Spiritual journal, Feb. 2025: Uff da! Trump’s ‘efficiency’ experts are going after the Lutherans now; bishops respond
Bishop Eaton: ‘Our call to love our neighbors as ourselves remains steadfast.’
Lightly edited copy of an emailI sent to my spiritual director today in advance of our session for February, archived here so I can go back later and see what I was thinking about when I posted it. Taken together, these emails give me a rough benchmark of my spiritual journey. When I wrote this one, I had my hair on fire because I had just learned about the Trump administration’s attack — more precisely Elon Musk’s “Government Efficiency (sic) Department’s” attack — on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to which I belong.
As it has become increasingly clear the Trump administration is igniting religious discord, I have decided to be more public about my faith (something Lutherans typically don’t like to do), in the hope it will help readers to realize that not all people of faith endorse its bigotry and cruelty. A broadly ecumenical resistance to Trump is beginning to form in religious spaces, and I want to be a small part of that.
Hi Sister —
Confirming (belately) our Zoom meeting tonight at 6 and transmitting a couple of links to something that’s come up in the last day that has kind of crowded my spiritual reflections out of my mind.
Over the weekend, Elon Musk announced he is “rapidly shutting down […] illegal payments” to Lutheran Social Services. No reason given, but he forwarded a message on Twitter (“X”) from ex-General Flynn stating — falsely — that “the Lutheran ‘faith’ (this use of ‘religion’ as a money laundering operation must end).” [The words, garbled syntax and scare quotes are Flynn’s.]
I learned about it from a Facebook message posted by Bishop Stacie Fidlar of our Northern Illinois Synod. Here it is, in full:
I cannot believe I have to even say this. But I will. Because truth is important. For full disclosure, I am a Lutheran, I am a bishop, and I serve on the LSSI board.
Lutheran services is one of the main providers of social services in this country. It is the result of the days they first stepped foot in this country. Lutheran Social Services of Illinois started in Andover Illinois with an orphans home. Other Lutheran refugee and social service agencies have been at work in this country for over 150 years. They have filled in the gaps where the government has failed. They have helped untold numbers of people with adoption, family reunification, resettlement (remember, most of your families were refugees or immigrants), senior care, foster care. Lutheran’s run nursing homes that receive both Medicare and Medicaid payments – VERY possibly something that has cared for your family at some point. The Lutheran Services in America partners (ELCA and LCMS) reach 1 in 50 people in this country every year. And they are some of the most desperately in need and vulnerable.
And all of these Lutheran services have legitimate government contracts. As do their Episcopal and Roman Catholic and mainline and evangelical partners.
Why do they do this work? Not for profit. Literally. They do it because it’s the work in the gospel. It is our call. And they have legitimate government contracts to do it.
There is no money laundering here. There isn’t even profit here. There is the legitimate fulfillment of contracts to care for people.
Period. [Links in the original.]
(The Andover Children’s Home and Lutheran Social Services of Illinois are near and dear to my heart. It was established in the 1860s by Swedish immigrants belonging to the old Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Synod in the wake of a cholera epidemic that decimated the Swedish-American communities in Chicago and the upper Midwest. Together with other Lutheran church-based, or diaconal, services, it was later folded into LSSI as the old ethnic synods went through a series of mergers that culminated with the formation of ELCA in 1978. I have written several articles about Swedish immigration and presented a paper titled “Swedes in Roger Williams’ Garden: Acculturation in Immigrant Churches, 1848-1860.”)
I’ll also link to last night’s pastoral video on FB from our presiding bishop with a bit more detail: As ELCA’s elected national leader, Elton said the church steadfastly believes in: (1) its mission to love your neighbor; and (2) the Eighth Commandment (by Martin Luther’s numbering): “You shall not bear false witness.
[Please see video embedded above]
I think these links should work, but in case they don’t, here’s a quote from an article on a Baptist website1 that has considerable background. It’s an opinion piece — the Baptists have been, in general, very strong about the separation of church and state since Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in Rhode Island — but it’s not a bad summary. [Links and scare quotes in the original.]:
“Now it’s the ‘Lutheran’ faith (this use of ‘religion’ as a money laundering operation must end),” Flynn wrote on X, the social media platform owned by Trumpian oligarch Elon Musk. “Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations receive massive amounts of taxpayer dollars, and the numbers speak for themselves. These funds, total BILLIONS of American taxpayer dollars. … It’s time to hold these organizations accountable. American taxpayers deserve transparency. Enough is enough!”
Alongside his rant, Flynn posted a screenshot of grants received by Lutheran organizations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Although the focus of his attack seemed to be on immigrant and refugee assistance — things now targeted by the Trump administration — the nonprofits he attacked also assist with foster care, adoption, head start, food pantries, elder care, resources for victims of domestic abuse, and more. A few days earlier, Flynn had joined Vance in leveling similar attacks against the Catholic Church. As for the Lutheran groups, he pledged to “examine them all and shut them down,” and he labeled one ELCA-affiliated group a “snake oil organization.”
This isn’t the first time the ELCA came under attack from conservatives in recent months. They were also falsely targeted after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, an ELCA member, was chosen as Kamala Harris’s running mate last summer. Some of the loudest voices attacking Walz’s church and denomination were Missouri Synod Lutherans.
Flynn’s broadside over the weekend received lots of affirmation from his supporters. And it quickly grew in reach after Musk, who recently sparked headlines for twice making a Nazi salute, amplified Flynn’s post and added in the wee hours on Sunday, “The DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” He offered no evidence to suggest any payments were actually illegal. [Links in the original.]
My apologies for springing this on you with so little notice, but at least I think you can scan through the email quickly enough before (or during) our Zoom session. I keep telling myself I’m probably over-reacting, but something is also telling me maybe this time I’m not. One of the questions in my mind is how to react when your faith is under attack without turning into an intolerant creep yourself.
Ordinary Time 