Low Church Missouri: A Response
The Rev. Dr. Joel Biermann recently released a video titled “Low Church Missouri” in which he reflects on “a time when things were pretty simple and where things were pretty straightforward.” I would like to offer three critiques.
Firstly, the lens of nostalgia often presents a distorted view of the good old days. This is evident when Biermann speaks of the church of his childhood when “you didn’t worry about doing things right. You just did things that were given to you to do and you worshiped God and received his gifts.” Except that most of the time, the poor practice of the day meant that God’s people, for no good reason at all, were not receiving one of the chief gifts of Christ: His holy Supper. As Biermann relates, “Most Sundays we used page 5, which was the liturgy without communion. It was essentially the Divine Service with the Lord’s Supper whacked off.”
Biermann speaks of the importance of receiving God’s good gifts three times in the video, yet he looks back favorably on a time when communion on a typical Sunday was not the norm. Such a practice aligns very poorly with our Confessions, where it is stated that the Lord’s Supper is celebrated in our churches on “every Lord’s Day and on other festivals.” How then can Biermann go on to say, “We’re upholding our common confession in the Book of Concord”? And how is this “doing it in ways that enhance and teach everybody and help them to grow into the fullness of God’s reality”?
Biermann continues that “there have been lots of ways of being faithful and conservative and true to our confession within Missouri, especially when it comes to worship.” Perhaps this is true, but going without the Lord’s Supper was not one of these faithful ways. We should call that practice what it was: an intrusion of Pietism and its anti-sacramental theology into our churches. It was a corruption of our confession coupled with the adoption of an extremely poor and spiritually damaging practice.
Secondly, Biermann urges us to “pay attention to why we’re doing what we’re doing, and not [get] hung up on the wrong things for the wrong reasons, like simply trying to follow the rules.” But when discussing the reasons that Low Church Missouri did things, Biermann admits that a given practice of the day, whether omitting communion, not chanting, using things not in the hymnal without hesitation, or wearing a Geneva gown, “just simply was the thing you did. It was the given. That’s kind of the hallmark maybe of Low Church Missouri. They didn’t have a big agenda. They weren’t crusaders for any particular cause or against any particular cause. They weren’t anti anything.”
In other words, the church of Biermann’s youth did exactly what he seems to accuse others of doing today, observing ceremonies and rites with no thought about their purpose or meaning. How does going without the Sacrament, contrary to our Confessions, help the congregation to receive the gifts of Christ? Nobody thought to ask that. What message is conveyed when the pastor dons the garb of a Calvinist preacher instead of traditional Lutheran vestments? Nobody considered whether such a practice might soften our people to the dangers of Reformed theology. What was the harm in departing from the hymnal for LWML Sunday, or youth Sunday, or any other Sunday, for that matter? Nobody, as Biermann says, “thought twice about it.” And that is exactly the problem with the Low Church Missouri of our grandparents. Nobody (speaking broadly, to be sure) thought or taught about why we did what we did. An agenda “never crossed anybody’s mind.” We worshipped the way we worshipped because “it just simply was the thing you did.”
Finally, Biermann makes use of the term adiaphora. “Worship is always an adiaphora [sic].” This statement is followed by a thinly veiled accusation against those who are not “Low Church Missouri”, suggesting that one who worships in this way is “trying to make big impressions,” and “getting hung up on the wrong things for the wrong reasons, like simply trying to follow the rules or show somebody how pious I can be or give my confessional credentials by the sort of vestments I wear.” Biermann also speaks of the “virtue signaling that goes on through vestment choices or even worship style choices.”
Adiaphora is commonly used as an “I can do whatever I want” card within the Missouri Synod. In truth, it should usually mean the opposite. If the whole synod walks away from the Word of God, then, of course, I am bound by Scripture to swim against the current. But in matters of adiaphora, I should not do so. Adiaphora does not mean that I am free to ignore all theological considerations and do every idea (all amazing, to be sure) that pops into my head. Instead, when Scripture leaves a matter free, I am compelled to seek good order, Christian unity, and a strong confession of the Gospel.
The answer, then, is not to romanticize either Low Church Missouri or its opposite. Nor is it to pretend that every vestment, hymn, ceremony, or liturgical practice is commanded by God—though I have never met a high church pastor who makes that claim. The answer is to approach these matters with the theological seriousness that, according to Biermann, was lacking in the church of his youth. The problem with Low Church Missouri was not simply that it was “low.” The problem was that, too often, nobody had stopped to think about why things were being done. If Dr. Biermann’s video helps us to recognize this danger by way of example, then he has done the church a great service. Nothing we do in worship, whether commanded, forbidden, or neither, is without significance. Every rite and ceremony matters. Every practice has a purpose. Such things serve either to obscure or to illuminate Christ and His saving gospel.