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Hidden damage and current needs: pulpit and pew in Lutheran Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2007

Elizabeth Koepping
Elizabeth Koepping*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, UKekoepping@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

In both world wars, Lutherans of German origin in Australia were used as scapegoats by the government, as that church and its people were regarded as German and therefore a safely bounded object for spite. South Australia, the heartland of Lutheranism, was especially attacked, some pastors and long-settled citizens being interned, restricted and otherwise rejected: actual worship was also affected. The traumatic effects have lasted until now in rural communities such as ‘Hope’, the subject of long-term anthropological research by the writer. These effects are not merely personal, which are grim enough, but inevitably, in deeply religious communities with limited sacred–secular split, also theological. However, given the understandable yet unacceptable unwillingness of the church to face the past, the consequences are ignored. This article argues that crises, whether natural, the result of war, or of wrong behaviour by church officers, are present in every church context through the past to the contemporary world, as is the tendency to ignore the impact in favour of maintaining the institution. The lasting theological effects on laity and clergy should be acknowledged and acted upon in training and ministry for many years after the events, whether they resulted from the behaviour of one person in a parish or an entire government or empire. This may mean accepting the implications of locality for lived theology.

Type
Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 441 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2007

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References

1 Both quotes from State Parliament of South Australia, Hansard, 1917, p. 952.

2 Italian aliens who were Roman Catholic were interned; Italian Australians rarely. Roman Catholic German Australians in the Clare valley of South Australia were not interned.

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9 McKernan, M., Australian Churches at War, 1914–1918 (Sydney: Catholic Theological Faculty and Australian War Memorial, 1980), p. 21Google Scholar, on the period: ‘[Protestant] laymen supported what the clergy proposed even in debates on current affairs or politics . . . Each [Presbyterian] congregation elected elders from among the laymen but the minister chaired the meetings and assigned their work: he was the leader, they were clearly subordinate. The Catholic church did not even give its laity a voice.’

10 Luther in 1520: ‘We are priests, which is much more important than being kings, because ordination enables us to stand before God and plead for others. Indeed, only priests can stand before God and plead’ yet in the same year, ‘a priest in Christendom is nothing else but an officeholder. As long as he holds office he takes precedence: when he is deposed he becomes a peasant or townsman like anybody else’, ‘Von der Freiheit eines Christenmensch’ in Martin Luther, ed. H. Gollwitzer (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1983) and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1970).

11 Saying of Luther, no. 302 in Tischrede, ed. K. Aland (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1960).

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13 This demand ‘smacks of works-righteousness and not justification by Grace through Faith alone, for it implies a primary purpose of the church is to develop a certain standard of public conduct which the pastor symbolises’, Horden, W., Living by Grace (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), p. 19Google Scholar.

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16 Anxiety and doubt about salvation becomes, writes Joest for Luther, ‘unbelief, the refusal to accept God and his promise’. Hope people know this, but the ensuing communication block is unhelpful. See Joest, W., Dogmatik, vol. 2, Der Weg Gottes mit den Menschen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. 400Google Scholar.

17 From ‘Ad librum Ambrosii Catharini responsio’, 1521, in Luther's World of Thought, ed. H. Borkamm (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1965), p. 137. This contrasts sharply with Nouwen's comment that ‘The Word of God is always coming into the World’. Creative Ministry (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 40.

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20 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, p. 658: ‘Justification by faith is the key which unlocks the heavenly treasury, and the happiness to which this gives rise is regarded as the only clear proof that the soul is in a state of grace.’

21 In 2004 church employees’ behaviour to women and children led to the community chastising complainants.

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23 Kierkegaard, Søren, The Sickness unto Death (London: Penguin, 1989)Google ScholarPubMed.

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25 J. Orr in Neuger, C. Cozad, The Arts of Ministry: Feminist-Womanist Approaches (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1998), p. 135Google Scholar.

26 Quoted in Spener, Philip, Pia Desideria (Grand Rapids, MI: Fortress, 1964)Google Scholar.