In my opinion, the ELCA has been moving toward a Kulturprotestantismus since
its inception.  I used to tell my students at Bethany College 18 years ago
that authentic Lutheranism must always appear unstable under the conditions
of existence in comparison to the Roman Catholic tradition to its right, and
various Reformed traditions that drive towards Liberal Protestantism to its
left.  (The right tends to believe the presence of God is unambiguously
present in the world in onto-theological structures; the left tends to
believe there is no presence of God in earthly structures, but such
structures can point to the place where God is.  Lutheranism, on the other
hand, speaks of the paradoxical presence of the infinite in the finite, a
presence that takes up divine absence fully.)  The truth is that it takes a
lot of theological input to keep this paradoxical, unstable theological
tradition in existence.  Two decades ago many of us saw the handwriting on
the wall: The ELCA seemed at its beginning to marginalize theology, and
without emphasizing theological reflection and teaching, the ELCA would
eventually fall apart, some going toward the sure onto-theological
foundations at the right (the church and its structures), many fleeing to
the left where the divine is glimpsed only on the fleeting margins of
existence through a foundational testimony in scripture or personal
experience.  We are seeing this happening.

The WordAlone movement has always sought to highlight the paradoxical center
of Lutheran theology.  Our foundations are not in earthly structures (or the
unambiguous presence of the divine in such structures), nor in some
foundational human testimony of the past (or in the immediacy of personal
experience), but in Christ, the living Word who confronts us within life in
all of its ambiguity, and who is attested to in Scripture.

Carl Braaten has adroitly named the problem within the ELCA.  (He has been
doing this for 18 years.)  He knows that the only way to recapture the
Lutheran center is through real theological reflection and confessional
teaching.  For many years he has despaired that this can happen within the
ELCA.  For many of his friends, the lure to the right has become
irresistible.  How, after all, can we stand on the nonfoundations of Christ
Alone - - the cross gives eschatological foundations, of course - - when we
see the entire institution trotting to the left to find foundations in
personal experience?  How, in the real world, can a paradoxical middle
position ever hope to vie with the powerful message of the left, a message
affirmed by the prevailing ethos of the day?  Better to retreat to the
foundations of the church to do battle.

So we have a choice.  Do we want to employ the ontological
machinery of the church in order to battle Kulturprotestantismus?  Or do we
to stand in the paradoxical center, at the point of the strange overturning
of the ontological forever related to the ontological, at the nonfoundations
of the Cross that, eschatalogically considered, becomes for us the
foundations of it all?

This is the question, I think.

Dennis Bielfeldt