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All letters to be published in Lutheran Partners magazine / Lutheran Partners Online must include your name and where you reside. Address: Editor, Lutheran Partners, 8765 W. Higgins Road, Chicago, IL 60631-4101; e-mail, Lutheran.Partners@elca.org, Lutheran_Partners@ecunet.org, or LUTHERAN PARTNERS (if on Ecunet/ Lutherlink). Because we wish to publish as many letters as possible and at the same time maintain some control over the length of the letter section, letters should be no more than 600 words in length. Shorter letters are preferred.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported an eight percent increase in the suicide rate among 10-14 year olds, the largest increase in 15 years! This is yet another heartbreaking and disturbing reminder of how prevalent the resort to violence is in our society. Whenever we accept the premise that violence can somehow be redemptive, we embark on the nihilistic path that leads to self-destruction. Someone has drawn the analogy between the canaries used by coal miners to detect toxic fumes to our children who are demonstrating increasing sign of distress. It’s imperative that we listen and take action!

Our culture begins the training in violence at an early age. Psychologists tell us that by the time a child is 18 years old, he or she will have viewed 200,000 images of violence. There are images of violence on our children’s lunch boxes and pajamas!

Then, as our children grow in years, we place in their hands interactive computer games that further undergird their belief in the redemptive use of violence. Consider the game Super Columbine Massacre that allows the player to stalk classmates, killing as many of them as possible, or the game JFK Reloaded that allows the player to take the place of Lee Harvey Oswald and test how skilled he or she might be in assassinating John F. Kennedy.

War is the ultimate manifestation of our culture of violence. The tragic irony is that we believe that war can be sanitized and justified. We are shocked by the prisoner abuse at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the deliberate murder of civilians in Iraq by our armed forces, or the epidemic of suicides among our veterans and active military personnel. We’d like to believe that such violence is an aberration or the actions of a few bad apples; the truth is that it is the logical consequence of the violence that is warfare. When we use violence to destroy others, violence will destroy us as well. That’s the meaning of Jesus’ words to his disciple, “Put away your sword. All who take the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

It is true that our church is not numbered among the historic “peace churches.” But by embracing the truth that only peaceful means can achieve peaceful ends, our church can play a vital role in breaking the cycle of violence that infests our society. The pursuit of peace through nonviolence is the road not taken; and indeed it takes more courage than violence and war. But, if we can summon the courage to embark on this path, our church will be revitalized and a new day will dawn for the human community.

Bernard Kern
North Richland Hills, Texas

Commending the Call
It is with a great deal of pleasure that I read the March/April 2008 issue of Lutheran Partners cover to cover. It seems to me that the church is finally beginning to see that the “sense of call” is important in the lives of our church people however they conceive it to take place.

When the ELCA came into being, I expressed a great concern that the Augustana Church’s concern for the “inner call” was being lost. In fact I wrote a piece on the subject that The Lutheran magazine had planned to publish when the ELCA was developing its doctrine of the ministry (though it never got published)....

[I write this] ... because of my strong belief that I received an inner call and had it providentially confirmed by what happened during my college days at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. I wrote of these experiences in the Augustana Heritage Newsletter (volume 2, no. 4, Spring 2002).

My main reason for writing you was to commend you for the way in which you have lifted up the sense of the call and the importance of vocation rather than something just functional in our experience as servants of God in this world. Keep up the good work in making Lutheran Partners a much better journal than it has been.

Ernest A. Bergeson
Harwich, Massachusetts

Point – Counterpoint
I need to tell you that when I received my copy of Lutheran Partners, I was astonished at the introduction of enameled paper stock and full-color cover and considerable interior color.

I would think that these days of mission challenges and limitation of financial resources would discourage spending unnecessarily of higher cost fluff for the publication being principally sent to professional and lay leaders of the church, practically all of whom receive the publication gratis.

John P. Petersen
Evanston, Illinois

I can’t begin to tell you how much improved Lutheran Partners is! I got my copy last week and have read it from cover to cover. That has never happened before!!! I’ve forwarded a piece from an Episcopal priest friend of mine with hopes of it being used in the “Written on the Heart” section. Keep up the good work. What you are doing has restored some of my faith in the possibility of “good and useful” things in our church. Thank you.

John Frykman
San Francisco, California

Former Incarnation
I have been an enthusiastic reader of Lutheran Partners since its inception. Sometimes I agreed with articles, sometimes [I] disagreed. There were articles that inspired me and ones that puzzled me. Most of the time I appreciated the education and stimulation each issue provided. A sign of the success of each issue was the number of letters responding to articles.

The recent change to focus on stories of people’s lives is a step backward. I miss the intellectual stimulation of scholarly articles. When I could not attend a course or even a lecture, they provided information or discussion that was beyond what was available in the parish or most other publications.

Now Lutheran Partners tells stories I could find in the parish or community. Letters that continue the dialogue have decreased in number. The magazine does not challenge or enlighten in the way it used to do. You have turned Lutheran Partners into “Lutheran Guideposts.” I miss its former incarnation.

Raymond Mitchell
Berlin, New Hampshire

A Little Reminiscence
... The church as I have known it [I’m in my eighties now] has been busy at “putting things together” [properly]. I recall a convention of the United Lutheran Church at Philadelphia. Hours upon hours were spent on getting together what was to be a proper, theologically correct wording for the Eucharistic Prayer. Later as a delegate to the church’s national meeting at Pittsburgh, what was right or wrong in how communion might be seen or administered seemed to engulf the convention. I recall that intinction was regarded as going just a bit too far. Things (continued to) change, once we thought we had it put together properly....

... Still, within the denomination there were groups. One view was that despite our forms, we needed the warm spirit of an active Christianity among us. Others looked askance at those who ignored the liturgical proprieties. We were growing up.

We do need [a] framework that is true, an understanding of the Lord whose caring love needs expression by those who “live in him.”... [I]t becomes a matter — once we understand what is right and proper in keeping “the faith” — of putting the loving spirit of our Lord in our lives and turning on the power that is possible with the distinct life [that is] in Jesus.

William E. Dennis
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania