‘Minnesota Lutheran’ candidate Walz does unspeakable things with green beans and Tater Tots in church basement casseroles

One thing you can say about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ new vice presidential candidate: He didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. You have to be quintessentially Midwestern to share a recipe for hotdish, a church basement potluck staple the rest of the country would probably refer to as a casserole, on the Governor’s Office social media page. And Walz, who was tapped last week to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the Nov. 5 presidential election, is Midwestern to the core.

As Brian Kaylor of the online newsletter Public Witness puts it, it’s like he came “from central casting for a movie adaptation of Garrison Keillor’s Minnesotan world of Lake Wobegon.”

The same goes for Walz’ church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. While ELCA attracts its share of criticism, typically for being 97 percent white and too nostalgic about its German and Scandinavian immigrant roots, Kaylor notes with tongue in cheek that it’s “pretty difficult to make the church of Lake Wobegon look scary and extreme (other than what they do to Jell-O salad).”

Part of that persona is something called “Minnesota nice,” and an important subset of Minnesota nice is what Walz has jokingly self-identified as “Minnesota Lutheran.” Explains Jack Jenkins, longtime political correspondent for Religion News Service, in an article picked up by the Jesuit magazine America:

Walz sometimes describes himself as a “Minnesota Lutheran,” an identity he frames as a sort of midwestern cultural subtype. He has referenced the idea during speeches, such as when he addressed North America’s Building Trade Unions legislative conference in April.

“Because we’re good Minnesota Lutherans, we have a rule: if you do something good and talk about it, it no longer counts,” Walz said after he was introduced. “So what you have to do is to get someone else to talk about you.”

He made a similar joke while speaking at a conference hosted by the Center for American Progress last year, suggesting that, like Minnesota Lutherans, Democrats don’t talk enough about their accomplishments. When moderator and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne asked aloud if that made Democrats political Lutherans, Walz responded, “I don’t know — maybe.” [Links in the original.]

Since Walz’ parish church, Pilgrim Lutheran in St. Paul, is affiliated with ELCA, which Jenkins accurately characterizes as “a mainline denomination on the more liberal end of the spectrum,” the political attacks were probably inevitable.

The Daily Caller noted that Walz’ parish “positions itself as an ally of the Islamic community,” as does Walz, and a right-wing website called Protestia branded the parish — and ELCA — as a “Trainwreck of Heresy and Blasphemy.” Similarly, Mollie Hemingway, a editor-in-chief of The Federalist and a self-identified “confessional Lutheran” (i.e. one who subscribes to the Augsburg Confession of 1530, a foundational statement of doctrine) , noted on X, formerly Twitter, that Walz is an ELCA member.

“You may be familiar with the ELCA,” Hemingway added, “due to some of their congregations using the ‘sparkle creed’ or hosting drag shows.” (The “sparkle creed” is a rewrite of the Apostle’ Creed in LGBTQ+-friendly language.) Hemingway also said, presumably for the benefit of those who don’t share her confessional orientation, that ELCA is “extremely left-wing sub-denomination.”

All of which led Kayor, an ordained Baptist minister who writes about church-state relations, to remark that referring to ELCA as a subdenomination “is a bit like me calling the Southern Baptist Convention a “sub-denomination,” and to exclaim:

Anyhoo, this issue of A Public Witness shows up like a hotdish with, dontcha know, a look at Minnesota Nice Lutherans and why, gosh darn it, the attacks on Walz’s church are worse than Wisconsin.

I’m not sure whether Kaylor’s reference to Wisconsin is an in-joke in the upper Midwest or in Lutheran circles, so I’ll let it pass, but I thoroughly enjoyed his conclusion:

You betcha! So we must offer solidarity to the Minnesota Lutherans under attack today. Here I stand, fer crying out loud, I can do no other.

Ryan Burge, a Baptist minister, professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, got on X to challenge Hemingway: “This statement is demonstrably, empirically false. A majority of Evangelical Lutherans cast a vote for Donald Trump in 2020.” He attached a bar chart showing 52 percent of ELCA Lutherans voted for Trump in 2020. That’s compared to 69 percent of Missouri Synod Lutherans, who are more conservative both confessionally and politically. For the sake of comparison, here are other denominations noted in the same bar chart:

• Nondenominational evangelical, 78 percent
• Southern Baptist, 72 percent
• United Methodist, 62 percent
• American Baptist Churches USA, 49 percent
• Presbyterian Church USA, 47 percent
• Episcopal Church USA, 31 percent.

In other words, ELCA is pretty middle-of-the-road. (This might be a good place to note that to Lutherans, “Evangelical” doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to American political reporters. It comes from the German word for “gospel,” meaning good news, and it has nothing to do with supporting — or opposing — a political party. Nor are Lutherans unanimous. Missouri Synod Lutherans tend toward evangelicalism, in the American, political sense, while ELCA is considered a mainline Protestant denomination.) If Burge’s figures are a good indication, and I believe they are, we’re less conservative than United Methodists, lightly less liberal than Presbyterians and significantly less so than Episcopalians.

So I’d say the recent political attacks on ELCA, and on Walz, are wildly off target. After all he’s been called, to little effect, a “San Francisco-style liberal,” a liar who “abandoned his unit” in the Minnesota National Guard, and a weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Far-Left Lunatic. Those of us who aren’t from the upper Midwest might think he does unspeakable things with ground turkey, green beans and Tater Tots — all three included in his hotdish recipe — but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the mainstream. At least not in the upper Midwest. Alick K. Thompson explains for the Food Network website:

What Minnesotans — and some North Dakotans — call hotdish is a type of casserole, although its definition is somewhat narrower. A hotdish must be a main course, and almost always a hearty one that includes a protein, starch and at least some vegetables. It can’t be a breakfast or side dish, for instance.

So the “Turkey Trot Tater Tot hotdish Gov. Walz shared to Facebook checks the boxes. Ground turkey for the meat, check. Tater Tots for starch, check. (Tater Tots, by the way, is a registered trademark for the processed potatoes produced by a subsidiary of Kraft Heinz.) And green beans, check.

But the Governor’s Office recipes calls for fresh green beans. (A nod to Minnesota truck farmers?) Purists might object. In a video available on YouTube, titled “Church Basement Ladies TV – Episode One: ‘Hotdish‘,” actors who call themselves the Looney Lutherans explain the cultural mores in abundant detail. It’s sendup of a 1960s vintage local TV show in Fargo, N.D., and they tell how to make a hotdish “perfect for every function, funerals, mission night, Luther League [a youth group].” The Looney Lutherans based in St. Paul-Minneapolis, are veterans of a production of the play Church Basement Ladies, and they should know. Ya sure, you betcha.

Links and Citations

Jack Jenkins, “Five faith facts about Harris pick Tim Walz, a ‘Minnesota Lutheran’ dad,” America, Aug. 6, 2024 https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/08/06/five-faith-facts-tim-walz-lutheran-248512.

Brian Kaylor, “Political Attacks on Walz’s Church? Good Grief,” Public Witness, Aug 8, 2024 https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/political-attacks-on-walzs-church.

Looney Lutherans, “Church Basement Ladies TV – Episode One: ‘Hotdish’,” YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3wcCpFRyg&t=127s/

__________, “Meet the Gals, Looney Lutherans website https://looneylutherans.com/meet-the-gals/.

Terry Mattingly, “A New Interpretation of Faith: The Story Behind the LGBTQ+-Inclusive ‘Sparkle Creed’.” Religion Unplugged, July 20, 2023 https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/7/20/a-new-interpretation-of-faith-the-story-behind-the-lgbtq-inclusive-sparkle-creed.

Bryan Metzger, “JD Vance called Tim Walz a ‘San Francisco-style liberal.’ Walz visited the city for the first time last month, while Vance lived there for years,” Business Insider, Aug. 6, 2024 https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-tim-walz-vice-president-san-francisco-2024-8 .

Martin Pengelly, “JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up,” Guardian, Aug. 7, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/07/tim-walz-jd-vance-military-service.

Robert Schmad, “Tim Walz’s Church Doesn’t Like To Call God ‘Him,’ Supports Reparations And Pride Parades,” Daily Caller, Aug. 7, 2024 https://dailycaller.com/2024/08/07/tim-walzs-church-doesnt-like-to-call-god-him-supports-reparations-and-pride-parades/.

Jake Schneider, “Meet Tim Walz: Far-Left Lunatic,” Republican National Committee, Aug. 6, 2024. https://gop.com/rapid-response/meet-tim-walz-far-left-lunatic/.

“Tim Walz’s Lutheran Church is a Trainwreck of Heresy and Blasphemy,” Protestia, Aug. 7, 2024 https://protestia.com/2024/08/07/vice-president-pick-tim-walzs-lutheran-church-is-a-trainwreck-of-heresy-and-blasphemy/.

Alice K. Thompson, “What is a Casserole?,” Food Network Kitchen, Aug. 14, 2023 https://www.foodnetwork.com/how-to/packages/food-network-essentials/what-is-a-casserole

Wikedpia Augsburg Confession, evangelicalism and Tater Tots.

[Uplinked Aug. xxx, 2024]