The Lutheran Rosary

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

Now, Religion in the News. A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from California Catholic Daily April 24, 2007, with a headline: Goddess Rosary Beads. The following are excerpts: On Wednesday’s at 7:00 PM, Ebenezer Lutheran church in San Francisco opens its sanctuary for the Christian goddess rosary. The church says it offers goddess rosary beads, and that prayers and suggested meditations will be on hand as well as incense, candles and bells. The goddess rosary is grounded in traditions of the Christian church and the proclamation of the gospel, which is a vision not released from bondage for a new creation, says the church’s website. It says, that though God as Father plays an important role in Christian tradition its exclusive emphasis contributes to a limited understanding of God, and understanding that supports a domination structure that oppresses and subordinates women. Ebenezer Lutheran church however, does not want to eradicate masculine images of God but to balance them with feminine images to confront the biblical text products of their day and cultures for the blatant patriarchal

biases and misogynist attitude.

Tom:

Dave, this is certainly not your Missouri Synod Lutheran church.

Dave:

It could be.

Tom:

No, it’s not, I can tell you that. But, as you said, it could be, I mean, what surprises us anymore, as we mentioned in the last segment, there are so many things that are going on today within Christendom that it’s almost hard to be shocked except it still is very shocking. This article—I got it from the California Catholic Daily, so the Catholics are shocked that the Lutherans are not only using rosaries but now instead of Mary they’re using their rosary to pray to the goddess. But I could take it a step further, Dave, and look at the Evangelical church. The Evangelical church now has their own rosary, some elements of it, particularly within the emerging church. Why is that? Well, the reason is, because they are turning to mysticism. They’re turning to the techniques of mysticism and now when we are going to repeat a word over and over and over again to get into an altered state, to get closer to God, we need something to count off those words, that mantra that they’ve developed. Dave, this is insane!

Dave:

We’re involved in what the Bible calls divination. Divination is any physical object that becomes a means of contact with God. And you’ll find it in a stage magician, he’s got his wand. The—well you have rosary beads would be part of it, but you’ve got crystal balls, tarot cards, things like this. And here we have incense, candles, and bells—what’s the point? Well, it’s going to create an atmosphere, and it’s going to, you know, impress the spirit world out there and maybe God will be impressed. And it says, “The goddess rosary is grounded in traditions of the Christian church and the proclamation of the gospel...” What?

Tom:

I don’t know where that’s—where they get that.

Dave:

You can search the Bible and never find that—proclamation of the gospel!?How does that have anything to do with a goddess, which is the antithesis?Now you understand, Tom, you understand but maybe we can help our listeners out there. As quickly as possible, why doesn’t the Bible use female images of God? Well, on the one hand, God is neither male nor female, as we will be in the eternal state. The scripture says, Jesus said: We will be like the angels, neither male nor female, you don’t get married, and so forth. A lot of problems are raised there. But why do we call God the Father? God is not male, he’s neither male nor female, but we call Him the Father, not mother, because a mother gives birth out of herself, the Father does not. The Father God, He’s not the universe, He’s not part of the universe, it’s not an extension of Him, He created it out of nothing. And you can’t give a female presentation of that, but they insist, mother, mother Mary of course has become the mother of the church. And, so then to go on and say, “God as Father plays an important role…”—well, that’s nice, you allow that much, but the “…exclusive emphasis on this”, it “contributes to a limited understanding of God.” Wait a minute! God reveals Himself, and we’re not coming up with some new understanding on the basis of feminism, or whatever. So, this blatant patriarchal bias and misogynist attitude it’s talking about here, this is the Bible we are dealing with! This is the holy Word of God, and it doesn’t change, and these people are just rewriting scripture.

Tom:

And the erroneous idea that the Bible is the product of a certain day and a culture is ludicrous.

Dave:

Well, Tom, 40 different people, over a period of 1600 years, most of them didn’t know one another, they never met, came from different cultures, different times in history, and it is harmonious, it develops, you can follow the theme from Genesis to Revelation. If the Bible is anything it is not a product of the culture or the time in which it was written! Compare what they were talking about when Moses wrote the Pentateuch for example. Go back and you’ve got—what was the earth was on a tortoise—I mean on an elephant’s back, it was on a tortoise and—

Tom:

According to Hinduism.

Dave:

Yeah, right, and you’ve got things—well, some of the others came into this idea as well. No, the Bible says God hangs the world on nothing. You couldn’t explain it any better. So, it is not a product! The hygienic instructions that God gives through Moses to the children of Israel, deliver them from the bubonic plague, and so forth—and in the middle ages—is as far as you could get from what he learned in the court of Pharaoh as the top medical remedies of the day.

Tom:

Dave, one other point about this so-called Christian goddess rosary, prayer beads go back to the occult far before Catholics picked it up, and so on. We have prayer beads in Islam, and so on. So these are occultic devices that we find throughout paganism, and so on. So, whether it’s Catholic, Lutheran or now the Evangelicals getting involved in it, it is dead wrong. Vain repetitions, what does the scriptures say about that?

Dave: