Another example of mainline denominational corporate confession comes from the German Lutheran Church. At the end of World War II, in October 1945, the newly formed United Evangelical Lutheran Church, under the influence of one of its leaders, the prominent anti-Nazi theologian and pastor, Rev. Dr. Martin Niemöller, who had resisted the Nazis alongside the famous Christian martyr, Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, issued the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt (Stuttgarter Schulderklärung). In the Stuttgart Confession, the German Lutheran church identified with and confessed the corporate guilt of the German people for the widespread suffering perpetrated by the former Nazi government with words like the following:
With great pain we say: Through us unending suffering has been brought upon many nations and countries. . . . Now a new beginning should be made in our churches.
Apparently the Lutheran denominational leadership felt such identificational repentance was in keeping with their theological understanding of Christian confession. This kind of corporate confession of national guilt has been articulated and discussed over the past decades by German theologians like Dr. Martin Honecker and Dr. Gerhard Besier, as well as by German New Testament scholars like Dr. Bertold Klappert of the University of Göttingen.
Source: Stuttgart Confession of Guilt - As quoted by Dr. Gary S. Greig, The Biblical Foundations of Identificational Repentance as One Prayer Pattern Useful to Advance God's Kingdom and Evangelism, April 2001
Advocating for a Slave
Philemon, if you consider me a partner in Christ, I ask you to welcome Onesimus back home as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it all to me. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay you back everything that Onesimus owes you—not to mention that you owe me your very life.
Source: Paul - Philemon 17-19 (IEB)
Humbly Looking Into Our Sordid Past
I am convinced that the deep collective wounds of Canada, the US, Guatemala, and indeed all of the Americas, cannot be healed without humbly looking into our sordid past, and seeking sincere and life-transfiguring reconciliation with the African-American community, and with the Native Peoples of our continents.
Source: Nate Bacon - Ministry newsletter on 1 Sept 2017
Go See Them For Yourself
I’ve visited the Bruderhof in the Hudson River Valley, and found warm hospitality. If you live in the NYC area, I strongly advise you to go up the Hudson and see them for yourself; they welcome visitors. As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, my religious beliefs are rather different from their Anabaptist creed, but nobody tried to proselytize me. They were just generous and open-hearted.
Source: Rod Dreher - "With the Bruderhof", Daily Dreher eNewsletter, 11 Dec 2020
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/with-the-bruderhof
ECT
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium" (ECT) is the title of a programmatic statement composed by eight Protestants (leader, Charles Colson) and seven Roman Catholics (leader, Richard John Neuhaus) and endorsed by 12 more Protestants and 13 more Roman Catholics. It appeared in the journal "First Things" in May of this year and, shortened, in the Spring edition of "Touchstone."
Source: J.I. Packer - Christianity Today, "Why I Signed It. Part 1.", 12 Dec 1994, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1994/december12/4te34a.html?start=4
Rita & her sister
Rita’s younger sisters lived in the area. Rita took a long-shot chance and reached out to her for a visit. Her sister took a long-shot chance and said yes. That began a difficult and honest adult process of mutual repentance, forgiveness, and understanding. At that time, little did we know that seven or eight years later we would be moving to Texas, literally twenty minutes from where her sister lived! Thirty years of alienation, erased! A sister and a friend recovered, plus geographic proximity!
Source: Dr. Stephen R. Crosby - "Confessions of a Christian Idiot", Reprinted from Christianity Without the Religion Magazine - February 2019
https://stevecrosby.org/christian-unity/confessions-of-a-christian-idiot
Mass Lynching of Italian-Americans
The largest mass lynching in US history killed 11 Italians in New Orleans in 1891. And now an Italian-American group says [New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell] is set to offer a first-ever apology to Italian-Americans for the city's role in the lawless murders.
…
Mike Santo, who serves as special counsel for the commission, said he'd become aware of the lynching a few years ago, realizing how the 1891 lynching was a "longstanding wound" for the Italian-American community.
