About Those Lutherans

You may not have given the Lutherans much thought lately. Most people haven’t, unless they happen to be Lutheran. It is a sizable community—in the neighborhood of ten million—and some readers wonder why I haven’t written about it here. After all, there have been columns on Roman Catholics, evangelicals, old-line Protestants, and other members of the denominational menagerie that is religion in America. And after all, I am a Lutheran.

Some may suspect me of being an ecumaniac. An ecumaniac is an ecumenical zealot who loves every church but his own. In truth, I rather like being a Lutheran. All in all, it is a sober and serious way of being a Christian, lightened by the pervasive awareness that-—at the beginning and the end, and at every point along the way—all is grace. I suppose one reason I haven’t written about the Lutherans here is that I wear another hat as editor of Lutheran Forum and give voice to my specifically Lutheran felicities and discontents there.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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You may not have given the Lutherans much thought lately. Most people haven’t, unless they happen to be Lutheran. It is a sizable community—in the neighborhood of ten million—and some readers wonder why I haven’t written about it here. After all, there have been columns on Roman Catholics, evangelicals, old-line Protestants, and other members of the denominational menagerie that is religion in America. And after all, I am a Lutheran.

Some may suspect me of being an ecumaniac. An ecumaniac is an ecumenical zealot who loves every church but his own. In truth, I rather like being a Lutheran. All in all, it is a sober and serious way of being a Christian, lightened by the pervasive awareness that-—at the beginning and the end, and at every point along the way—all is grace. I suppose one reason I haven’t written about the Lutherans here is that I wear another hat as editor of Lutheran Forum and give voice to my specifically Lutheran felicities and discontents there.