Wake-Up Call: Our Theological Problem

On Monday, I wrote about the failure of the mainline denominations in standing up against the evils of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and greed that put Donald Trump on the ballot and will put him in the White House come January.

Philadelphia seminarian Lenny Duncan takes the ELCA to task for our failures. In taking a magnifying glass to the electoral map, he points out:

I’m not surprised because as a Black man I have lived in Donald Trump’s America since I was a child. I have been preparing for Tuesday since I taught myself to read.
A mantra I often use in regards to my work with the #decolonizelutheranism movement is that “the problem is not sociological, it is theological.” I stand by that now.
Here is your wake-up call.
The area’s that won this demagogue the day were overwhelmingly ELCA Lutheran strongholds. The path to 270 and beyond marched right through the heart of the Augsburg Confessions and wore the red cover of an ELW as it marched up to the voting booth. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the crumbled “blue firewall.”

But Christ is ever at work in the world. God's Kingdom is continuing to erupt into the cosmos, despite the Church's repeated failures. This beloved seminarian points out that the Church does its best work when we're on the margins of society:

The hope. Where is the hope for us than?
The church has always flourished when it was counter cultural. When it was in resistance to the empire.
The hope is that you are seeing America clearly for the first time in a long time. The hope is that same brown man who was executed stood up three days later and shifted the entire universe.
The hope is you were anointed, called to a time such as this. Republics have fallen. Kings pass away.
Empires crumble. The church has stood throughout it all. The first step is we need to challenge what it means to be a Christian and a Christian leader. The next is we organize, we resist. Lastly we need each other so desperately right now. People gather in community because when we gather in the name of God something deep down inside each and every one of us gets fixed. Set right and renewed. 

Read his full article here.