I believe that you have acted wisely in not deserting the Church of your Baptism and Confirmation for another obedience. In my experience there is nothing to which a Christian can legitimately aspire in any other communion that is not implicit in the Church of the Augsburg Confession. If, at a particular time or in a particular place, that which he seeks is not explicit, it may be that God has called him to that time and place in order patiently to recover something that the Church of the Augsburg Confession has lost or neglected or overlooked. Let me counsel you therefore to stay where you are and faithfully to pray, to study, to witness and to work for a restoration of sacramental life to the Church that above all others is capable of most fully utilizing it. -- A. C. Piepkorn, written in December of 1952 to a student who had thought about leaving Lutheranism for Anglicanism. Copyright © 2006 American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. Reprinted with permission. Lutheran Forum, 40:3 (Una Sancta/Fall 2006): 48-55. www.alpb.org. (Thanks to Dr. Secker for sending me the article)
18 November 2009
Piepkorn Goodie
I believe that you have acted wisely in not deserting the Church of your Baptism and Confirmation for another obedience. In my experience there is nothing to which a Christian can legitimately aspire in any other communion that is not implicit in the Church of the Augsburg Confession. If, at a particular time or in a particular place, that which he seeks is not explicit, it may be that God has called him to that time and place in order patiently to recover something that the Church of the Augsburg Confession has lost or neglected or overlooked. Let me counsel you therefore to stay where you are and faithfully to pray, to study, to witness and to work for a restoration of sacramental life to the Church that above all others is capable of most fully utilizing it. -- A. C. Piepkorn, written in December of 1952 to a student who had thought about leaving Lutheranism for Anglicanism. Copyright © 2006 American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. Reprinted with permission. Lutheran Forum, 40:3 (Una Sancta/Fall 2006): 48-55. www.alpb.org. (Thanks to Dr. Secker for sending me the article)
There were people in 1952 considering leaving the LCMS for Anglicanism? :)
ReplyDeleteThat was poor grammar...
ReplyDeleteIn 1952 there were people considering leaving the LCMS for Anglicanism? :)
That's better...
There was a person so considering at any rate. I'm not aware if he was alone. There were others who were looking across the Tiber that he also wrote to.
ReplyDeleteWilliam,
ReplyDeleteI assume you have posted this because you consider it sage advice. Would you agree with the first statement in an unqualified manner?
"I believe that you have acted wisely in not deserting the Church of your Baptism and Confirmation for another obedience."
Of course, though I think I know where you're headed. He means the particular Church in and through whose ministry you received Holy Baptism and were Confirmed in the faith; not that a person who abandons the Lutheran confession to embrace the Anglican one thereby departs from the Una Sancta.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine who graduated from Augustana Seminary in Rock Island in 1954 told me that there was a degree of movement into the Episcopal Church by Augustana Synod seminarians and young pastors in the 1950s. He himself, in a moment of discouragement, went to meet the PECUSA Bishop of Chicago at that time, Dr. Burrill, but the bishop seemed so uninterested in and unconcerned with doctrinal matters, that he abandoned forever any thought of becoming Anglican. (He "poped" 25 years later; Burrill died only a few years ago, in his late 90s, and in his last decades fully accepted WO.)
ReplyDeleteDr. Tighe,
ReplyDeleteI suppose that makes sense given the rather close ties between the Church of Sweden and the Church of England during that time and since.
I went to Winkel today. I needed to hear this. Thanks.
ReplyDelete