"It Is A Gate"

"It Is A Gate" L. DeAne Lagerquist We begin with a text, a pericope cut from a larger book. Who does? Well, Lutherans do, at least some Lutherans. So do some other Christians, which is why we call the cycle of readings the ecumenical common lectionary. In the midst of a scripted yet interactive ritual we ask what that text meant … and what it might mean. We ask what it reveals to us today about the divine, about the world God made, and loves even in its fractured state, and repairs, and about our place in that world. A child of Lutheran congregations, and camps, and schools, I have been a habitual participant in this interpretive activity. Asking this question in the context of worship has shaped my habits of mind outside of church as well. So, if not with a biblical lesson, in response to an invitation to write about "How My Mind Has Changed," I nonetheless start with a text. In her 1937 autobiography On Journey, Vida Dutton Scudder (1861–1954) wrote, "For to remain a member of a historic Church is not to achieve finality. A creed is not an imprisoning wall, it is a gate, opening on a limitless country that cannot be entered in any other way. I am within that country; Laus Deo; but I have only begun to explore it …" What this meant to Scudder, a high church Anglican, college professor, and Marxist social reformer, is a topic for another time. I also quoted her words as the epigram for the chapter Caryn Riswold and I contributed to Transformative Lutheran Theologies (Fortress, edited by Mary Struefert in 2010). Both there and here I recall Scudder's words to signal that my mind simultaneously has changed and not changed. End Page 196 Entering I passed through the watery, creedal gate of baptism on November 27, 1955, at First Lutheran Church in Rugby, North Dakota. "Going to church" and Sunday School were significant parts of my childhood. In adolescence I explored that "limitless country" in weekly Wednesday, Sunday, and "home" confirmation lessons. My teachers and the Grace/Faith/Life curriculum fostered the habit of always asking "what does this mean" and gave me words for what I had experienced. Divine grace, I learned, is an unearned gift unaffected by what I do, whether virtuous or wicked. Then, in the spring of 1970, among the people of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Ames, Iowa, I affirmed the promises that had been made on my behalf. While I have bristled at the language of some liturgy and hymns, been bored or irritated by some sermons, struggled with some theologians' teachings, reviled the actions of some church-folk, I have had neither a crisis of faith nor a conversion experience. We are saved by grace through faith, not by any works. I have told my students that this is the center pole holding up the big, open tent that is the Lutheran way of being Christian. My mind has not so much changed as my understanding of this central tenet and its implications for Christian living is being deepened and expanded. This happens when I encounter the realities of a world not only damaged but also damaging. It also happens when I experience the splendor of divine grace manifest in many and various ways: natural, human, sacramental. My coming of age corresponded, more-or-less, with American, second wave feminism and with the emergence of feminist theology. My own feminism is rooted in the equality implicit in my understanding of grace. Women and men, all people, are equal first in our brokenness and need for grace. And we all have gifts to be used for the benefit of others and toward repair of the world. Awareness that this has not been the reality, not even in the church, has informed my leadership in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and directed my scholarly interest in women's history from my master's thesis on female abolitionists, to my investigation of women's End Page 197 organizations, to my study of female leaders such as Mary Markley, Cordelia Cox, and Gertrude Sovik. In this historical work, theological reflection...