“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
Letting go without giving up
A fall retreat for rostered ministers in beautiful Door County with Keynote Speaker, Jennifer Hockenbery (Biography Below)
The Landmark Resort once again hosts our fall retreat for pastors and deacons.
Together we will discuss how to let go of the idols of Being Good, Appearing Beautiful, and Knowing Truth as well as the need to let go of the guilt that is tied up with pursuing those idols. But that doesn’t mean just, as Kierkegaard once said about Lutheran morality “lightening up a little,” which actually can make us just feel more guilty and anxious about still feeling guilty and anxious! What it does mean is finding a new freedom in faith in the God who pursues us in love, cloaks us in righteousness, and teaches us through the Spirit. Living in this faith allows us to Love Joyfully—the very opposite of Giving Up.
The verse Galatians 3:28 is going to be the framework for the discussion. In each session we are going to discuss how systemic class divisions about who is valuable create false idols of goodness, beauty, and truth that bind us to cycles of guilt and anxiety. We will think about Paul’s (and Luther’s) theological argument against the categories themselves and our own possibilities for teaching, preaching, and living more freely in our churches, institutions, and individual lives.
Keynote Speaker - Jennifer Hockenbery
Keynote speaker, Jennifer Hockenberry
Jennifer Hockenbery is the interim executive director of WELCA and the current editor of Journal of Lutheran Ethics. She was dean of Humanities at St. Norbert College from 2020-2024 and Professor of Philosophy at Mount Mary University from 1998-2020. Her edited volume, The Devil's Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition, brought together philosophers, theologians, and historians to discuss how Lutheran theology was influenced by the philosophical traditions of Greece, Roman, and Medieval Europe and how Lutheran theology influenced and incfluences the philosophy after Luther. Her books, Thinking Woman: A philosophical approach to the quandary of gender and Wisdom's Friendly Heart:Augustinian Hope for Skeptics and Conspiracy Theorists, both explore dialogue as a way to help us find consensus and ethical paths forward in issues surrounding gender and politics. A lifelong Lutheran who has enjoyed all the stages of church life, from being in Christmas pageants to directing them, from sitting in Sunday School to teaching it, and from enjoying Luther League to participating in mostly older adult education, she is now a member of Grace Lutheran Church in Green Bay.