Our regular guest contributor, the Rev. Vincent Shemwell, recently appeared to discuss usury in the history and life of the church on the popular podcast “On the Line.” Take a look/listen, and you can read in more detail about any of the eras or authors mentioned using the index below. You can also hear an interview on the subject with Rev. Shemwell on the Gottesdienst podcast.

One of the personal organizing principles I have adopted is called the Stockdale Paradox. Admiral Stockdale was the ranking U.S. prisoner of war in Vietnam. He observed that men who clung to unfounded optimism were the men who failed and died as POW’s but those who faced their brutal circumstances head-on, and at the same time kept faith that they would prevail, are the ones who survived and even thrived in difficult times.

In the years immediately preceding the 1869 General Convention, Walther, as synodical president, advanced his opposition to lending at interest with a vehemence that was increasingly impossible to ignore. This growing boldness obviously did not go unanswered by those with a more permissive view of usury. For instance, in January 1867, an article published in the American Lutheran, commenting on Walther’s theses against usury, expressed the author’s lament over what he derisively described as the “sheer impracticality of the so-called Old Lutherans.” Rather than retreat, Walther replied to the attack with open polemic, writing (Lehre und Wehre XIII [February 1867], 54): “We firmly believe that nothing could cause the ‘American Lutherans’ to recoil from us so-called Old Lutherans more irrevocably than Luther’s teaching on usury; for a Christianity that demands more than so-called revivals, after which one continues, as a businessman, to act exactly as before, is, to them, an intolerable inconvenience.”