Sola, Sola, Sola

The latest unsolicited installment of the Word Alone "Network News" came sometime back between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which meant I didn't have time to look at it until more recently, which at least spared our secretary from my usual post-reading rant for a while.

What I found most interesting in this one was the announcement that Word Alone is launching its own publishing house, called Sola Publishing. I don't know why this surprises me, they've already held their own youth gatherings, started their own House of Studies, have their own call process that circumvents the ELCA's - clearly, Augsburg Fortress is too enmeshed in the ELCA's "liberal agenda" to produce decent resources, so why not start a Word Alone publishing house as well?

The name is taken from the Reformation battle cries: Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura (Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Scripture Alone), which is all well and good and clever, except that when you remove Fide, Gratia, and Scriptura, all you're left with is ALONE.

Which is a crummy (not to mention, anti-body of Christ) thing to be.

And yet, it seems what the Word Alone folks are inevtiably heading for. Because already they are factioning off even further - there's Word Alone (allegedly a reform movement within the ELCA), there's Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ (churches that have already left the ELCA and formed their own national body), and according to the seniors I was talking to last spring, there's some new fangled Augustana synod for those who are ticked at Word Alone. And that's just the ones I know about. Who knows how many other fractions and factions are out there.

But that's the thing about being so terribly convinced of your own rightness and righteousness, is that you have to keep backing up and drawing another line in the sand to separate yourself from those who would compromise your dogma or your conscience. Live like that and it doesn't take long to find yourself boxed into a corner, utterly alone.

And the whole thing just makes me sad, because that's not at all what we as children of God are created or called or envisioned to be; it makes me sad because there are people within this movement, good people, people I once considered mentors and friends, who keep backing themselves away.

Sigh. . .

Sola Pax,
Catrina