Waterloo, ON

Rev. Mark Kleiner misunderstands the Psalter included in the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship. The ILCW Commissioners knew they were preparing a book for worship, and, in the interests of space, included only the Psalms which were part of the Common Lectionary in use at that time. This accounts for the absence of some 28 Psalms, which were not “expurgated” for their content, but simply would not be used in worship. No hidden agenda here!

In contrast, our present Evangelical Lutheran Worship does include the complete Psalter, but has a hidden agenda. It has massaged the Psalter to expurgate all masculine references to God. All third-person male pronouns for God (he, him, his), have been changed to second-person pronouns (you, your, yours). Does it matter? Only in the sense that Psalms originally written as proclamations about God have been changed into prayers to God. We might ask, then, to use Rev. Kleiner’s words, which worship book has in fact been “intention about insulating ourselves from scriptural disturbance.”