Thursday Theology: A Response to Last Month’s Letter from ELCA Bishops

Co-missioners,  

Six weeks ago, a letter from bishops of ELCA synods began making the usual cyber-rounds by which such things get conveyed these days. The letter was about Christian Nationalism. The bishops quite rightly opposed it. Even so, today’s writer, Mike Hoy, asks questions about whether the letter, however well-intentioned it may have been, meets the criteria of what one hopes for from Christian bishops in their calling as servants of the Gospel.  

We urge you to read the bishops’ letter before proceeding to Mike’s critique. You’ll find, by the way, that this is a longer post than usual. It seemed better to deliver it all once than to break it into parts. 

A quick reminder that the next Crossings Conference unfolds in the northern reaches of St. Louis County on January 11. The topic is as urgent as one wants a conference topic to be. “What is it,” we will ask, “that finally drives Christian behavior?” We hope you’ll join the conversation. It will be led by a marvelous lineup of speakers. To register (if you haven’t yet), click here. Discounts and scholarship help are available. To learn more, send an email to conference@crossings.org 

This coming Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King. Be sure to thank God that the Crucified-and-Risen One is in charge and the pretenders are not. Alleluia indeed! 

Peace and Joy, 

Co-editor Jerry Burce 
for the Crossings Community

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Toward a Respectful Dialog with the ELCA Bishops on Their Pastoral Message:  
Lifting Up the Humility of Love 

by Michael Hoy

From Canva

“A Letter from Bishops of the ELCA to the Church” is a pastoral letter that was brought before the October 2025 meeting of the ELCA Conference of Bishops. Pastoral letters from bishops are generally presented to the church for public proclamation in congregations. This letter, however, was published online, first appearing on October 9. I learned of it only because it was brought to my attention by some clergy in synods where their own bishops had signed on.  

Generally speaking, in the life of the church, when bishops talk, people listen. “Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be, for wherever Christ is, there is the catholic church. ” That’s how St. Ignatius phrased it in the early second century. [1] Episcopal authority was meant to safeguard the church in the Gospel even as Christ safeguards the church. Hence the question I raise here: is this “pastoral message” from bishops of the ELCA serving this aim of safeguarding the Gospel of Christ, or better still of proclaiming it?  

One of the more helpful recommendations of this letter for those of us who are affiliated with the ELCA has to do with dialogue between siblings in Christ. The bishops urge us to “Model respectful dialogue in a polarized world, seeking understanding rooted in love.” 

In the following I raise four critical concerns about the letter. In doing so, I strive to honor the bishops by seeking this understanding in the Gospel-centered unity of the church and in the humility of love which Christ himself models and gifts to his church. 

First Concern: This letter did not proceed out of the ELCA Conference of Bishops. 

Here I note that not all of the ELCA bishops concurred with this letter. While a substantial majority (forty-nine of sixty-five bishops) signed it, sixteen did not. I also have it on good authority that a handful of these voted “no” on issuing it. This leaves even the signatories recognizing that the letter did not achieve the full consensus that allows a document to be issued as a formal statement of the Conference of Bishops. 

Bishop Timothy Graham of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod was one of those who declined to sign. On being pressed to say why, he explained himself in a letter to his own synod. He makes some good points. I share a major snippet of what he wrote, adding my own italics along the way. 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.  

I want to address a question that has come up regarding my choice not to sign the recent letter associated with the ELCA Conference of Bishops. Not all bishop colleagues signed this letter for various reasons, including myself. As a result, several IK rostered leaders and laypeople have asked about my personal decision. 

First, I want to clarify that I participated in the discussion and voted in favor of the document. My decision not to sign was not made lightly, nor does it reflect disagreement with the concerns expressed within the letter. Instead, my choice was rooted in my conviction that a statement coming from the Conference of Bishops should represent the unified voice of all its members. When such unity is not achieved, it is better to refrain from individual endorsements. 

As people of faith, we are called to act prayerfully, carefully, and out of a place of trust in God, not in haste or division. Scripture reminds us that words are powerful—able to build up or tear down— and so I strive to weigh mine with great care and in the spirit of Christ. In an era that admires, desires, and even demands rapid reactions and responses, I find it more necessary than ever to pause, listen, and act in accordance with prayerful discernment, rather than submit to the pressure for immediate response…. 

