If you’re going to listen to Pete Seeger’s antiwar anthem, written in 1955 but made popular in the 60’s, listen to the Kingston Trio’s 1962 version. Songfacts.com says, “Pete Seeger wrote this song as a call for peace. He was inspired by Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel And Quiet Flows the Don, which is about Czarist Russia. In a 1988 interview with Paul Zollo, Seeger explained: ‘In one of the early chapters, it describes the Cossack soldiers galloping off to join the Czar’s army. And they’re singing: ‘Where are the flowers? The girls have plucked them. Where are the girls? They’ve all taken husbands. Where are the men? They’re all in the army. Gallop, gallop, gallop, wheeeee!’”
Leave it to a Russian do understand the bleak, despair that is the cyclical, inevitable nature of war in a fallen world. Russians make good conservative Lutherans. Where have all the resolutions gone that have tried to call back an erring Lutheran Church Missouri Synod for 50 years now? They all gone to Omnibus Resolutions. This is how the LCMS Addresses pressing theological matters. By not addressing them at all and referring back to what has already been decided.
This is from Today’s Business 2023:
Issues Addressed by Previous Convention(s)
2 OMNIBUS RESOLUTION B
3 WHEREAS, A number of issues have been presented through overtures to which the Synod, in convention, has
4 previously spoken; and
5 WHEREAS, After careful consideration of these matters, there appears to be insufficient rationale to change or alter
6 the stated position of the Synod; therefore be it
7 Resolved, That petitioners offering the following overtures be referred to previous convention action as indicated.
Overture Subject Previous Action
Ov. 5-39 To Reconsider Woman Suffrage in the Church 1995 Res. 3-05; 1986 Res. 3-09; 1969 Res. 2-17
Ov. 5-40 To Reconsider Woman Suffrage in the Church 1995 Res. 3-05; 1986 Res. 3-09; 1969 Res. 2-17
Ov. 5-41 To Reconsider Woman Suffrage in the Church 1995 Res. 3-05; 1986 Res. 3-09; 1969 Res. 2-17
Time and again I have referred to St. Kurt’s statement at the 2004 LCMS Synodical Convention when it was decided that the Synod was bound by previous decisions of the Commission on Constitutional Matters. Marquart said, “Then the Synod is no longer bound by the Word of God.”
This preeminent theological, professor, scholar said this 20 years ago. 30 years ago his ”Church Growth” As Mission Paradigm was published by Our Savior Lutheran, Houston. It is still available in a Luther Academy publication. It is a withering assault on the assumptions, theology, and reasoning behind the Church Growth Movement. But despite Marquart’s clarion call what an August 9, 1993 Newsweek article, of all things, said has come to pass. The article “…having noted that the mainline denominations may be dying from the loss of theological integrity, comments: ‘The only thing worse, perhaps, would be the rise of a new Protestant establishment that succeeds because it never had any’” (Marquart, 30).
The truth has been out there about the Order of Creation and while those of us who knew the truth fiddled sex, marriage, and sexuality burned down around us. We’ve known the truth about the Reformed, Evangelical assumptions and theology of Church Growth and while we fiddled with debating mediums verses methods, form and substance, adiaphora and doctrine: liturgical worship, congregations, and Concordia Colleges have burned to the ground. And if you don’t think the match has been struck at the seminaries, wake up and smell the Sulphur.
Where have all the faithful resolutions gone? To omnibus resolution graves where they have spouted many “winsome” people-pastors with no theological integrity and damn view faithful ones. And what side of this you are in is exposed by whether you care more about my saying “damn” then you do what I said about doctrine being buried.
