Book Of Concord

Refugees rising

This year's Concord Reads book is Outcasts United by Warren St. John. It follows last year's Concord Reads selections, two books by Firoozeh Dumas, in the loose theme of newcomers to this country. But unlike Firoozeh Dumas, the young heroes of Outcasts United find very little to laugh about in this country.

Flying from their war-ravaged homelands to the dusty outskirts of Atlanta, the boys are true outcasts. They have arrived in Clarkston, Ga., often with only one parent and sometimes with none. Young teenagers, they cook and care for their younger siblings like junior adults and find that hiding from gunfire under their beds is still part of life.

Their salvation comes in the form of a woman holding a ball. That woman, Luma Mufleh, is the linchpin of the story. Mufleh, a wealthy Jordanian, chooses not to return to her home country after college at Smith. Instead, she finds herself opening a sandwich shop in her adopted hometown of Decatur, Ga. But, like many other residents of Atlanta, even Mufleh is unaware of the huge refugee community one town over. When her discovery of an ethnic grocery store takes her into Clarkston, Mufleh discovers her calling. Missing the turn to the store, Mufleh comes across a parking lot game of soccer that changes her life.

It was the United Nations of soccer. Clarkston, a small, sleepy, Southern town had become home to thousands of refugees through the machinations of World Relief and the International Rescue Committee. Clarkston, with plenty of apartments and proximity to jobs in the megalopolis of Atlanta, became the new home to people from Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq. St. John describes the dreary Clarkston apartment complexes far differently from the iconic dream of America. And every day boys spilled out of their Spartan apartments to play the universal game that requires no special equipment, not even shoes.

After watching the parking lot soccer game, Mufleh turns up later with a new soccer ball and slowly gains the trust of the players and their families. The one soccer game leads to a soccer organization that includes tutoring for the boys and jobs for their mothers.

It is inspirational to read about Mufleh's patient work with the children, their families and the bureaucrats. Although the movie rights to this story have been sold, this is no Hollywood tale of quick glamour and happy endings. Mufleh devotes her life to the boys and their families at the expense of all else, but she takes it one step at a time. One of her greatest hurdles is finding a grassy field for practice. The irrational efforts of Clarkston's mayor to keep any refugees from using the public fields draws the attention of the press and of the author, St. John.

4th Annual Conference of the Augsburg Confession – Necessary Roughness

Annual Conference of the Augsburg Confession . The conference was Friday evening and Saturday, but I could only make the Saturday activities.

After Divine Service the Rev. Dr. Larry Rast, President of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN, spoke all morning on “The Impact of the German Confessional Revival on the Origins of the LCMS.”  The title may cause some eyes to glaze over, but Dr. Rast did an excellent job with the presentation. Some of the more significant (and highly condensed) points included:

The first Lutherans to hit the North American continent didn’t follow the Lutheran confessions. They used Luther’s Small Catechism until they could write one they thought was better. Many of these formed the General Synod of 1820 and founded the first Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg, PA. Due to geography and difficulties in transportation, 58 Lutheran church bodies formed in the span of 35 years, and by 1900 there were over 100.  German Lutherans formerly under state church were highly fragmented in no-state-church America. David Henkel, son of the Rev. Paul Henkel, founded the Tennessee Synod, which was the first synod in America to subscribe to the Augsburg Confession. Henkel would begin printing the entire Book of Concord in English in 1851 — four years after the founding of what would now be the LCMS. The Works of David Henkel are a fascinating read, according to Rast, who wrote the forward. Charles Porterfield Krauth studied at Gettysburg but felt the entire Book of Concord needed to be retained.  What was truth in 1580 is still truth today. Rast summarized The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology by saying Krauth felt that it was more important to know what of the Christian faith has been retained than to know what whas overthrown.

During lunch I asked Dr. Rast if the LCMS was the first synod to subscribe to the entire Book of Concord. Two years prior to the LCMS founding, the “Buffalo Synod” also subscribed to the entire Book of Concord, but a personality dispute between C. F. W. Walther and the Buffalo Synod’s J. A. A. Grabau caused the Buffalo Synod to join the old American Lutheran Church which eventually became part of what is now the ELCA.

In the afternoon, three speakers presented on a different article from the Augsburg Confession.

The Rev. Terry Cripe, President of the Ohio District of the LCMS, spoke on Article V, the Ministry. Pr. Cripe had the material to make an interesting subject: how the understanding of the Office of the Holy Ministry has varied from early Christianity through the Augsburg Confession to today’s ideas. Unfortunately, having no handouts or visual aids to help me understand how things changed along the way, I found the presentation difficult to follow.  At issue were whether the duties listed in Ephesians 4 had all been collapsed over time into one pastoral office or whether these were still different roles with their own duties.