My hope and prayer are always for unity, reconciliation, and the well-being of the church and its witness to the world. I ask for your understanding, your prayers, and your partnership as we continue to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in all things. We are Church together, for the life of the world and the sake of the Gospel. [2] 

I hear a more balanced and evangelically pastoral tone in this bishop’s letter than in the “pastoral message” that the majority of his colleagues signed and issued. For me this heightens questions about the manner in which the majority’s letter was developed and the timing of its issuance. From the signatories themselves has come some candid admission that the letter as it stands “is not perfect.” I agree with this assessment and will explore some key reasons for this. Among them are reasons the bishops themselves may not have thought about. Here is where respectful dialogue would be useful and very welcome.  

Second Concern: While the urgency that drives this letter is understandable, and while the bishops’ critique of the false gospel of Christian Nationalism is justifiable, the bishops do not seem aware that they too have failed to lift up the Gospel. 

The bishops’ letter is surely passionate: “As bishops of this church, we declare that the ELCA cannot be silent.” Agreed. Their diagnosis of our current political crisis in America is warranted. In the midst of political polarization, and especially as this is being driven by right-wing political ideology and a quest for power, the bishops accurately note that many “vulnerable communities are being scapegoated and attacked.” Here they make particular note of “immigrants and refugees,” “people of color” and “transgender people.” These and others whom “society often seeks to exclude, erase, or diminish” are being “marginalized or oppressed,” and “vilified.” They are bearing “the devastating weight of racism,” are being “targeted,” and are denied “their dignity and even their right to exist.”  

Moreover, the bishops properly identify Christian Nationalism as one of the principal fomenters of this inexcusable evil. Christian Nationalism is an alien gospel because it distorts the Christian faith and mixes it with “an unhealthy form of patriotism.” It “confuses the Gospel with political power, turns God into a mascot for the state, and privileges some people over others based on race, religion, or birthplace.” As the bishops rightly insist, “This is not the way of Jesus.”  

Well and good.

But do the bishops recognize that this is also a time for confession on their part and ours? Do they acknowledge our own need for forgiveness? As it happens, they make no mention of “sin.” When forgiveness also goes unmentioned, this cannot be surprising. What does surprise me is the failure of the bishops to so much as raise the question of our possible complicity in the evils they name. As a result, they fail to model the respectful and hopeful dialogue they are urging on the church at this time. 

I am also struck by the failure of the bishops to bolster their case with an appeal to our theological roots in the Scriptures and the Lutheran confessions. This would surely push us to recognize our own failures before cataloging the dreadful shortcomings of the people we are criticizing—many of whom, despite their faults, are still our siblings in Christ. If consulted, our theological heritage would remind us that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, also where our current national crisis is concerned. Here one would expect bishops as leading pastors of the church to address it with the resources of the Gospel. Instead, they pivot directly to ELCA social statements, Churchwide Assembly decrees and the like, and rely on these to underwrite their case for justice.  

With that, the bishops chastise the evils of Christian Nationalism. Then they “insist” that the church join them in this chastising lest the church be silent (a hoary and dreadful feature, I admit, of Lutheran history). Unfortunately, when the bishops “declare that the ELCA cannot be silent,” are they aware that in this very moment they are being exceptionally silent about what the church needs most if any of us are to do the good works our most desperate neighbors require? In this context I note that when the bishops mention the Scriptures, they speak of them only as that which “commands us to welcome the stranger.” Where is the strength and promise of the Scriptures’ own Author, Jesus the Christ (John 5:39)?  

The church’s unity is anchored in the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. This raises a question. Where in this bishops’ statement do we encounter the authentic good news of Jesus, the One who shows mercy and forgiveness to real sinners, as in the ones whose shortcomings the bishops so aptly identify? How does this good news of Jesus meet the pressing needs of our time? And who will proclaim this good news, if not the church? Yet the bishops in their “pastoral” message have not shown themselves to be servants of the Gospel, but only of the Law. How can the offenders they identify repent if no word of forgiveness is offered? And how can that call to repentance be heard as credible unless the church gives priority to forgiveness? This seems to be what Jesus himself wants the church to want when he teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This is the “way of Jesus,” to use the bishops’ own phrase. It is also an important segue to the following third critical concern. 

