When you were elected, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton said you saw the church’s role as a translator and interpreter of the faith for the 21st century. How do you see the Lutheran church doing that in the U.S. and around the world?
The Lutheran church’s big gift is its theology, and the ability of this theology to not give simplistic answers, but to foster critical thinking and ask critical questions and not be afraid of this. In today’s complex world, people are often looking for simplistic answers in order to feel secure, but this is not necessarily what brings us forward.
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Secondly, the clear understanding of holistic mission that consists of proclamation, of diakonia, of worshipping, but also of public witness to hold all these aspects strongly together is definitely something that Lutherans can bring as a gift to the broader Christian family.
What are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities for the Lutheran Church in the U.S.?
One of the biggest challenges perhaps — not being that deeply acquainted yet with the context the ELCA lives in — is to live up to the commitment to reach to different parts of society, to look beyond one’s own immediate circles, to reach those people who are not the usual suspects to be members of the ELCA. And how to remain committed to being part of the global communion — to understand that when one party is suffering, then the whole body is suffering. It is a challenge for many churches to realize that we serve one part of a bigger body.
You’ve mentioned the LWF is working on a document on Jewish-Christian relations. Why is dialogue with Jewish communities so important?
One of the impulses for this process is the fact that the next assembly is going to meet in Krakow in Poland, only approximately 100 kilometers away from Auschwitz, which is almost a symbol for some of the worst atrocities against humanity that have been committed.
LWF was engaged in relating to Luther’s writings about Jews already in the 1980s, but in recent decades, not much has been done in view of Jewish-Christian relations in particular. So we do hope that, by engaging in this topic now, we are able to inform the constituencies in our member churches about the rise of antisemitism and also to counter some wrong and unhelpful narratives that might be spreading through populist politics around the world.
You’ve written for RNS about the refugee crisis and how the LWF is helping the people of Ukraine. Can you talk about that work?
We have always been committed to supporting people in need and to supporting refugees because this is part of our DNA and actually one of our four founding pillars. When this war started, we felt that this is something where we need to contribute, where we need to step in and help Ukrainian refugees, who are predominantly women with young children.
We don’t have a very big member church in Ukraine — it is rather a tiny one — but we have a member church in Poland with approximately 60,000 members, which has been doing amazing work in supporting Ukrainian refugees. We support Ukrainian refugees through the so-called “one LWF” approach, where we bring together our diaconal work in our local member churches and the work of Lutheran World Service, which addresses humanitarian needs and development. So these two strains of work are coming together in Poland particularly, but also in other countries neighboring Ukraine.
How does Lutheran theology inform that work?
This was one of the core convictions of Luther himself. He used to say that through being liberated by God’s grace, we are actually free to serve the others, and being curved in on ourselves is actually what can be described as sin. When we are really liberated by God, then we are liberated not to look at ourselves only, but to turn our eyes to the needs of others. I very much like Luther’s understanding of everyday worship. He says that serving the neighbor through diaconal work, but also through our everyday work — whatever we do, if we do it in a way that is committed to serving the others — this is actually worship that we do outside the Sunday worship.
This article originally appeared here.