He said the commission got in touch with the mayor, who was amenable to the proposal, and his group has been coordinating for weeks with a liaison in the mayor's office to get the proclamation written.
He praised Cantrell, calling her the "right woman at the right time" to step up and acknowledge a darker aspect of her city's history.
"It takes a lot of nerve to do that," Santo said. "People want to see that, especially today."
He said he personally felt the pending proclamation was "refreshing." On behalf of Italian-Americans more broadly, he said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
Source: Ryan Prior - "128 years later, New Orleans is apologizing for lynching 11 Italians", CNN, 1 April 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/us/new-orleans-mayor-apologizes-italian-americans-trnd/index.html
A Catholic & A Jew (and the Catholic is ... Tolkien)
This dwarf-elf alliance may well be a paradigm of a Jewish-Christian friendship. Interestingly, as Saks and others have noted, Tolkien’s correspondence during World War II reveals that he himself fell into an unplanned interfaith friendship. Too old to serve in the war, he was asked at Oxford to serve on air-raid duty, keeping watch in order to alert denizens of the university town if there was a bombing and they needed to seek shelter. While on duty, he was paired with one of the most esteemed Jewish historians and Zionists then in Britain. Tolkien wrote:
I was in the small C33 room: very cold and damp. But an incident occurred which moved me and made the occasion memorable. My companion in misfortune was Cecil Roth (the learned Jew historian). I found him charming, full of gentleness (in every sense); and we sat up till after 12 talking. He lent me his watch as there were no going clocks in the place: —and nonetheless himself came and called me at 10 to 7: so that I could go to Communion! It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world. Actually I was awake, and just (as one does) discovering a number of reasons (other than tiredness and having no chance to shave or even wash), such as the desirability of getting home in good time to open up and un-black and all that, why I should not go. But the incursion of this gentle Jew, and his somber glance at my rosary by my bed, settled it. I was down at St Aloysius at 7.15 just in time to go to Confession before Mass.
Source: Meir Soloveichik - The Secret Jews of The Hobbit, Commentary Magazine, 11 August 2016, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-secret-jews-of-the-hobbit/
Benedictine @ Fuller
“I’m so grateful that an evangelical seminary [Fuller] received a Catholic Benedictine brother,” he says. “The way I was loved and cared for and inspired and encouraged and challenged—my goodness! I wouldn’t replace it with anything else.”
Source: Michael Wright - https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/a-voice-from-narnia/
Peter Kreeft
Then one summer, on the beach at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I read St. John of the Cross. I did not understand much of it, but I knew, with undeniable certainty, that here was reality, something as massive and positive as a mountain range. I felt as if I had just come out of a small, comfortable cave, in which I had lived all my life, and found that there was an unsuspected world outside of incredible dimensions. Above all, the dimensions were those of holiness, goodness, purity of heart, obedience to the first and greatest commandment, willing God's will, the one absolute I had discovered, at the age of eight. I was very far from saintly, but that did not prevent me from fascinated admiration from afar; the valley dweller appreciates the height of the mountain more than the dweller on the foothills. I read other Catholic saints and mystics, and discovered the same reality there, however different the style (even St. Thérèse "The Little Flower"!) I felt sure it was the same reality I had learned to love from my parents and teachers, only a far deeper version of it. It did not seem alien and other. It was not another religion but the adult version of my own.
Source: Peter Kreeft - Hauled aboard the Ark, http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/hauled-aboard.htm
Are we regressing emotionally?
Early in our childhood development we are often unable to self identify with more than one pole.
I experienced this with my own son when he was three. I would look him in the eye and say, “I love you so much buddy,” and he would respond, “I ONLY love momma. I don’t love you. I just love momma.” After putting my heart back together, I would gently respond, “You can love us both,” and he would respond, “I can only love momma.” This went on for nine months, but eventually a couple neurons somewhere in his cute little head fused together to permit him to say I love you to both of us.
Carl Jung explains that this phenomenon can continue through adulthood, causing us to relate primarily in either/or categories.
I’m convinced our adult civilization is regressing emotionally.
