The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is both the largest Lutheran denomination in America and the representative of progressive views among the three main Lutheran bodies in America. On Monday, the bishops who serve the 809 ELCA congregations and their 468,000 members in Wisconsin issued a statement regarding Governor Walker's "budget repair bill" and the resulting dispute with labor in Wisconsin.
The main body of the letter reaffirms the ELCA's fidelity to the basic tenets of social justice that have defined all the Abrahamic faiths, including Christianity, since the Babylonian Exile and calls on the state government to respect those tenets as well.
We pray that the rights of all people will be respected and represented with dignity and opportunity for fair and equal exchanges. We pray that negotiations and debates will be guided by genuine care for all opinions. We pray that partisanship will give way to community-building and shared effort for the public good. We ask that the rights of all workers, public and private, be held in high regard. We ask that decisions that involve the livelihoods of those workers be made with compassion and shared understanding.
We ask that you defend the rights of those in our state who are most vulnerable. We ask that legislation pending would defend those whose needs are met through medical assistance, job training, child care, hunger assistance and fair and equitable housing support. We assert, with respect, that future legislation not place undo challenges on those in our state who can least afford to bear those burdens.
However, once you get past that, the letter's content becomes a little less straightforward.
Like you, we face times when we are tempted to push one agenda at the expense of another. Like you, we hear from people who wish to have their way rather than seek a fair and equitable compromise. Like you, we are well aware of pressures that form when difficult decisions must be made.
The language here is a somewhat murky because it is not always clear to whom the statements are being addressed. If I read it in the most charitable way possible, it would seem like the first sentence is aimed at Walker and the Republicans in the legislature and the second at labor and the Democratic caucus. The third sentence, however, is ambiguous given the scope of the audience. To which difficult decisions are the bishops referring? Does it reference the decision of the "Wisconsin 14" to stand up for the workers and remain out of the state despite Walker's harassment through the state police and threats to workers? Or does it reference the "financial crisis" that was the pretext to this and the decisions that it presents to the state as a whole?
That confusion carries over to the next paragraph, which is where I start to have big, big problems with the statement.
We agree that there are serious financial challenges before us all. Our consciences demand that we earnestly defend the rights and the dignity of the weakest and poorest among us. We hope you will seek to do the same.
As a Democrat, I often find myself thinking and saying that the Democrats seem to have forgotten what it means to be a Democrat. This paragraph makes me start to think the same thing about progressive Lutherans.
Luther and the Lutheran tradition have never been accused of being too timid or polite, for good reason. Luther's exchanges with Erasmus read like a Don Rickles set. The popular image of the man is of an angry German literally nailing points of disagreement to a door. When faced with torture and death for standing up for his beliefs, instead of recanting, Luther uttered these words: “Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen!” We have never been known for doing anything other than speaking our minds, whether that was a smart move or not. In that spirit, let me offer the following.
Walker's claims to a financial emergency and subsequent claims that such an emergency gives him a pretext to ask for what he is asking are bullshit. They are complete and utter bullshit. Prior to his victory in the gubernatorial election, Wisconsin was one of the very few states that was not facing a revenue problem in the wake of the market meltdown and unemployment crisis. So, to give himself the pretext the Republican Party as a whole is using to justify austerity measures and union busting, he created a financial emergency with massive tax cuts. He has a history of doing this and we should not pretend this conflict rests on a point of legitimate disagreement.
Sometimes, being nice, blunted, and impartial is neither appropriate nor affordable. Sometimes, fidelity to what is true, just, and right requires us to be assholes. Luther understood this. It's time progressive Lutherans did as well.