Outer Rim Territories

Pro-Life Rally and the Religious Community involvement

My comments to the Divine mysteries post got me thinking about another topic. Well, actually this has been rattling around in my mind for the better part of the week. You might call this my 4th (or is it 5th?) post on Augsburg Confession, Article XVI... I went to a pro-life rally here in Fort Wayne on Saturday with the kids. Dr. Alveda King (neice of MLK Jr.) was the keynote. We also heard from others including Congressman Souder. The Seminary had I'm guessing 7 faculty with many students in attendance. Overall perhaps 1500 people attended the rally at the Scottish Rite auditorium and then marched to the US Federal Court building about a mile away. Last week I queried a couple groups of classmates with a question: "Would you as pastor wear your collar to the event?" I received mixed answers. The general agreement was that this was a civil event and not part of the pastoral function, so no collar was the preferred garb. Humorously, those faculty predicted to not wear collars, did... and those who we were sure would, did not! There was an altar call of sorts for the final prayer led by the pastors in the audience which the staff participated in. No, this was not questionable like Yankee Stadium. The rally did often resemble a Baptist church service with Gospel singing and Bible verses but there weren't pretenses of non-Trinitarian prayer. To the point, AC:XVI specifically speaks against abstaining from the political spectrum as Christians. As well, as Christians we can hold office, etc. What is not spoken to and is completely absent from that article is pastors participating in civil events whether in the name of the church or not. I wonder about this whole collar thing. Can pastors participate in name of the church without their congregation's support? Or are we going to take an ontological view of the Office of the Holy Ministry, that regardless their very being is pastor and consequently they are pastor regardless whether the participating function is one of the Ministry or not? Ultimately on this issue of abortion, I believe we can make a strong rational argument against WITHOUT bringing faith in at all. Certainly we are compelled by faith to participate but should this faith play a part in our participation in a visible way, e.g. the collar? Should we resort to participation as citizens making compelling arguments of reason? Finally, could this participation with collar do more damage to the evangelism efforts of the church? Does it send a message of civil disobedience or overt brain-washed activism? Or is criticism as a result of our participation, collared or not, just the "cross bearing" life of a Christian? Chris