Quarreling Yesterday & Today

In Paul’s day the church quarreled over the Jewish law and over genealogies, over meat sacrificed to idols and sabbath practices, and over favoritism shown to the rich patrons and negligence shown to poor widows. Churches clashed over the incarnation and the resurrection. They fought over which apostle was better than the others. They butted heads over race, class, and gender. They quarreled over the Spirit of Peace.

Modern churches are no different. We did some searching in the World Christian Database. Our query for Lutheran denominations yielded 186 distinct records worldwide. That…