion but what is paramount is a commitment to justice, reason, and compromise.

Lutherans thus have a strong sense of a centralized federal, state, and local governmental system. In fact, historically it evolved out of a feudal Germany that was defined by many localized principalities and city states which feuded with one another. The idea of many localized seats of authority may seem attractive, but really only the strongest do well in this system. If the local government was corrupt there was no appeal to someone higher. If the local government did not have resources there was no broader pool of resources to draw from.

We have a strong Pauline doctrine of government and (though American Lutherans might not know it) a clear understanding that it is part of the believer’s responsibility to pay taxes to provide economic access and welfare for all citizens, not just those with the means to care for themselves. St. Paul, as we heard, sets up a simple argument in the Epistle to the Romans. If you say you believe in God, you will pay taxes: "For authorities are God’s servants (13:6,7)." Taxes make it possible for the government to negotiate justice in a community. Wealth can be distributed more equitably.

You have probably heard it said, The Government has the responsibility to put the people’s money back in their pockets. This certainly contradicts the Lutheran value that "There is nothing that we have that we have not received." How can we who are followers of Christ argue that it is our money? Does it not all belong to the Creator, as the meaning of the first article of the creed confesses? Is not one of the traditional points in the parable of Jesus about the coin in which he says "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s." What is not God's? Where do we come off saying it is ours alone?

If children are not being educated, not properly insured for medical attention, not properly housed, and natural resources are being wasted without the necessary public transportation, how can we argue for tax breaks for those who already have more than enough? We can call it advantages to the affluent. We can call it politically expedient for those who need large donations from the affluent to run for office, but we cannot call it Lutheran or biblical.

Furthermore, the gradual shift from justice to charity is not wise from a Lutheran perspective. Churches can be charitable through their congregational and social ministry organization programs, but they cannot deliver steady and reliable opportunities and services the way the government can. Churches can give Christmas baskets and limited job training. The government can assure a just minimum wage, educational opportunities for all through community colleges and loans such that all have access to jobs. Churches can take care of the homeless in shelters, give them training, and can even build some houses, but only the government can build low-income housing on a vast scale.

There are certainly ways to cooperate and for SMO’s and other faith-based community organizations to work with public government, but they cannot replace it. It is fundamentally important to remember that the Church in our country cannot levy taxes.

My late faculty colleague, Michael Möller, argued that it is now time for the Church to argue for some of the assumptions of the modern world: tolerance, reason, good and strong centralized governments. Part of our role, as a Lutheran Network, may be to resist a complete shift away from a federal responsibility for social welfare and the public good to the state, local, and congregational level. Lutheran theology is clear in its linking justice with justification. Because we are justified by grace through faith we are free to work for justice through reason in the world and in cooperation with others even of other faiths. Lutheran theology with its Pauline influence has a deep commitment to the value of government for the sake of justice, for our grace-given ability to reason with one another apart from Christ. We have seen ourselves by and large and here in Pennsylvania as advocating for justice with the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Pennsylvania while leaving the doing to the secular order.

Part of our responsibility is also to resist a growing tendency towards requiring measurable outcomes without providing adequate funding. In other words, we must resist government that creates assessment instruments without providing the necessary resources. Outcomes without sufficient income. Regulations without resources. The mischief in much of current public policymaking is that the amount of resources shared is not being increased but reduced or kept the same, and the redistribution of wealth and resources that has been a fundamental piece of our country’s economic success is jeopardized by the limits of local resources and the inability of religious institutions to levy taxes.

On the other hand, we would be foolish to ignore, that as the Federal Government devolves its responsibilities on state, local, and now congregational levels, the latter will become more and more important, and there will be more and more resources located there. Thus a Lutheran strategy for Pennsylvania is necessary. Furthermore, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has long anticipated and adapted to a changing climate. Basically in our two-reign theology our role as Church is to advocate in public for justice and social services, but some or all of us actually deliver services in a huge way and use public resources. Our missions have been shaped over generations to meet needs that have also changed gradually over time. In fact, many of our social ministry organizations were created because congregations could not be counted on to provide the social ministries that the SMO founders thought society needed and public welfare required.

Our social ministry organizations in particular have received public monies to serve the public good and the public interest. In the meantime we have accumulated knowledge and skills that can be shared with others and have served as mediating institutions between the local, state, regional and federal levels. As Lutherans we also have a strong ecclesiology and, at least, have the pieces and leadership in place to be organized for the new context. These institutions that have led the way stand to lose much in the drive toward local congregational foci that might create dependence and a variety of feudal fiefdoms. The professionalism and skill that have been developed cannot be lost to a nonprofessional piety about the value of local volunteerism no matter how important volunteerism can be.