Third Concern: The letter is riddled with the “must” language of the Law’s demand—to the point of moralistic legalism. 

There are 728 words in the bishops’ letter. Far too many of them exhibit a legal/law-based thinking. Here is a compendium of those legal words: “compel”, “command”, “commitment”, “confront”, “summon”, “accountability”, “justice”, “must”, and—most commonly in this letter—“insist.” I took the liberty of bringing this matter to the attention of my own bishop, asking, “What does the word ‘insist’ mean?” The bishop answered, “It means demand.” Then she added, “It is in our tradition.”  

Did this bishop make note of my crestfallen face when I replied, “Yes, it is”? If so, I may have left her bemused. I did not take the time to elaborate then and there on how “demand” in our tradition means specifically the demand of the Law, not the Gospel. There is no question that the Law demands—in the bishops’ word, insists—that we do works that are pleasing to God, even and especially in our civic life. Our tradition calls this “civil righteousness.” Such demanding law is not only for those of us who share the faith, but for all humanity. We are all under the Law. Yet the truth is, none of us can bear the weight of that much demand—that much insistence on “justice!” “The Law always accuses.” That’s how the Reformers spoke when their own critics were high-handed on the Law, to the point of reading the Scriptures as “leaning toward the Law.” Those critics refused to share the holy good news of the Gospel as the promising Word of God for all people who are failing and falling under the Law’s impossible demands. That every person fails and falls beneath the Law is abundantly evident. Failure is no excuse, though. The “demands” of justice and judgment still stand. Enter Christ crucified and raised who did not come to place demands on those who are already failing. He came instead to be with us in the midst of our failure. And for those failing and dying under the weight of all these legal “demands,” Christ himself bears his own cross and bears our transgressions in his own body in order to set people free, forgiving them and encouraging them through the Spirit to grasp this free gift through faith. The Lutheran Confessions (especially Apology IV) point out that it is our faith in Christ that makes us pleasing before God—not our works; and indeed, it is faith that makes it possible for us to truly do good works. [3] 

God knows our neighbors need our good works. But the bishops are so Law-heavy that one may well miss the Gospel altogether. To be sure, there are a few openings, even references, perhaps, to this promising Word. Yet Law and Gospel get mixed together without the proper distinction. Here is one example among many from their letter: 

“The Gospel we proclaim insists that our neighbor’s need is the occasion for our love and that our public life is shaped by justice, mercy, and a commitment to the common good.” 

In this statement about “the Gospel we proclaim,” what matters is our own works. This leaves us only with the demands of the Law, and without the promise of the Gospel. When Law and Gospel get mixed without the proper distinction, the result is legalism—or perhaps better in this case, moralistic legalism. Sadly, this same moralistic legalism has permeated far too much of the preaching these days in the ELCA. As a result, the people of God are not being fed the “holy good news” of Jesus the Christ, crucified and raised for the forgiveness of sins and the life of the world. All they get instead is “insistence” that they do better. Christ may (and then again may not) get mentioned in such preaching, but not in a way that honors him by lifting up the scandal of Christ crucified for us all. That’s how Christ is properly to be honored (1 Cor. 1:18-25).  

Even worse, Christ may well get presented in deficient proclamation as a new lawgiver for us to follow. There is no understanding here that Jesus suffered and died on the cross for us all and for the forgiveness of all our sin, or that he rose with the death-marks on his hands and feet as the final vindication of all of us beyond death and judgment. This you will not find being made explicit in today’s bad preaching. Nor will you find it in the bishops’ letter, for all that letter’s powerful merit.  

It behooves these bishops to answer for that omission to the One in whose “name” they make appeal to the wider church. 

