Two Lutheran scholars: one becomes Catholic, the other Orthodox. Both discuss their new book and how they ended up where they did here: http://easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com/2012/03/does-rhine-flow-into-tiber-bosphorus-or.html

In the 1960's the Rev. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, President of the Lutheran World Federation characterized Lutherans as "a bridge church; not really Catholic but not truly Protestant."

More recently Rev. Dr. Carl Braaten has expanded this thought by saying that Lutherans are "Catholic without being Roman; Orthodox without being Eastern; and Evangelical without being Fundamentalist."

By either definition perhaps the best metaphor is of Tevye playing a fiddle on the roof--a step too far and....

Sounds like what many Anglo-Catholics say and believe.

Where I live, eastern PA, most Lutheran (ELCA) so called pastors are women. So I personally consider them completely liberal Protestants. Not in the slightest Catholic or Orthodox.

Dr. Martin Luther must be spinning in his grave.

You must be in the territory of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (Berks and Chester Counties eastward to the Delaware River)...very liberal female Bishop there, too.

About the only orthodox Lutheran Pastor would be Mike Travella at Holy Trinity, Abingdon, and he and his flock departed for the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

I'm no big fan of the ELCA, but there is one thing I can think of to say for them: they were the one Lutheran denomination in this country that signed the Joint Declaration with Rome.




- Peter Jericho

"Neither Moscow nor Rome will give us unity."
+Lubomyr

The ELCA was (and continues to be) severely criticized by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod for signing JDDJ. Rome did little to alleviate Missouri's concerns by anouncing the Millenium Jubilee indulgences while the ink was still drying.

An interesting development is that a delegation from the one-year old North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was received by Pope Benedict--there is a picture on the NALC web site of their Presiding Bishop greeting the Pontiff.

As Luther asks in his Catechism, "vat is das?" ("What does this mean?")

Last I looked, the Rhine flowed into the North Sea. Wittenberg is on the Elbe, and that flows into the Baltic.

Disallowed. All compass directions must be either East or West.

While the Elbe does flow north into the Baltic, the Rhine is definitely flowing west when it empties into the North Sea.

There are many of us who self-designate as "evangelical catholics".

Many can be found here:

Society of the Holy Trinity [societyholytrinity.org]

The original geographical allusion was the title of the book on Vatican II, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (link [amazon.com]). It refers to the influence of (liberal Catholic) German bishops and their theological perspective on the direction and outcome of the Council, a movement of ideas influencing Rome, i.e. Catholicism. For the present topic it suitably refers to the movement of persons (Lutheran~"German", the Rhine) to Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

I think Lutheranism flows into the Baltic or the North Sea. Every day it has less and less in common with the great Apostolic Churches that, metaphorically, are marked by the Tiber or the Bosphorus.