Our Pennsylvania Lutheran Institutions and their Missions

Dr. Krey, center, listens to a conversation between attendees from the Southwestern PA Synod.

To what extent should we reevaluate our original missions as institutions of the Lutheran Church in the present context? It is obvious to me that our missions are becoming increasingly mixed. Seminaries find themselves teaching laypersons in a way that we have never done before, including those without bachelor degrees (even highschoolers). Lutheran colleges have re-targeted their recruitment populations. Lutheran camps and SMO’s have done the same. As we mix our roles and consider collaborating, we need to discuss appropriate funding streams and to clarify our missions. To some extent all of our institutions, seminaries included, have been driven to seek other funding streams and markets because of a shortage of Lutheran financial and people resources. All of our institutions have been driven to seek clients, students, and users who can pay for themselves. Here the poor are doubly the losers. The Federal government is devolving itself of its responsibilities, and the institutions of the Church are seeking clients that can pay for themselves. We are facing enormous structural changes in society that we can moderate but not turn around quickly.

We have the theology and the mediating institutions and networks to deliver. Nevertheless, our recent history as Lutheran institutions has been one of drifting apart as in a continental drift. Sometimes it has felt to any number of us that we stand alone in our calling to be faithful to the mission God has entrusted to us. As one SMO executive noted the other day, we tear across our territories like cowboys seeking funds to support our missions. Perhaps there is too much duplication of effort. We also share a feeling of general disempowerment engendered by the imperial context in which we live—a system in which some and not others have access to power. This Pennsylvania Network we plan to be a part of can help us to be motivated by mission instead of chasing dollars for the sake of survival. With such a proposed network, we would have a system wide view and be less susceptible to short-term solutions. The Pennsylvania Lutheran Network could well be the more gentle Lutheran way to call us back to our roots and traditions.

A Common Lutheran Mission:

How might we achieve this despite the differences even in this room?

It would seem that the Pennsylvania Lutheran Network is the association that could help us to address these issues and to organize ourselves in this complex and changing context. We have the intellectual, spiritual, fiscal, and institutional resources to do amazing things; the issue is how to mobilize some of these resources efficiently without creating a new institution that will require its own resources, staff, etc. to accomplish what we are already called to do in our own particular locations. Collaborative efforts are more effective in garnering resources from funding sources, from foundations, and from the Federal Government.

Networks that are well organized provide access to resources in a context of disempowerment. There are principles of faith-based community organizing that could help us in our formation. Critical to this is the identification of issues that can be addressed without defeating us, finding allies and partners, and coming to agreement on the issues to address.

Essential to this is an understanding of what is common and what would be common to one or more of the institutions represented here. At the same time we would have to listen carefully to the self-interest of each institution. Institutions operate out of self-interest. Individuals are always better able to transcend themselves and their interests than institutions can, which is why leaders can often make all kinds of noble collaborative commitments only to hear a chorus of "that is impossible" back home. It is also important for us to remember that enduring changes cannot just come from the top. In this case collaboration must come from the communities that we organize in our own institutions. In this way our staff and the communities we serve can transform themselves in the process.

How do we arrive at a common mission in the context of divergent views and legitimate interests? I would like to use an old definition that I learned when I was an intern for Dr. Henry Van Deusen, then the executive in The Lutheran Council USA, who taught me that the best service was to listen to the variety of views—to do what a friend of mine recently described as creative listening. We will often because of self-interest disagree about what is best for Pennsylvania and the contexts in which we serve, but clear communication and listening to one another with moral deliberation will provide us with integrity. Let me give you an example from the current debate on the funding of public education where some voices call for accountability and standards and other voices call for more resources and equity.

Dr. Van Deusan would argue that our voice has integrity only when we listen attentively to the divergent views within and without the Church before we speak. Sometimes, he taught me, it is important to let both sides of a debate be heard simultaneously to help those to whom we wish to advocate hear both sides clearly. In the process, the most startling consensus develops, and our theological anthropology that attributes to people the amazing ability to reason with imagination is reaffirmed. In the Civil Rights movement according to Robert Moses, "self-help" programs have been pitted against those who urge political action to tear down institutional racism, but both approaches have been necessary in our crooked path to racial equality. Similarly, as former businessman and lawyer Harold O. Levy, Chancellor of the New York City Schools, notes, urban public school systems are underresourced, but at the same time that one argues for equity one must also argue for standards and accountability. He also points out that it is also important to read the budget and reports. To his shock he learned that in New York, at least, "State aid has nothing to do with need and everything to do with spoils and avarice and greed and politics." Our theological anthropology also has a strong doctrine of sin.

