Clout Chaser 🗿 on Nostr: In January 2023, the LCMS released a new revised teaching resource called Luther’s ...

In January 2023, the LCMS released a new revised teaching resource called Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications. The volume includes a translation of Luther’s Large Catechism, one of the Lutheran confessional documents, bound together with dozens of essays, some of which import radical social agendas. After reading the essays, I published my critique online to Twitter on Jan. 21. I focused entirely on the theological content of the catechetical essays, pointing out their contradiction of the LCMS’s conservative reputation.

One essay argued that self-defense was immoral and that Scripture does not support a people’s right to bear arms. Another essay, the most infamous of the lot, twisted Matthew 7 to declare that sodomy, pornography, pedophilia, polyamory, and transgenderism were simply “specks in our neighbor’s eye” while (heterosexual) fornication was the log in our own. The essay on “God as Creator” attempted to bypass creationism, denigrating fundamentalists as simply discussing “scientific theories.” A couple of other essays explicitly focused on incorporating social justice theories and ideas about “economic and societal privilege” into Lutheranism. One essay declared urban gentrification to be a sin because whites moving into poorer neighborhoods and indirectly raising property values is, according to this new catechism, theft—due to the increased tax burden. Another asserts that social justice is a Christian necessity; even though perfect social justice is unachievable, we must aim for “proximate justice” (“proximate” being determined, apparently, by the author of the essay and his friends).