There was an online hullaballoo last week about the “sparkle creed” at a very progressive Lutheran church outside Minneapolis. Offered as a substitute for more traditional creeds, the clergywoman cited God as “nonbinary,” having “two dads”.
A Fox News segment reported on the sparkle creed as a “crisis” for Christianity. But no one needs to worry that Christian orthodoxy is seriously threatened by sparkle theology.
The cleric at Edina Community Lutheran Church cited her belief in the “rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.” What does that mean? Likely neither she nor the congregation that stood to join her could really explain.
The church’s website highlights the congregation’s advocacy for “LGBTQIA+, inclusion, racial justice and ecofaith.” It also cites immigration and “reproductive justice.” And it highlights misdeeds towards native peoples:
We acknowledge that Edina Community Lutheran Church is located on the traditional, ancestral and contemporary lands of the Dakhóta Oyáte*, the Dakota nation. Treaties developed through exploitation and violence were broken. Tribes were forced to exist on ever smaller amounts of land.
Acknowledging this painful history, we as a congregation confess our complicity in the theft of Native land and acknowledge that we have not yet honored our treaties. We further confess that Christians and Christian churches have benefited from this land theft. We commit to being active advocates for justice for Native People and to truth telling that leads to healing.
Do any native people attend Edina Community Lutheran Church? Most churches with native people tend to be more traditional and more focused on traditional Christian work, not the activism preferred by some white liberal Protestant churches. And the overall project of theological deconstruction almost entirely belongs to white progressives in fast declining Mainline Protestant denominations.
Theological progressives often herald their latest favorite fads as representing the inevitable future. And some dour traditionalists gladly collaborate in this prediction. After all, isn’t the world, and the church, constantly degenerating to ever new depths of depravity? And nothing can be done but complain!
But in truth, the progressive Protestant project of North America and Northwestern Europe is fast concluding. It abandoned orthodoxy early in the 20th century in favor of a cold modernism that rejected supernaturalism in favor of stern moral reform. That focus on science and rationality gave way to postmodern self-discovery and deconstruction, with obsession over self-identity, including race and ethnicity, but most especially of late sexuality and gender. One hundred years ago “God” was a metaphor for implementing egalitarian social justice. Now “God” is a projection for anxiety over self-actualization.
The audience for these trends was never sustainably large. Liberal Protestantism around the world began shrinking 60 or more years ago. Few regular people were interested in sermons about how Christ’s Resurrection was not really physical but poetic. Even fewer have time for a sexually confused “nonbinary” deity who’s busily apologizing for 1,000 years of Western Civilization. Most regular people harken to religion when it speaks to their basic spiritual needs about who they are, what they should do, and where they are going. Christianity typically thrives when it offers salvation, morality, and hope in a personal, active deity. Esoteric religious movements appeal to special niches of activists and intellectuals focused on specific contemporary situations. Such movements never represent the future. They don’t even represent the past. But they will always be with us in some form, even if in small numbers, experimenting, reacting, deconstructing, striving for ever new levels of self-knowledge.
There will always be “sparkle creeds” trying to displace more traditional creeds like the Nicene and Apostles Creed. Supposedly those ancient creeds are restrictive impositions, demanding that we believe what we really logically can’t. But they have endured for millennia because they claim a transcendent permanence outside of ourselves. Before we were, God is. We can’t define Him. He reveals Himself to us and defines us. Christ was not confused about His maleness. He had “two dads” who were/are God the Father and His stepfather Joseph. Importantly, He was birthed by a mother. The Virgin Mary was not confused about her gender. She was a woman and will always be the blessed mother of Jesus Christ. And He will always be the eternally begotten Son of the Father. We look with awe to these assertions surrounded by majesty and mystery. Many reject their claims, but these claims offer compelling cosmic insights that no version of a sparkle creed can ever approximate. In a few years, nobody will recall the sparkle creed. In one thousand years, millions still will recite the Nicene and Apostles Creeds.
The traditional creeds also offer what sparkle does not: redemption. Sparkle congregations must strive and agonize over thousands of years of injustice, for which there is no real remedy but constant apologies to which nobody is really listening. No member of the Dakota tribe, dead or alive, cares about the pleas for forgiveness from a Lutheran congregation. No BLM sign or march will compensate for slavery or segregation.
In contrast, the historic creeds offer a definitive gift: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” And “His kingdom will have no end.”
No amount of sparkle will ever compete with that claim.
Comment by Bill on July 7, 2023 at 5:46 pm
I showed a clip of that recitation to a layperson in my congregation. He likened it to a standup comedy routine. I suspect that secular people won’t even take it seriously. I would be curious to see the attendance stats for this congregation. I suspect, like other so-called Progressive churches, that it is in a rapid downward spiral.
