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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. Those selected for publication may be excerpted in the interest of space.

Joy in the Office
We will sorely miss the Pastor Loci column. Pastor McKinley had what is connoted by the typically compounded German word, Amptsfreudigkeit... [T]he meaning is something like “joy in the office of the ministry.” And Steve McKinley had it.

We could all use a good healthy dose of Amptsfreudigkeit. For us pastors, it’s a great antidote to the “Lenten panic”; a sure defense against our inclination to “whine, shine, and recline”; a preventative to our blaming almost everything on the alleged “alligators” in the parish; and a braking effect on our tendency to magnify the negatives and minimize the positives.

Amptsfreudigkeit: it’s great as preventive medicine, but more importantly, it’s a way of life in the ministry, a pole star, a motto. Amptsfreudigkeit Always! (Immer Amptsfreudigkeit?) Doesn’t it have a ring to it?

And your journal will be a good read even after Pastor Loci’s friendly parting. Ave Atque Vale, and Pax et Gaudiam back to you, and more.

Eugene F. Kramer
Monona, Iowa

Churchly “We”s and “I”s
I especially liked Karen Minnich-Sadler’s article “The Communal ‘We’ and the Necessary ‘I’” (Nov./Dec. 2005). I have friends in both evangelical and mainline circles and I hate to see us shoot broadsides at each other over a matter of emphasis. As she says, we need both the We and the I. I’m not sure if it makes any difference which comes first. I know many mainliners who definitely have the “I,” and the evangelicals I have visited have a very strong we — a closeness and unity which is certainly as strong as we Lutherans. Our Lord must weep when he sees his people divided when we should love each other as those of the same household of faith.

My “we” came first as I was brought up a Lutheran with strong family ties to the church, but I had an “I” experience years ago which brought me back into the church after I had wandered away. I excitedly shared my experience with one of our Lutheran church’s seminary deans and thought he would be happy. Instead, he treated me like I had a disease! There were a few of us seminarians who had the “I” experience, and he tried to isolate us until we could be cured.

Fortunately (after moving to another seminary) my next dean ... was much more accepting and I felt more like I belonged to a community again.

Years ago, Dr. Crumley advised us at a [Lutheran Church in America] Synod meeting in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that if we were truly an ecumenical church, we should be reaching out to the Evangelicals as well as mainline. Good advice!

Robert S. Ove
Rio Rancho, New Mexico

Psychology and Scripture
Many of us have noted since our 2005 Churchwide Assembly that a talking point has emerged which is: “How do we read Scripture?” In an effort to make the current discussion more fruitful than it otherwise might be, I suggest that we begin by defining the debate more precisely. The real question is not simply “How do we read Scripture,” for that question can take us in too many directions. The real question is “How do we read Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge?”

We ELCA Lutherans are rooted in that broad Protestant tradition which chose and still for the most part chooses to read Scripture in a way that is positively informed by the sciences. For example, we have allowed geologists and astronomers to inform us that the universe is not less than six thousand years old but is ten to fifteen billion years old. We have allowed biologists to inform us that evolution plays an important part in the development of life on this planet.

I need not continue with this list, for you are an educated audience, and you already grasp my point. I think we were on the right side of the Scopes Monkey Trial in this debate, and we are on the right side of history.

The new question may be whether or not we allow scientific knowledge, particularly from psychologists, to inform how we read Scripture when we come to the area of human sexuality. We should probably also be asking ourselves [if we choose not to read the Scriptures this way], then why is this topic different? I hope by this letter to stimulate the thought of a group of people I have come to respect deeply — the ordained clergy and professional staff of our ELCA — and to move the discussion forward. We are among the most broadly educated people on the planet. I know we can do this.

Jeff Elliott
Brant Beach, New Jersey

Both/And, Either/Or
Try as I may, I cannot get myself to begin my prayers “Dear Intelligent Designer.” The current debate and quasi-warfare between religion and science has taken drastic turns in the ousting of eight pro-Intelligent Design School Board Members in Dover, Pennsylvania, and the Kansas State Board of Education mandate for all public school biology teaching to include Intelligent Design vis à vis Darwinian evolution. I am reminded of a remark attributed to the wife of the Bishop of Worcester after Darwin’s theory of evolution was explained to her: “Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.”

Pat Robertson chimed in recently warning Dover, Pennsylvania, people who voted to “reject God” recently [that they] had better not turn to God when and if a disaster hits them as divine retribution for what they did. I would remind Pat Robertson that the title “evangelist” means “bringer of Good News.” He does not deserve that title. And the people insistent on making room for God in biology classes need to consider the title of J. B. Phillips’ Second World War-time sermons on the British Broadcasting (BBC) service: “Your God Is Too Small.”

Evolution and biology are not the anti-Christ some seem to think they are. Thank God for people who do not try to drag educators and education itself into a new Dark Ages. How big is your God, our God? Lutherans, of all people, seem to acknowledge we are a both / and people, saints and sinners. Why then would or should we expect everything else to be an either/or test of truth including the current evolution/intelligent design (i. e., creationism) debate?

L.A. Lake Jacobson
Wilsonville, Oregon