We slide back to childhood when we particularly dislike something about a people group (progressives or conservatives) and deem it necessary to find ways to accumulate a burning mound of facts about why we should hate “them.” Polarization is not a result of intellectual enlightenment or informed thinking; it is a result of emotional regression.
To sign up for Jesus and join his movement is to take on the mature work of integrating differing poles rather than regressing into either/or categories.
Source: Dan White - "When Clinton and Bush go to church … together", V3 Church Planting Movement, Jan 2017, http://thev3movement.org/2017/01/when-clinton-and-bush-go-to-church/
From Ann Cogdell
The process of praying prayers of identificational repentance is both humbling and necessarily cleansing—looking at the sin of another or a grievous event of history, I felt that my eyes needed to be purified so that I could look with care rather than point the finger; but looking carefully, I realize that there are similar tendencies in me and I begin to feel compassion instead. It was a new thought for me to realize that I’m standing alongside the ones or the situation I’m praying for. I found it difficult to feel free to weep in the public setting of lament, though I often weep in private over things that grieve me. So, I was challenged because one of the things that draws me to Jesus is that He is deepIy free—well, I want to be more like Jesus.
Source: Ann Cogdell - Report to Christ Church Anglican in Waco, 4 Sept. 2016 (written draft)
The Substance of My Ministry
I saw clearly how forgiveness was the substance of my ministry. Without it, my ministry would die.
Source: David du Plessis - From "A Man Called Mr. Pentecost", as told to Bob Slosser, Ch. 18, p. 170
New Mexico Prays!
Vince Torres, Executive Pastor at the Blaze Christian Fellowship, explains it this way, "What happened Sunday was nothing short of historic. Watching Catholics and Protestants come together in worship and prayer to our God was so powerful and unlike anything I have ever witnessed at our state capitol. The gathering served as proof that the gospel message of Jesus Christ has the power to transcend denominations and even politics. It was such an honor to be part of it. To God be all the glory."
Source: Vince Torres - Vince Torres, Executive Pastor at the Blaze Christian Fellowship, quoted by Brian Alarid in "Christians Make History With Worship Event at New Mexico State Capitol", Charisma News, 7 March 2017, http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/63470-is-this-historic-worship-gathering-part-of-james-goll-s-prophesied-west-coast-rumble
John Dawson's Father
My dad’s last admonition to me before he died was to focus on the restored unity of the Church, so in spite of my huge responsibilities in Youth With A Mission, The International Reconciliation Coalition and its repentance prayer initiatives remain a significant priority when expending our limited time and energy.
Source: John Dawson - Personal intercessory email, 13 Dec 2017
Killers of the Flower Moon
And I would say this. I spoke with some of the descendants of the husband of Mollie Burkhart and the uncle who was one of the masterminds of the plot, and they were remarkably candid, and after I finished the book I received a note from one of the descendants, who said "I'm so ashamed that this is part of our history, and please if you see the Osage will you please tell them that."
Source: David Grann - David Grann, author of "Killers of the Flower Moon", quoted in "In The 1920s, A Community Conspired To Kill Native Americans For Their Oil Money", Morning Edition, NPR, 17 April 2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/04/17/523964584/in-the-1920s-a-community-conspired-to-kill-native-americans-for-their-oil-money
Perspective
In his book, The Vision and The Vow, Pete Greig tells of how a distinguished art critic was studying an exquisite painting by the Italian Renaissance master Filippino Lippi. He stood in London’s National Gallery gazing at the fifteenth-century depiction of Mary holding the infant Jesus on her lap, with saints Dominic and Jerome kneeling nearby. But the painting troubled him. There could be no doubting Lippi’s skill, his use of colour or composition. But the proportions of the picture seemed slightly wrong. The hills in the background seemed exaggerated, as if they might topple out of the frame at any minute onto the gallery’s polished floor. The two kneeling saints looked awkward and uncomfortable.
