The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is often considered the conservative version of Lutheranism versus the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), yet the reality is far more muddled, and the LCMS is really the equivalent of the conservative denomination driving the speed limit on its way to being the ELCA.
Both Lutheran camps join together for ministerial work, the most infamous being the Lutheran Immigrant Refugee Service (LIRS) promoting mass migration into the America for profit. The LCMS loathes the thought of any Lutheran who has dared to interact with Stone Choir being in their pews, going so far as to excommunicate Ryan Turnipseed who dared to criticize the annotated Lutheran catechism to equivocate fornication, homosexuality, and pedophilia.
What is really a speck of a non-issue is being used to overlook the larger tolerance of sexual sin and deviancy within the LCMS. Last year, there was finally enough outrage for LCMS pastor Wayne Fredericksen to resign in disgrace over his support for homosexuality and his grooming of children through exposure to gay propaganda. It took over a year and grassroots efforts for this man to be removed, and even then, there was no accountability by the denomination in stripping him of his ordination. Had he said politically incorrect things about race, they doubtless would have been proactive.
On the same day that one of the LCMS district presidents was arrested for child pornography, the LCMS podcast Unite Leadership Collective, hosted by Tim Ahlman, had a discussion on the “LGBTQ Questions.” The guests on the podcast were Josh Salzberg and Pastor Mark Schultz. Salzberg started the crowdfunding campaign for the Fredericksen after he resigned and runs Lutherans for Racial Justice, which is an anti-white, racial Marxist organization that caters towards the LCMS. Schultz is a retired Lutheran pastor. Salzberg ironically makes the claim that people are averse to discuss racial justice because it leads to pro-homosexuality, which is historically undefeated and the natural outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. BLM has always been anti-family and pro-homosexuality, much like MLK himself.
Side B Theology is best defined as softening the severity of homosexual desires and sin. This can be done through equivocation, through softening of the church’s tone towards the gays, or through outright affirmation efforts short of endorsing sodomitical marriage, which would be Side A. One common theme is the notion that homosexuality is either unchosen or immutable, which is thus used to mitigate the sinfulness of homosexual thoughts. That such thoughts are unnatural is why they are inherently sinful. This is what theologians call concupiscence.
Early on, Schultz challenges the notion of repenting of homosexual concupiscence.
In other words, what the trans person was saying is what when it what’s the purpose of sharing the law? I guess is the question because what they were saying is it seemed to them that when we’re talking in general to Christians, we share the law to point people to repentance and to God’s grace. But when it comes to trans or gay people, we share the law to point them to a different kind of behavior we think they ought to be doing in their lives. When he was saying, look, Jesus wasn’t saying, “Well, clean up your thoughts.” Jesus was pointing out, “You can’t even clean up your thoughts. That’s why you need me, right?” And Jesus was trying to point us to grace instead of controlled behavior. And I think we get that a lot of the time when we share the law, but when it comes to LGBTQ people, we seem to be saying something different. We seem to be saying, “No, you need to clean up your act.”
The obvious subversion is that Christ’s grace does change people’s behavior. This is the essence of Sanctification and becoming a New Creation. The reason that homosexuality is treated differently is because there is a societal notion to celebrate such wickedness in the culture. Only with this particular sin is there a desire to whitewash it whereas with other sins people freely acknowledge are negative. The habitual porn addict likely feels shame for his acts. There is no movement to promote “Gooners for Christ” but there are plenty that promote “gay Christianity.”
The refusal to change behavior or to control one’s thoughts is to persist in rebellion rather than repentance. Proverbs 15:26 reads, “The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord” while Christ said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:18). The notion that there is a distinction between repentance and behavioral change is unfounded in Scripture. Schultz seeks to introduce a distinction where none exists as a means to soft-pedal tolerance of homosexuality within the Church.
Salzberg then appeals to the 2014 additions to the Commission on Theology & Church Relations (CTCR), which is a church resource on how to handle various theological issues. The CTCR statement on gender is atrocious and compromised, citing the DSM-5 as a legitimate source of science rather than recognizing the reclassification the term “gender identity disorder” in favor of “gender dysphoria.” Salzberg conflates the document’s discussions on intersexuals with the transvestites to suggest that the CTCR had a category for nonbinary that was not a genetic deformity. This conflation is a common tactic for trans-activists.
Schultz asserts that there is a conspiracy theory that the prevalence of homosexuality is driven by the medical community, which is farcical both due to the aforementioned changes to the DSM-5 and the lucrative treatment that accompanies gender “reassignment.” The two guests then assert that brain chemistry has not been thoroughly researched, to convey that transvestites did not choose their sin or that brain chemistry justifies one’s disordered sexual proclivities. They are functionally arguing the “born this way” narrative. This has never been proven, though other chemical exposures have been suggested to correlate with homosexuality, but this would not justify the behaviors. There is a difference between struggling with perverse thoughts and embracing them as a personal identity. The gays and transvestites choose to live these lifestyles. They choose the sinful path. It is not a struggle if they are not even fighting it.
