On Lutheran Aid in 2025

Posted On February 12, 2025

A lot of Lutheran Laberei has come about due to a recent letter penned by LC-MS (henceforth LCMS) President Rev. Matthew Harrison. The majority of the letter addresses a pan-Lutheran1 aid agency formerly called LIRS (now called “Global Refuge”) which was spotlighted on X/Twitter by Mike Flynn as having received millions of dollars in USAID funding. Harrison basically spends 90% of the letter explaining why the LCMS first was part of LIRS and why it has now distanced itself from LIRS. He also talks about the American-Lutheran political climate, with the 1974 Concordia Seminary walkout being a defining moment in LCMS identity.

The aforementioned Laberei, however, came from a lot of Lutherans who took exactly one sentence of Harrison’s letter and ran with it to the extreme. The sentence in question? “I’m personally pleased with DOGE.” Yes, folks. Let me now show you the entire line (with my own emphasis added):

Let me just note (and this is NOT an official position of the LCMS): I’m personally pleased with DOGE.

Harrison then continues describing the proper functions of government and good governance and says that the US federal government has fallen short of those requirements, thus necessitating a body like DOGE to rein it in. Secondly, and this is why I believe many of the Laberern didn’t actually bother to read the article, Harrison criticized Flynn’s original Tweet, saying:

I’m sure that General Flynn meant well with his muckraking, but he misses the mark in two ways. First, though I do not agree philosophically with every operational aspect of LIRS, if there is something legally amiss, the blame falls squarely upon the federal government. LIRS — and even our own LCMS RSOs — simply does what the government asks and pays for them to do.

ASIDE: In a related note a Gottestdienst Blog Post that has since been edited criticized2 a certain LCMS RSO (Registered Service Organization) for including many DEI verbiage on their website, which would perhaps indicate that there were many DEI-related activities3 in their practice.

So, what did the Laberern get out of it? That Harrison is a Trumpite, a Musk-lover, and an anti-refugee, anti-immigration, pro-government intervention, boot-licking disgrace! How dare Harrison agree with cutting aid to Lutheran immigration/resettlement NGOs! How dare he not join The Vatican in condemning the cuts! How will we ever fulfill our commandment to love the foreigner among us as proclaimed in Leviticus 19:34?! (I hope that these so-called LCMS members still believe that Leviticus 18 is binding, too) A few ladies I saw on Facebook said that it is now time to remove their names from their congregation’s member list! The horror!

My immediate and very Lutheresque reaction: “Während du rauss gehst, lass die Tur bitte nicht dir am Arsch schlagen!”

Seriously, if you’re a liberal Lutheran who cares more about feelings than doctrine, the ELCA down the street would be more than happy to welcome you in for a nice, warm group hug. I personally have grown tired of these self-righteous Lutheran boomers (yes, I said it) who will on one hand praise the excommunication of a LCMS Lutheran who did nothing wrong and on the other hand clutch pearls because the synodical president made a right-leaning personal statement. Get over yourselves. President Harrison, as rightly pointed out by Gottesdienst, has been quite apolitical as to the ongoings of things in the synod, even perhaps when he SHOULD HAVE BEEN POLITICAL.

I work in the aid industry overseas. I have seen a lot of good things come out of it and I’ve seen a lot of bad things come out of it. I’ve seen projects where the technical support people (that refers to the middlemen that oversee the activities of a project) get a small cut of what the donor takes beforehand. Finally after us, the lower management/partners get their cut and they distribute whatever they don’t take to those at the bottom of the pipeline. This illustration from the Irrawaddy (all the way from 2014) gets right to the point:

Image Credit: The Irrawaddy [https://www.irrawaddy.com/stories-that-shaped-us/trickle-town.html]

The silver spigot at the top? That’s the US government sending out the money paid by the US tax payer to USAID. That blue tank with “AID” written across it is what DOGE is looking into. That lady in pink with the red bucket? That’s probably The World Bank or Asian Development Bank or IMF or something like that. Notice how the drops of water are getting smaller and smaller? That’s because everyone (including me) gets to take their cut. I’m a part of the system, I admit it. And just because there are those like me and my managers who try to work ethically doesn’t mean that the people above or below me use those funds ethically. The one who suffers most is the emaciated fellow at the bottom, sure. But what’s worse is that the taxpayer, who doesn’t get a say as to where the taxes go, thinks, “well, at least my money is going to those who need it.”

So… What should the Laberern do? Well, if you really want to help those orgs that have just lost their USAID funds pull out your checkbook! It’s a tax-deductible donation, after all! The more money you donate, the less money you pay to the administration that you loathe so much. Let me list some off for you:

Now, of course, I’m actually partial to Lutheran Agency for Missions to Burmese (LAMB, Disclaimer: I do some work for them now and again) because LAMB doesn’t take government funds to help Burmese refugees in Fort Wayne and, unlike LIRS, actually cares about teaching them about Jesus. Plus, they do all of that on less than $1 Million a year. So, if you’re into that sort of thing, I would direct you to their donate page.

However, if you’re continuing to laber but you’re not willing to step up and write a check to replace the USAID funds those first 3 orgs have lost (keep Leviticus 19 in mind, now!), I would advise you to halt die Klappe. Tschüß!

  1. “Lutheran” very much in scare quotes ↩︎
  2. Of course, on the internet, it is hard to just make things go away. HERE is the original blog post, archived on The Wayback Machine. As stated by the author in his edited post, “[…] I posted nothing that was not a matter of public record,” so I have no moral objection to publicizing the original post. ↩︎
  3. This is a non-profit/NGO buzzword denoting events that happen in a project. ↩︎

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