A Confirmation of Times Past

This is my confirmation class photo, 1968, at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church (LCMS), Mt. Prospect, Ill. Mt. Prospect is a northwest suburb of Chicago. If I correctly counted there are 74 confirmands pictured. (If you are interested my mug is in the lower left hand corner.) A VMI cadet told me she just loved looking at this photo. It is of a time gone by.

1968 was a bad year in the United States: race riots, two political assassinations, anti-Viet Nam war protests and riots, the ‘summer of love’ in San Francisco (1967), the TV Age, the beginnings of the gay pride movement, marijuana was in the air, the Pill, the “new morality”, and in ’68 the violent protests in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention by the various leftist groups. The Republican candidate for President, Richard M. Nixon ran on a law and order platform.

Yet, coming off the post-World War II, churches were full.

The Vicar that year was all excited to show my confirmation class the new youth room, called “Snoopy’s Dog House”, all done in Peanuts cartoons.

By this time, us thirteen year olds were already making fun of the use of the word, “groovy”.

The Churches were full because all the GIs from WWII were coming home, getting mostly free college, marrying and having families: then myself and many others, The Baby Boom Generation.

I do not write this for a nostalgic stroll down memory lane or a recitation of history that you may already know. In fact, I have no nostalgia for this, but I write for these reasons:

1. I want to forget about all this history but I can not and well I should not. It is good to be reminded of history for learning about it and about our time. Even to understand our history through the lens of the 10 Commandments, and repent.
2. Let us make no mistake about the ’60’s various revolutions have won, especially the sexual revolution (as it was called). Sodom and Gomorrah is in our libraries, on televised award ceremonies and on our screens.
3. It was the beginning of an age of unprecedented wealth that we think is our birthright. It’s not.
4. Now in 2023, all these revolutions promising to bring about the Age of Aquarius for our bliss are now a huge miss, as domestic tranquility is almost a joke.

But it is this lesson that I write and I think is important for the Church: the Church and churches, and their large worship attendance is gone with the wind. The ’50s and ’60s, and into the ’70s are an aberration in church life. We think this is normal and keep beating ourselves with notions and nostrums to fill the pews. Let’s stop beating ourselves up over this. With all the success of Christian denomination church life, we were also selling away the saltiness of doctrine and living in Christ for a piece of the American and Aquarian pie.

Now we are wondering what happened. I have only done a thumb-nail sketch of our decline. Growing up in that time period, I thought it was so exciting. It was but it was not. We bought into decadence and its idolatry and with it despair.

But I also knew by faith in what I heard at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church through the hymns, the Holy Communion, and the prayers that Jesus is Lord. The same Vicar who showed us Snoopy’s Dog House also told us the Te Deum Laudamus of Matins is one of the oldest hymns in the Church. I thought that was groovy! St. Paul’s with three services on a Sunday was rightly proud that at one of them every Sunday was Holy Communion. Holy Communion every Sunday. Only in the Lord we will get through.

The Remnant is a reality of especially Old Testament history that the prophets foretold a national catastrophe for Israel, God’s judgment of immorality and idolatry, but there would be a Remnant faithful to her Lord. The Anchor Bible Dictionary describes the Remnant as “What is left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe”. We are in the midst for some time now an ongoing catastrophe. With the ever shrinking Church on our continent (not Africa!), there may come a time, after we are long gone, with small Remnant congregations faithful to Biblical teaching scattered about like seed, and some unworldly worldling will stumble into a Remnant congregation and a fire will be lit in his soul. Let us be true to true teaching as taught by true teachers and all taught by the greatest teacher: The Lord.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, come.