This is without getting into the fact that pornography causes young people to go down this road, and the influence of propaganda has in normalizing these sins, which are then projected onto the susceptible audience. For example, the glamorization of suicide in 13 Reasons Why coincided with an increase in youth suicides. The same could be studied of the increase in depictions of homosexuals by Hollywood and the increase in prevalence in society. Autistic children, of whom there has been an increase (probably the result of chemical exposure), have been especially targeted by this transgender ideology. These types of things are likely to be derided as “conspiracy theories” by Schultz and Salzburg who use that label to describe a slew of talking points conservative evangelicals have against the queers.
Forty-five minutes in, after conflating the eunuchs in Matthew 19 with transvestites, against the original intent of the text, Salzburg then posits that there are faithful gay Christians.
God didn’t create one or the other. He created everything. And again, I’m not making any kind of theological assertion, but people who are non-binary, trans, and LGBT community that are Christians that take the Bible seriously, they’re looking at that and going like, “Yeah, what’s the difference between creating all examples of gender and sex and how that works as well as creating all examples of time and day and land and water and animals and fish an bird.
Salzburg affirms the faith of these unregenerate sinners at multiple instances in the podcast. There are no nonbinary, trans, or gay Christians. If they were saved, then they would forsake such degeneracy. The core premise is that they think they are born that way, so therefore God created them that way, which then justifies their sinful behavior. Salzburg claims that he is not asserting new theology, but that is exactly what he is doing when he both affirms their faith and advocates that Christians do not understand these sexual degenerates.
Immediately following, Schultz celebrates his gay brother who is married to a man as a faithful Christian, as though the contradiction is akin to regular Christians being materialistic.
Those “gay Christians” are Side A (Affirming). By affirming their faith as Christians, he is inherently engaging in a dialectic with the Church, attempting to synthesize the orthodox with his vastly more affirming position. This middle ground is why it is called Side B, because it functions as a synthesis. And the reason he is doing this is because Salzburg has a gay brother. Every single time a Christian compromises on the issue, it is always because the sin issue hits close to home. He then claims that gays make good parents, ignoring the issues surrounding surrogacy or the notable cases of gay adoptive parents abusing their children.
The tail end of the podcast consists of them advocating that Christians listen to gay struggle sessions, where Christians sit and listen to the queers and their stories. This is another Marxist dialectical tactic
A gentleman working on a PhD talked to over 2,000 LGBTQ people of all who had been raised in a faith community and all who had left that faith community, 95% of which had left that faith community at some point when they came out or when they became open about their gender. Then he gave them like 30 different things to select from to say, why did you leave the church? Do you know what the number one was? It was no one would listen to my story. That was the number one thing…Something as simple as being willing to listen first instead of jumping to the law or judgment made a dramatic difference could make a dramatic difference in the lives of LGBTQ people.
Here, Schultz blames the Church for failing to listen to gays who had already apostatized from the Church. If someone “comes out,” then they should suffer social ostracization both from their family and from their church. This is both the Old Testament Law and the standard established by the New Testament, one that was unquestionable in the Church for two thousand years.
Parents should not indulge their children in their sin by supporting them or listening to their story. Their story does not really matter. They are valuing their experience over the words of Scripture. They are advocating that Christians conform to their worldview, rather than conform to Christian teaching. The conversation Schultz and Salzburg are suggesting will not make them repent, but rather make the church tolerate sexual degeneracy.
Conclusion
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has several men who would be a better fit for the ELCA. They dishonestly claim they are not trying to change theology, but inherently they are by affirming the faith of sodomites and advocating better “treatment” of sexual degenerates which is outside the bounds of Scripture. Their deception is most obvious when they are conflating intersex people with transvestites and homosexuals, as the former is a genetic abnormality, not a social contagion.
Side B Theology is a dangerous heresy, one that has been on the decline in recent years, not because Christians were more accepting and dialoguing with homosexuals, but because the culture became less accepting of their degenerate behaviors. Christians, particularly young men, were intolerant of them and are increasingly so. They were using the gamer words like fag and refusing to use preferred pronouns. By refusing to bend the knee to the faggots and asking Charlie Kirk how sodomy wins the culture war, the culture began to change to the point where even Kirk came around. Revival and repentance do not come by tolerance and being nicer than God, but by intolerance and a righteous hatred.
There should be zero tolerance of homosexuals in the church. Becoming more like the ELCA will only ensure the death of the LCMS.
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This is similar to church corruption happening in (predominantly state) churches all over Europe. For many previously Christian countries a hard No-No to hand over children to the church is now becoming the majority opinion. Meanwhile these “churches” implement secular “prevention programs” to obfuscate the actual issue.
Personally I use my own critical method to deal with these doctrinal developments: There was a broad consensus across all denominations regarding several “hot” topics up into the 19th century. Rating earlier manuscripts (from the 18th century and earlier) higher than later manuscripts from the 20th century and beyond is very useful to get sound view on the “Christianity consensus”, which is now shifthing into the 21st century.
This method ist based on the thesis that knowing “20th century Christianity” is completely irrelevant for salvation. If someone never heard of Billy Graham and his personal invention of the “sinner’s prayer” (https://faithsaves.net/the-sinners-prayer/), it would not change a dime. Everything Christians had at the turn of the 19th century was as fully sufficient for salvation. There was literally no need for Big Eva.