Saturday, February 19, 2005, from Bishop Stephen Bouman
 
Greg,
 
Please share this preface to your release of our materials.
 
It has been immensely helpful to me to have received the advice, second reading and perspective of a good number of colleagues in this exchange we have been sharing. An excellent book by Paul Jersild, "Spirit Ethics" has been a great help in background on how Lutherans read the Bible. Walter Bouman has been willing to walk with me and has provided guidance and directed me to some of the sources mentioned. Other seminary scholars, colleagues in the conference of bishops and pastors in our synod have also commented, critiqued and helped me. I take responsibility for the conclusions and possible heresy :) As I reviewed the materials I am again struck by how rough and frank and at times "not ready for prime time" some of the writing has been. You initiated this dialogue with a cry from the soul, but also a severe judgment on my ministry. How can we not have let emotion in some of what each of us has written? So I trust you, and those with whom you share this, that this intimate and pastoral exchange will be treated with respect and understanding. On a second reading of Jenson's piece, I acknowledge that he is right and I was wrong about the monarchial episcopate and its history. I still do not accept my thinking and position places me in the general "protestant" rescension of Lutheranism. I do not accept such polar thinking. I am an evangelical catholic. Through my long history and public writing in Lutheran Forum, my presentation at the first St. Olaf convocation you referred (I took on Walter Sundberg in an exchange on public theology), and my theological positions on sacramental and confessional heart of Lutheranism, no one mistook me for a "lowest common denominator" Lutheran. When I began to be more open to gay and lesbian issues all that did not seem to matter, and I became to many of my former friends and colleagues if not a pariah, then something close to it. The point I tried to make about a "fundamentalistic" reading of scripture, reducing it to one issue as a lens in its interpretation, is a point I would make about Lutheran morphology as well. On reading again your letters to me, I am again struck by how much you love the church, how deeply competent you are as a working theologian, and how much I respect your ministry. I look forward to hearing now from your colleagues in the Manhattan ministerium as all of us struggle with how we read the Bible, interpret the confessions in our age, parse law and gospel for the sake of Great Commission fidelity and discipleship, and continue to ask how gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can honor the resurrection of Jesus in how they bring their lives and relationships to the church. And what I really want to know, and pray for, is will we continue to find one another at the table, the font, study of scripture, mutual consolation and admonition of the saints? Thank you again for inviting me into this conversation. May some part of it be used by the Holy Spirit in building up the church and its mission to incarnate an eschatological community of hope in the midst of this world.
 
Continued blessed springtime of the soul,
Stephen