Politics is public morality, and we Lutherans belong at the table. It would seem that we have the brainpower and the wherewithal to get at the facts in Pennsylvania. I know some of you well, and I know that you can read those formulas and budgets that so often obscure inequities while depicting those who are underresourced as "pouring money down a hole" to use Chancellor Levy’s words. But Levy is a realist. He adds that more resources will also require efficiency.

Some Scenarios

As you know, the eight seminaries of the ELCA have been put into a system by the Division of Ministry, and the three seminaries of the East have been placed in a cluster. We have learned that our staff and constituents collaborate in ways that those of us who are leaders cannot even imagine, but this is because the presidents, deans, and board chairs and selected board members and bishops meet on a regular basis to set a tone and policies. Our organization has caught the attention of at least three foundations that have provided resources.

What would it look like to form three clusters in PA, teaming SMO’s, colleges, camps, and seminaries, and to let these clusters relate to PLN as a system for statewide issues? The colleges and seminaries could gather data and provide study materials, and the respective SMO’s could work on the issue through public funding. Seminaries and colleges could also provide training. The synods could suggest congregations as sites for programs. If advocacy were required, the cluster could work with LAMPa to advocate for justice on a particular issues like the percentage of children who are underinsured in Pennsylvania or the lack of funding for the programs that our SMO’s are doing for the State.

Upsala at Wagner

The Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia has collaborated with Wagner College, the Division of Higher Education of the ELCA, the Multicultural Commission, and the Region Seven bishops to identify high school seniors who are persons of color or who speak languages other than English and who wish to commit themselves to preparation for rostered ministry. If admitted to Wagner College, they receive free tuition, and they also receive free tuition and room and board upon admission to LTSP. LTSP also collaborates with Wagner by locating its two-week Summer Theological Academy for high school juniors on its campus.

SMO’s could cooperate with congregations in the delivery of community services that would serve the missions of both. Especially now in the new context in which faith-based organizations will receive resources to do the work traditionally done by governmental agencies, they will need to collaborate with synods and congregations. Colleges and seminaries could be involved in doing the necessary evaluations for outcomes. I have often felt that the gifted faculties at our colleges are underused by the Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania. The Church is in critical need of competent research in areas of its mission that faculty could provide. We have a common mission that cuts across various stake holders.

Our Network could also facilitate the sharing of staffs and space. Some of our institutions have more space than programs, and others need strategic space for their expanding missions.

Some Cautions

How can we network while respecting the different interests and missions of our institutions? How do institutions cooperate without spending endless time spinning their wheels in discussions and workshops and without generating the need for more staff and resources? One way, I would submit, would be to identify issues that can gather energy such that certain institutions will commit their resources and expertise to them. What may be good for one institution, however, may not at all be good for another.

Even as we cooperate as Lutheran institutions, we must honor our ecumenical and interreligious relationships, especially in relation to the public good, and allow each of our institutions to cultivate them in our local settings. That is, while we each have a Lutheran mission, we are also more dependent upon our increasingly diverse contexts.

In conclusion:

One additional benefit will be the lasting friendships and trust that will be developed among the leaders of the institutions of this relatively young Church. New patterns of relationships and hiring are developing that require cultivation, education, and development.

We are in the middle of an axial shift that can be moderated but not ignored. In the eyes of many it is the modern secular experiment –a product in this country of the moderate enlightenment-- that has failed, and a confused and inadequate public leadership is looking to the Church and the sacred for help. This pattern has occurred a number of times in Western History. As Lutherans we are caught because our origins are rooted in the critique of this turn to the religious to provide for the common good. Nevertheless, Lutherans have been highly adaptive, and thus we are gathered as Church-related colleges, Church-related Social Ministry Organizations that use public money for the welfare of Pennsylvania’s citizens, Church camps, Seminaries—not public universities as in Europe. We have the theology, the institutions, and the expertise, good bishops and leaders. We have heard that there are good models to follow, such as in Nebraska.

To paraphrase what the Ethiopian Eunuch said to Philip in the Book of Acts, What is to prevent us from jumping in and forming the Pennsylvania Lutheran Network?