Mother ChurchCarl Braaten here issues an energetic call for a truly ecumenical church, including a Lutheran rationale forrecovery of the historical episcopacy and papal primacy as servants of the gospel. Quoting Augustine's dictum that You cannot have God for your father unless you have the church foryour mother, Braaten writes of the church's place in the divine scheme of things and of the variousmodernisms that distort or hide the classical Christian tradition.