Fourth Concern: There is no humility of love in the bishops’ letter 

I do not fault the bishops for their passionate objections to the horrible tragedies that are being witnessed and experienced in this “time.” I’ve had many moments when my own passions have been deeply stirred in response to these same tragedies. But the solution to them is not found in pointing people of faith, even passionately, to the Law and its demands, but rather in helping them to grasp, in faith the Gospel’s own humility of Love. Would that the bishops who signed this letter had been this imaginative. 

The Gospel lifts up the humility of Christ’s love. It brings us the comfort of embracing everyone in love and forgiveness. It is also a promise we get to trust in faith, and in that promise to find the courage to bring Christ’s humble love to all the world. 

From Canva

Unfortunately, the bishops’ letter stops short of taking the Law to its judging depths. This prevents it from offering any truly emboldening promise of the Gospel we all need. There is, for example, no sense that whatever we have left of our creational “dignity” is broken in sin. We all need a crucified Messiah—“the wounds of Christ”—to heal this brokenness and to set aside its judgment. 

When there are times of deep discord and divisiveness within the body of Christ, St. Paul points us to the humility of Christ’s love. We find this in his incarnation, his death, and his resurrection.  

Humility points us to the truth of our creational origins. None of us has the right to humiliate others, to commit acts of violence against them in pride and arrogance, or to dismiss any of our created siblings. Nor do we have the right to abuse the rest of God’s creation as we sinners have continually done. The cries of the humble and the humiliated reach the ears of God. They bring judgment upon us. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return,” says the Lord. In his incarnation, Christ Jesus took his place with us in our humanity not because we were people of “inherent dignity,” nor to “reveal” to us that “God is love.” He did this instead to bear the weight of the humbling truth of how badly we have failed to meet God’s hopes and expectations of us. He even took upon himself our slavish dependency under the Law—all in order to make a place for every one of us in the Father’s home (Phil. 2:6-7). 

In his own obedience, Christ would take on all the failure and condemnation and the damning truth the rest of us deserve. He would carry it to his own death—“even death on a cross.” He would take all that damning truth to himself, and in its place would bestow on us the benefits of his grace. In other words, he would give us everything he had coming to him—his righteousness, his life (Phil. 2:8).  

And being raised from the dead and exalted by God, Christ in his glory does not go home empty-handed. Instead, he brings along all of us , the strays whom he has so valued and prized, even unto death, as his own kith and kin. This includes the lost and alienated, the forgotten and abandoned, the dregs of humanity—“the least of these” who could not find their own way home if their lives depended on it. All these are welcomed home, through Christ, in the Father’s good graces. “Any friend of my Son,” the Father says, ”is a friend of mine!” (Phil 2:9-11)  

This is the Christ we get to claim and confess by faith. Through Him we get to embody and share his life and love. We do this not only for all our fellow siblings in the church, but for the whole world! 

Only in this trust can we reflect the passion of Christ’s humility of love. We do this when we are “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” We reflect it when we “do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than [ourselves].” We honor Christ and the One who sent him when each of us looks “not to [our] own interests but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:2-4). 

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 Endnotes 

[1] Ignatius was concerned about the rise of Docetism in the church and promoted the role of the bishop as a teacher of the apostolic faith. The position on Christology against the Docetists is as important as justification-by-faith against the neo-Pelagians. The Gospel is at stake. The role of the bishop is to defend the Gospel as was the role of the apostles. (One might consider Paul’s standing up against to defend the Gospel before the Galatians, and even against the apostle Peter whom Paul openly opposed on this matter.) Ignatius is not vesting ultimate authority in an office, but in the apostolic proclamation. The purpose of church order, which is a later development, is to serve the Gospel. So he wanted the people to listen to him. (From Ignatius, “Letter to the Smyrnaeans”) The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1985 Reprint), 90; https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm. 

[2] “A message from Bishop Tim, Re: Bishop’s response to not signing the letter on 10/8/25” (Oct. 14, 2025), https://iksynod.org/who-we-are/notes-from-bishop-graham.html. I recommend that the entire message of Bishop Graham be read to recognize the endearing Christian spirit of his response, as well as his hopes to work for the dignity of many peoples in his own efforts as bishop for his synod. 

[3] Apol. IV:136, 188. 

Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use
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