Staying the Course
Recently, an old Christian friend sent me a message, an “Are you staying the course?” type of message. We attended Luther theological seminary together back in the 1950’s. By “staying the course” he meant are you still believing in the same One Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible?
We’ve been reading many of the same articles concerning our allegiance to Christianity, Lutheran style. I had just finished reading an article by Brad East published in 2025, entitled Goldilocks Protestantism focusing on the demise of Protestantism of which Lutherans are, which he sent to me.
I chanced upon another article entitled Is Protestantism Really Going Extinct?, by Bruce Hillman. Hillman concludes that Protestants are not declining, they just remain who they have been—10-12 % of global Christianity.
What defines this faithful few Hillman says, is their preservation and promulgation of the doctrines and dogmas of the Protestant heritage: the high view of Scripture, the importance of creeds and confessions, the role of the will in salvation, and the proper preaching and teaching of the gospel. That is what we were taught back in the 1950’s at the seminary.
Philip Gleason, from Notre Dame, has written an interesting article entitled The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity.
The old religion he refers to is the Protestantism Hillman refers to as: preservation and promulgation of the doctrines and dogmas of the Protestant heritage: the high view of Scripture . . . Gleason, an authority on church history, historians respect, points to the fact that religion in the United States has become Americanized. Races became a religious issue, as well as gender. There was the influx of Muslims, Buddhists, genders and other ideologies, Americanizing religion by giving them equal billing, too.
In his book The Old Religion in a New World,Mark Noll writes that Christianity has always been influenced by culture; that is the reason churches have been moving away from “institutional thinking” [Catholic, Protestant] and emphasizing individual beliefs and ideological alignments giving rise to non-denominational churches more evangelistic/Pentecostal in nature.
In the community in which we now live non-denominational churches appear everywhere. American individualism bends evangelistically inclined ideology to forms of revisionism. Individual ideology refers to a person’s personal set of beliefs, values, and principles that guide their understanding of the world and their place within it. These ideologies can encompass various aspects of their life, including personal values, political views, assumptions about human nature, that shape their belief systems, Gleason writes.
Regardless,I cannot wipe from my spirit and my mind what Hillman writes concerning what it means to be a Protestant/Lutheran: a promulgation of the doctrines and dogmas of the Protestant heritage: the high view of Scripture, the importance of creeds and confessions, the role of the will in salvation, and the proper preaching and teaching of the gospel. Goodness gracious, this is what we were taught back in the 1950’s at the seminary. In fact it was what I was taught to believe in Zion Lutheran Church back in the 1930’s and the 40’s before Lutheranism became Americanized.
In the gospel for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost, August 24th, the year 2025, this Jesus who is the way the truth and the life, who never changes, tells us that He is the door to a whole new way of living while we are here, and is preparing us for heaven to be with Him there forever—regardless of where we live now, in the mountains of Switzerland, off the coast of Spain, in the lands of Alaska or the prairies of North Dakota.
