Being Church Together

Earlier this month, Governor Tim Walz was thrust onto the national stage as the DFL Vice-President candidate in the upcoming election.

To be expected, everything about Gov Walz became fair game for scrutiny. His military service, his decisions as a leader, and his radical religious beliefs.

In fact, writer Mollie Hemingway said he belongs to “an extremely left-wing sub-denomination.”

Yikes. That sounds dangerous! What is the denomination he belongs to?

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

As an ELCA pastor in Forest Lake, I can assure you that belonging to the ELCA does not place you in the “radical” group. Have you tried our coffee? We like it hot and thin. Try adding cream and sugar and you’ll get the side-eye from a few suspicious members.

We are the 2^nd largest Christian denomination in the state behind Catholics and the largest Lutheran denomination in the country.

It’s tempting to label ELCA Lutherans as radical liberals, but according to polling data from the Cooperative Election Study, 52% of ELCA Lutherans voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

You can call an ELCA Lutheran a lot of things. You can shame them for adding too many vegetables in a hotdish or blending the colors on a 13 layer Jello. But suggesting the ELCA is an extreme sub denomination, to use the language of a debate fact check is “false.”

I understand why the ELCA gets tagged this way. We spend more time listening to messages about loving our neighbor and the most radical thing we do is our hospitality. We care about others and all of God’s creation. Most ELCA congregations support the LGBTQ community instead of shunning or judging people who have had other radical religious voices beat them over the heads with Bibles.

At the end of the day, an ELCA Lutheran is more concerned about how each of us help the needs of our neighbor instead of gossiping about who our neighbor voted for.

On Monday night, I attended a mission celebration event hosted by the Saint Paul Area Synod, the organization that contains 106 ELCA congregations. Our leader, Bishop Patricia Lull reminded us of the importance of being church together.

We had speakers from multiple congregations share what it means to be part of the larger church, including Pastor Ana Becerra, from the Spanish-speaking congregation of Christo Rey. She leads her church as an act of worship but also represents her community by showing up to advocate for someone at court.

Two teenagers talked about hearing about Jesus at the ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans last month with over 15,000 other ELCA youth from across the country.

Another gentleman shared a moving story about how his congregation gathered on Easter morning while noticing that a non-member neighbor was going through a tragedy. As their Easter breakfast wound down, the leaders of his church saw that an untouched egg bake and many leftover pastries were available.

The man delivered the meal to the grieving family and reflected that his church had their eyes opened because of the leadership of the ELCA teaching them about vitality through their spiritual gifts.

As the two-hour event came to an end, no mention of politics or politicians were spoken of, not even the member of Pilgrim Lutheran in Saint Paul. Being church together means that we embrace all of our neighbors. Maybe that is radical.

It’s time for my coffee. On ice. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to raise too many suspicions!    

Pastor John Klawiter is the senior pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Forest Lake. For more information, email him at