"Church and Continuity" Conference Review: Why is this Happening to Us? How the culture wars become religious wars among us – by Mr. Douglas Lindee

Conference of Intrepid Lutherans: Church and Continuity ~ June 1-2, 2012
Bethlehem Lutheran Church ~ Oshkosh, WI
Why is this Happening to Us?
How the culture wars become religious wars among us
by Mr. Douglas L. Lindee, Jr.
On June 2, 2012, I delivered the paper, Why is this Happening to Us? How the culture wars become religious wars among us, to the first annual Conference of Intrepid Lutherans: Church and Continuity. The title of the paper is not answered directly in the paper, but indirectly. To the extent that the World, as one of the Christian's great enemies, wages war against Christians, worms its way into the Church and induces compromise, culture wars have always resulted in some sort of religious contention. Being watchful for such compromise means, among other things, having a clear historical perspective as a basis for living out the present. This rationale is explicated in the introduction and reinforced in the conclusion, with the body of the essay split into two sections demonstrating the necessity of watchfulness, the first section focusing on the original "Crisis of of Word" – the early composition of the inspired texts, their collection into the Canon of Scripture, their use in the early defense of orthodoxy, and their faithful preservation and transmission to us in contemporary times – and the second section focusing on the history of the times surrounding the Early Church, and how, despite having the Word, cultural pressures resulted in compromise and error which became so deep-rooted that much of it remains unshaken even to this day. That is, a having of the Word did not, and does not, translate to a keeping of it. Keeping the Word by maintaining vigilance against error, is necessarily an historical task employed to detect change in the culture surrounding the Church of today in order to keep the World from invading and changing the Church. From the paper:

History teaches us at least two things... First, that the world or worldliness are the enemies of the Church; second, how, ultimately, the world has exerted its corrupting influence: by pressuring and goading the church into compromise. This paper will endeavor to show, by giving somewhat detailed examples from specific periods of social upheaval in the early history of the West, both that the world had conducted itself as the enemy of Christ and His Church and how its influence wormed its way into the church and induced it to compromise. Such will suggest that the same is occurring today, in our post-Modern era, the period of social upheaval in which we have been placed by God to contend for the faith. Whether this paper succeeds in these primary endeavors, the author will admit to a secondary endeavor: to equip the reader with apologetic facts and sources that will aid him in his own defense of the faith.

The two middle sections of this paper represent a sampling of research and historical facts I have collected since about 2005, perhaps with the lofty goal of an eventual publication that no one will ever read. The content of the essay is not original or unique by any means, as attested by the number of Endnotes (many people have collected these same facts and written on these same topics, though perhaps not with the same use and purpose I have), nor was it written with the clergyman in mind, as I expect that every competent pastor daily lives with such facts in the forefront of his mind. Rather, I wrote and documented as I did for the sake of today's laity, who is largely ignorant of such things, using the topic as a pretense to also "equip [the lay reader] with apologetic facts and sources that will aid him in his own defense of the faith." Finally, it should be noted that the paper linked above is slightly revised from the paper handed out at the Conference. Discussion following my delivery prompted me to add five explanatory endnotes to the main essay and expand a handful of others in both the main essay and in Appendix A, and to add a couple of quotations to the body of Appendix A. Otherwise, the revised body of the essay includes only minor grammatical changes.


Conference of Intrepid Lutherans: Church and Continuity ~ June 1-2, 2012
Bethlehem Lutheran Church ~ Oshkosh, WI
Why is this Happening to Us?
How the culture wars become religious wars among us
by Mr. Douglas L. Lindee, Jr.
The video above was taken as I read the paper at the Conference on June 2, 2012. The sound quality is admittedly wanting, but it is audible. I should explain that near the end I sound a note of slight exasperation... Unfortunately, the previous session had gone ever by about 20 minutes, and with lunch following my presentation, I had a hard-stop. The result was a loss of about 25% of the time I had expected to have for delivering the paper. In fact, at one point in the presentation, I had to pause for a minute to determine on the fly how I was going to redact and summarize the entire second section of my paper. Ach du lieber! Oh well, lessons learned for next time... At least all the content is recorded in print!

The remaining three presentations will be posted through next week – I have it on fairly good authority that the audio of those presentation is much better!