The Deep-Seated Roots of Australian Apostasy

Recent decisions were not the first step

A group of ELCA imposter “pastors” during the “50/40/10” celebration: 50 years of women’s ordination, 40 years of women of color ordination, and 10 years of LGBT ordination. A full view of Lutheran apostasy in America.

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On October 5, 2024, the General Synod of the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA) voted to endorse women’s ordination, ending years of tumultuously discursive debate. The vote shocked many confessional Lutherans who have long prayed for the faithfulness and preservation of the Lutheran Church of Australia and all our Lutheran brothers and sisters who have confronted and contemplated these very issues. The times have certainly tried the Church.

Yet while this apostasy may seem abrupt, the seeds of this decision were planted years ago. Worse, those same seeds have been planted in the American Lutheran Church—even her most conservative bastions. The LCMS is not immune. She must beware, and pray that she never suffers the same fate that has befallen the LCA.

For years, the LCA has permitted women to serve as lay readers and administer Holy Communion. They were prohibited from bearing the official title of “pastor,” yet acted almost entirely within the functions of the pastoral office. This decision confirms the postmodern and feminist tendencies that have influenced and informed their theological positions and doctrinal decisions for decades. This “newfound” attack on Scripture is anything but novel; it has been developing for many years.

The LCA has held several votes in the past regarding women’s ordination. These votes did not pass simply because a change in church doctrine requires a two-thirds majority vote— each vote received majority support. Thus, the issue of women’s ordination has not merely been on the LCA’s radar for some time, but a majority of LCA churches have continually advocated in its favor. Only now has it passed because it has finally received a two-thirds majority vote.

This speaks to an important aspect of adherence to Scripture’s normative principles. Once the barriers of teaching were broken by allowing women to serve as lay readers and the protections of proper administration of the Sacraments abandoned by encouraging women to administer Holy Communion, the sanctity of the pastoral office was disparaged. The movement away from Scripture’s clear and descriptive matters on the issue began, from which the Church would inevitably never recover–and it cannot without drastic reform and return to biblical teaching.

Thus, the proper roles of pastor, deacon, and layperson must not be confused in any sense, else the pastoral office is abolished altogether, as is the case in many Protestant denominations. God’s clear establishment, description, and qualifications for the pastoral office, as revealed through the Apostle Paul’s letters, have fallen on deaf ears in several denominations where pastors no longer preach the true Gospel, rightly administer the Sacraments, and adhere to the qualifications set forth in Paul’s pastoral Epistles. 

The recent vote also speaks against the democratization and trivialization of church doctrine. The LCA’s language dictates that “a change in church doctrine must be supported by a 2/3 majority.” This not only indicates that economic issues which may change over time or vary by region, but also that matters of actual church doctrine can and ought to be changed by a majority of churches. Thus, matters of scriptural teaching can be changed or altered by the will of the church. The Church has given itself the authority to alter Scripture.  

Such has been the devil’s trickery against the Church since its inception. The ancient heretic Marcion gave himself license to publish his own canon of Holy Scripture; Arius took on himself the extrapolation of philosophically pleasing doctrines at the expense of clear biblical teaching; several popes throughout church history have declared themselves ministers equal to or even above the authority of Holy Scripture. Yet this attack does not find its roots in the post-Resurrection Church, but rather in the Garden of Eden. The devil caused Eve to doubt what God said concerning the fruit of the trees of the Garden, and he himself altered the meaning of God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

The LCA’s apostasy also speaks to the importance of confessing the faith with clarity. It is a matter of necessity to prohibit women from serving as lay readers, but it is a matter of propriety to prohibit girls from serving as acolytes, for example. Perhaps God’s exhortation through Paul that women keep silent in the Church does not necessarily extend to acolytes, permitting them in theory to serve as acolytes, but it would still be prudent to refrain from doing so in order to confess the faith with clarity. This is particularly beneficial in times such as these, where the lines between male and female and the order of creation as it pertains to the Church have been blurred.

Confessing both by necessity and with propriety is imperative. Boldness requires discomfort. Clarity necessitates confrontation with the harsh realities of this disordered world; oftentimes prohibitive measures are the most distinctive means by which a clear confession can be presented. Such is the clarity with which the Reformers presented the Augsburg Confession, in which they argued against certain practices and in favor of others, all of which would, in the Reformer’s right estimation, present the Gospel of Christ and faith’s clear witness to Scripture with the highest degree of perspicuity. 

The LCA fell victim to the devil’s treacherous lies that the apportionment of pastoral duties to women is not in any sense an encroachment on the pastoral office itself. The redefinition of the pastoral office and its duties has by and large led to its ultimate demise in several Protestant denominations. Lay readers, Communion assistants, and the other abuses by which the LCA has justified their recent decision have belittled, malapportioned, and deconstructed the pastoral office. What use is the holy ministry when both the “priesthood of all believers” and the alleged concern for the welfare of the Gospel in preaching and evangelism, among other issues, have become catch-alls for heterodox practices and novelly unsound doctrines.

The seeds of progressivism were placed in the LCA’s playbook generations ago. Even on the LCA’s website, they champion their theological legacy by saying:

Lutherans are firm at the centre and flexible at the edges. We stand firm concerning the central issues of the faith, with the centre being justification and what God has done for us through Jesus. We are flexible on many other things. For example, we can choose to have bishops or not. It is also true that some things in Scripture are clearer than others. Christians may have differing views on social welfare and how to deal with refugee issues. We may sometimes feel that the Bible is clear on a topic, and so we have definite views on the right and wrong of the matter. Yet we remain pastorally flexible and patient when we relate to those with a different point of view. We recognise that our first priority is their relationship with Jesus, not their morality or their views on social issues.

To be “firm at the center and flexible at the edges” is to be, in a general sense, theologically shallow. Many of the edges guard and defend the Church from folding entirely to the ways of the world. Standing firm on matters of Scriptural silence that still provide confessional clarity–such as the place of women in liturgical settings and the general prohibition that women do not teach nor exercise authority over a man–provides a clear framework by which the Church confesses the whole and totality of the Gospel and the timeless, eternal teachings of Holy Scripture.

It is true that the Church may determine whether or not it is beneficial to have bishops–though even in matters such as these it is arguable that there is an objectively “right” answer–but this Christian freedom has been extended to matters that confuse the clear confession of the Gospel and the matters of faith on which Christianity rests. It is also true that such matters ought not cause disunity, disconnection, or disassociation with the clearly-espoused teachings of Holy Scripture. Christian freedom does not give the Church license to alter the otherwise clear confession of the Gospel for the sake of unity, evangelism, equality, “keeping up with the times,” or whatever excuse can be thrown around.

We must pray that the seeds of progressivism and apostasy are planted on thorny ground to be choked up by the thistles, or sown on the path to be plucked away by the birds (play on Luke 8:4-8). May the only seeds that have reached the fruitful soil of the Church be the seeds of the Gospel, whose fruit is a pure and clear confession of the teachings of the Word of God and a bold proclamation of the Gospel on account of Him who saved us.