Art critic Robert Cumming was not the first to criticise Lippi’s work for its poor perspective, but he may well be the last to do so, because at that moment he had a revelation. It suddenly occurred to him that the problem might be his. The painting he was analysing with clinical objectivity was not just another piece of religious art hanging in a gallery alongside other comparative works. It had never been intended to come anywhere near a gallery. Lippi’s painting had been commissioned to hang in a place of prayer.
Self-consciously, the dignified critic dropped to his knees in the public gallery before the painting. He suddenly saw what generations of art critics had missed. From his new vantage point, Robert Cumming found himself gazing up at a perfectly proportioned piece. The foreground had moved naturally to the background, while the saints seemed settled – their awkwardness, like the painting itself, having turned to grace. Mary now looked intently and kindly directly at him as he knelt at her feet between saints Dominic and Jerome.
It was not the perspective of the painting that had been wrong all these years, it was the perspective of the people looking at it. Robert Cumming, on bended knee, found a beauty that Robert Cumming the proud art critic could not. The painting only came alive to those on their knees in prayer. The right perspective is the position of worship.
Source: Nicky & Pippa Gumbel - As quoted in Bible App, commentary for 29 July 2016
The Anglican Church Repents for Antisemitism
Christians are to blame for centuries of antisemitism which led to the Holocaust and prejudice in modern politics, the Church of England has said, offering its “repentance”.
In an unprecedented 100-page report, the church confesses that “Christians have been guilty of promoting and fostering negative stereotypes of Jewish people that have contributed to grave suffering and injustice”, dating to when early Christians blamed Jews for the death of Jesus.
...
The report, entitled God’s Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian-Jewish Relations, has been backed by the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who writes in a foreword: “Too often in history the church has been responsible for and colluded in antisemitism and the fact that antisemitic language and attacks are on the rise across the UK and Europe means we cannot be complacent.”
Source: Kaya Burgess - "Church of England offers mea culpa on antisemitism", November 21 2019, 12:01am, The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/church-of-england-offers-mea-culpa-on-antisemitism-h22wtlrcl
Walk of Shame - NOT!
It would be very easy to change the organization’s name from March of Life to Walk of Shame. But Anna Reiner and her young friends are willing to swear that it’s not the shame which makes them learn the words of “Hatikva” and perform in front of 100 elderly people in Netanya.
“It’s the responsibility,” she explains. “I am the descendant of Nazi criminals, and I am responsible for this matter and for making sure that it doesn’t happen again. Before I knew all this information about my family, I had no interest in the Holocaust. Today, I am breaking the silence. It’s important to talk about it and not to forget.”
Source: Anna Reiner - Quoted by Itay Ilnai in "Nazis’ descendants sing ‘Hatikva’ to Holocaust survivors", Ynet News, 6 Jan 2017, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4902914,00.html
LaTasha Morrison
When it launched in 2015, Be the Bridge’s Facebook group had about 69 members. Today, the online community fostering racial reconciliation is more than 21,000-strong, with more than 1,000 groups in 48 states.
The nonprofit was tapped in September to receive up to $1 million in grants by Facebook’s inaugural Community Leadership Program, which also awarded Morrison and four other global leaders a residency.
...She describes Be the Bridge as a ministry and the organization’s successes as guided by God. Yet, when she presented Be the Bridge at a Facebook summit, Morrison was unsure if she should identify it as a faith-based organization.
“But they (Facebook) really wanted me to name it,” she said. “I thought that was just incredible, that they wanted me to name it.”
She said that the consultant Facebook had her work with at the time encouraged her to bring her “full self” to the table.
“That impacted me, that there’s an organization that doesn’t claim that they’re a Christian organization or anything like that, but they wanted me to bring my full self when there are Christian organizations and churches that I cannot step in and be my full self. I thought that was incredible,” Morrison said.
According to Facebook, Morrison and her fellow residents have “demonstrated the ability to transform the way people support each other through community.”
Source: Nicola A. Menzie - "‘Be the Bridge’ fosters dialogue between black and white Christians", Baptist Standard, March 19, 2019
https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/faith-culture/bridge-fosters-dialogue-black-white-christians/