Comment by Tom on July 7, 2023 at 5:49 pm
As others have said, the only true part of the title “Evangelical Lutheran Church in America” is that it is, in fact, located in America.
Comment by Amber on July 7, 2023 at 6:30 pm
Far be it from me to make any apology for such insanity, but I believe the “two dads” refers to Joseph and God the Father, not to some purported trans-ness of Mary.
Comment by Veronica surachinska on July 8, 2023 at 9:29 am
You should all be worried. I’m Ukrainian catholic and I watch our brothers in the novus ordo Latin catholic church and our faux pope moving further and further towards this kind of nonsense. And Whoever thought that holy laughter and angel dust would be found in hypercharismatic and Pentecostal churches? And a very big problem is that too many evangelical churches don’t even read the nicene, apostles and athanacian creeds. They tell their congregants that these moldy old words are “heterodox”. The nicene creed is the mission statement for every true believer throughout the world.
Comment by David Mu on July 8, 2023 at 10:27 am
I was never an evangelical in any sense of the term, but I certainly have no interest in this sort of ‘faith’. I have, spent some time around the kind of person who thinks/believes this sort of ‘theology’ has any actual value. Both the system of thought and the person with this are both boring, and quite useless. There are two words that appears to always be at word in them – petty and peevish. It is like the faith these persons create.
This only becomes more the case as this kind of ‘theology’ develops its actual ‘truth’; that is – whatever the thing means in the very far-left social circles. Sunday is to beautiful a day to waste being around this stuff.
Comment by Diane on July 9, 2023 at 1:53 am
For the many who’ve grown up in denominations without the use of creeds, as I have, this mudslinging over a “sparkle creed” is just juvenile. Move on to something with substance.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 9, 2023 at 2:34 pm
The Sparkle Creed is dull and jejune, but exposing it is a window on its buffoonish reality. This is an example of woke radicalism gone over the Left edge.
Comment by Palamas on July 11, 2023 at 9:03 pm
If the leadership (and members, to the extent they agree with this nonsense) of Edina Community Lutheran Church had an ounce of integrity, they would give the building and the land it occupies back to the Dakota. But no, this is just performance art, the virtue signaling of white liberals who think that their ideology makes them superior to everyone else, and that holding it means they never have to actually DO anything.
Comment by Mary Longworth on July 11, 2023 at 10:12 pm
It is so sad to see such a dumbing down of history, and the clear message of the bible being subverted to a charade. I think the creed by the Sparkle Messengers qualifies where Romans 1: 18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Jude, v. 4 speaks to these people as well.
As an earlier comment said, churches spewing these ungodly messages will not prosper.
Beautiful churches with leaky roofs and diminishing endowments. So sad indeed.
Comment by April User on July 11, 2023 at 10:22 pm
As expected, the male “pastor” (a fake pastor in my book), is married to another man and the female “deacon” is married to another woman. They are simply perpetuating their own sick and twisted lives onto this congregation. How tragic.
Comment by Anthony on July 12, 2023 at 7:11 am
Obviously a cult. Nothing new under the sun here. Been going on for 2,000 years. NOTE —- with the present trajectory of the United Methodist Church, it is headed to this sort of place sooner rather than later.
Comment by George on July 12, 2023 at 3:11 pm
Sixty one years ago, I was a member of a Lutheran Church (ALC) going through confirmation. Confirmation was hard back then and our church was very conservative.
It won’t take the UMC that long to catch up. In some areas, they are there already. Our cultural divide in this country affects everything. Schools, work, military, and sadly, our churches too. We are divided. Pick a side . There is no middle. Where do I stand ?
Well, the “sparkle creed” is completely and totally BS.
Comment by Gary on July 14, 2023 at 7:04 pm
ELCA – Everything Luther Cautioned Against.
If I were at a church and they read The Sparkle Creed, I’d get up,and walk out.
Comment by Paul Zesewitz on July 16, 2023 at 7:45 pm
“For the many who’ve grown up in denominations without the use of creeds, as I have, this mudslinging over a “sparkle creed” is just juvenile. Move on to something with substance.”
Really? So I guess you’re not the least bit concerned that this so called creed is nothing short of desperation in a congregation that has apparently thrown away the Bible, the Gospel and Martin Luther’s theology in an attempt to appeal to the secular world. That’s all good and well, this desire to attract people to the church. But this creed turns folks away from the God of the Bible because it isn’t remotely close. Jesus called God ‘Abba Father’. Abba literally means DADDY. And He also instructed ministers to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, not some non-binary god. This creed more resembles the teachings of a cult than of Lutheran theology and any Orthodox theology. Have a nice day.