{"id":6459,"date":"2023-11-10T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/?p=6459"},"modified":"2024-09-17T02:36:59","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T02:36:59","slug":"winter-2023-featured-essay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/?p=6459","title":{"rendered":"Winter 2023 Featured Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the Priesthood of All Believers Became American <br><em>by Jonathan Strom<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-rounded\"><figure class=\"alignright size-thumbnail\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/strom_jonathan-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/strom_jonathan-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/strom_jonathan-650x650.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/strom_jonathan-1300x1300.jpg 1300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>It is hard to overstate how ubiquitous the phrase \u201cpriesthood of all believers\u201d has become in American Protestantism. In that deeply fractured  context, it is widely embraced from the Southern Baptists on the Evangelical right to peace church Quakers on the left. Bill Hybels, the founder of  Willow Creek, the epitome of the American mega-church, devotes significant attention to the priesthood of all believers in his popular works.1  Lutherans in America, of course, also embrace the priesthood of all believers as part of their legacy.2 If, alongside the slogan of sola scriptura, there  is a piece of the Ref\u0002ormation\u2019s legacy that continues to resonate broadly in the Prot\u0002estantism of the twenty-first century in North America, it is  the common priesthood or the priesthood of all believers. While we might be tempted to treat this as an historical constant, that was far from the  case. In early America, including among Lutherans, it was not a central feature of American Protestantism. That changed in the nineteenth century  when it became for many a signature characteristic that cut across confessions and denominations. Even as the common priesthood remained closely  associated with Luther and the Reformation, by the early twentieth century, Lutherans no longer exclusively defined it, and it took on broader  cultural rele\u0002vance in American Protestantism. In turn, this came to affect how some American Lutherans understood it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/03_LUT_37-4_Strom_424-458.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong><em>HERE<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;How the Priesthood of All Believers Became American&#8221;<br \/>\nby Jonathan Strom&#8221;  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6459"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6486,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6459\/revisions\/6486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutheranquarterly.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}