May 2004
Sodomy and the ELCA
“Gay marriage” may be on the political back burner for the moment, as Karl Rove is busy crafting phrases that will appease Christian-conservative Bush backers this fall while appealing to homosexual swing-voters with promises of “civil unions” (a.k.a. legalized “gay marriage”). In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (ELCA), however, the pot is fixing to boil.
The ELCA was founded in 1986 as a result of a merger of several formerly ethnic Lutheran synods in the United States as well as a splinter group that left the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod after an attempt to turn the LCMS liberal failed. From the beginning, the ELCA has been distinguished by a professed loyalty to Scripture and the Lutheran confessions that can be set aside freely whenever the need arises.
Cultural Suicide—May 2004
PERSPECTIVE
Cultural Suicide
by Thomas Fleming
Multiculturalism and Western self-loathing.
VIEWS
America in Europe, Europe in America
by Claude Polin
A shared disease.
Europe and America
by Srdja Trifkovic
Identity of decrepitude.
Dreams of Old Places
by Anthony Bukoski
A personal essay.
Helping U.S. Manufacturing
The U.S. economy has shown strong signs of a turn-around. The President’s tax cuts have helped Americans turn an important corner. Many parts of our economy have regained their strength and have surged ahead with new vitality.
However, too many Americans need jobs. Many of these jobs have gone overseas, the result of outsourcing and offshoring trends seeking cheap labor.
Cultural Suicide
Tonight, dear friends, is the eve of the Feast of Albertus Magnus. “Who he?” would be the response of most people who have gone to school since the end of World War II. Names like Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, Cicero and Cato, Alfred the Great and the Venerable Bede, while they may echo distantly in the memories of those of us who have reached the age of 50, will probably ring no bells in the minds of our children.
What did your kids learn in school today? Certainly nothing about Albertus Magnus or Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae or Scipio Africanus and his gallant defense of Rome against the child-murdering Carthaginians. They would have been even less likely to hear about Charles Martel, who drove the infidel Moors back into Spain, or the ragtag Christian army of John Hunyadi, St. John Capistrano, and Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula, that drove the Turks back from Belgrade in one of the most glorious moments of Western history. What American under 60 can say what took place at Lepanto or Cowpens or the Alamo or Guadalcanal?
