THE MISSOURI SYNOD: STILL THE CHURCH MILITANT
Carlan, Margaret M.
THE MISSOURI SYNOD' STILL THE CHURCH MILITANT MARGARET M. CARLAN Grappling with the understanding of Lutheranism, Christianity, life The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was late among major...
...A few nights later more than i4,000 of those folks at a rally at Concordia seemed confident and even joyous that they had done just that...
...But synod officials, or the conservative side in the dispute, insist on application of the inerrancy principle to every word in Scripture and on acceptance without mental reservation of the historicity and factuality of each passage in the Bible...
...Persons on both sides of the dispute, in fact, view that convention action as the culmination of postwar liberal ascendancy in seminary and synod...
...Tietjen told a news conference at the convention, "I have no doubt that before long I will no longer be president of the seminary...
...The well-publicized Kent demonstration was very disturbing to most synod members, Dr...
...Preuss was re-elected at the July 1973 convention of the synod, it was clear that conservatives had won the battle, if not yet the war...
...Preuss' administration and has resulted in a continual purge of moderates from positions of power in the synod...
...Tietjen...
...The missionary emphasis that moderates stress is that of the Mission Affirmations adopted by the synod's convention in 1965...
...That type schism comes not from an organized split but simply when some men decide they must get back to the business of making a living, some decide there are more important fights for freedom to be won and some just lose interest...
...Schademann speculated that most would neither come back nor form a new synod but simply be lost through gradual attrition...
...Hackles rose in Canada recently over the U.S...
...They were part of an attempt by moderates to expel a congregation for ordaining an ultra-conservative Concordia seminarian whom the then moderate faculty had refused to certify...
...The project was the formation of a "new Western hemisphere community...
...THE MISSOURI SYNOD' STILL THE CHURCH MILITANT MARGARET M. CARLAN Grappling with the understanding of Lutheranism, Christianity, life The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was late among major Christian denominations in moving into twentiethcentury America...
...3 May 1974:212...
...The same, he said, was true of the synod...
...This may be overly optimistic by half...
...In praising Dr...
...Of the then acting seminary president, Dr...
...The following day 40 out of some 45 faculty members followed suit, declaring themselves condemned and suspended with Dr...
...Dr...
...Scharlemann was considered a moderate and some papers he wrote on modern biblical scholarship drew charges of heresy...
...They insist, however, that the inerrancy principle applies not to words but to the overall salvation message of Scripture...
...Bertram, who is chairman of the faculty committee administering Seminex, also says that his colleagues are willing to work at resolving theological differences "forever if necessary...
...The changes were not always related to doctrine but the conservatives portrayed and probably saw them that way...
...The official dispute within the synod--to which both sides have devoted literally thousands of hours of discussion and hundreds of pages of documentation in the past several years---concerns Lutheran understanding of the Bible...
...Founded in 1847 with headquarters in St...
...The Rev...
...Nixon's "new" policy in 1969...
...Establishment economists have often remarked that the United States does not need Latin America...
...Concordia is operating in a fashion and undoubtedly can continue to operate without the dissidents...
...Sheer nonsense" is what the moderate claim to openness is called by the Rev...
...The name of the rump organization reflects the two major concerns that moderate Missourians express about the direction of the synod...
...And the scholarship at the seminary, peculiarly isolated from other scholarly, cultural and religious trends in the United States, easily lent itself to fostering orthodoxy and doctrinal purity...
...Preuss will be in control of the church for three more years and he has made quite clear that his views will be the same next year and the next year and the next...
...foreign policy and subvert the loyalty of people to this country...
...Army, discussed the 1962 incident and the present troubles in the synod with the pragmatism of a good soldier...
...Robert W. Bertram, "boils down to the question is this church big enough for all of us...
...Rhetoric can hardly cover the fact of continuity in United States policy towards Latin America, and the practical impossibility of any real change...
...The people in the pews----close to 2.9 million in about 5,900 congregations--have yet to be polled...
...They cooperate through the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., headquartered in New York, but the Missouri Synod's participation in council affairs has been the most reluctant of the three large groups, as have been the synod's moves toward church fellowship with other Lutherans...
...Scharlemann, however, Dr...
...Yet he traced his personal concern about liberal trends on campus back to the college activism of the '60s...
...That was in the early '60s when Dr...
...nearly every Latin American nation is tied to the United States through investment, aid, trade and--most important-military assistance programs that tend to ensure not only "stability" but the kind of stability demanded for "development" within a hemispheric (that is, imperialistic) system...
...The United States would not press Latin America JORDAN BISHOP, JlOW a news editor in Canada, lived and worked in Latin America /or many years...
...Preuss' administration the synod has retreated both from the new spirit of mission and the historical spirit of evangelical openness...
...Yet, at the same time, the two sides move further and further from compromise...
...denominations...
...And he estimated that support for the present conservative administration is as high as 70 percent among Missouri Synod lay people...
...Some leading Missouri Synod Lutherans say no and on that answer they have staked their personal futures in the church...
...German was spoken in seminary classes into the 20th century with the transition to English not completed until 1930...
...Louis pastor, says that under Dr...
...But Dr...
...Tietjen because they shared his doctrinal views...
...of Divinity (Jesuit-controlled Roman Catholic institution whose aid to Seminex has touched off some grumbling by conservative Catholics) and Eden Seminary (Church of Christ...
...What the moderates are really counting on is a maninthe-pew Lutheran-type revolt against the way authority is being exercised in the synod...
...The usual argument is made in terms of the relatively small export market, the fact that America produces largely for domestic consumption, the small amount of Latin American trade compared with the large American GNP...
...Preuss focused on what has been his consistent view of the only route open to church reconciliation...
...This inevitably means American domination of Latin American politics, industry and trade...
...They have won some minor support from a few of the church's 35 districts, but the support has come mainly from east coast districts where the number of Missouri Synod Lutherans is relatively small and relations have always been closer with less conservative Lutheran bodies...
...Then, after a few small steps in the past few decades, the synod changed its mind...
...During an interview in March on the Coneordia campus, Dr...
...I want you to understand the gravity of the situation affecting as it does not only all that you do in this convention but virtually all that we will do as a church body for years to come," he told convention delegates...
...I COMMUNITY, SI--INDEPENDENCE, NO JORDAN BISHOP Under whatever slogan, Latin America remains effectively tied to the U.S...
...Louis University School MARGARET M. CARLAN, ]ormerly with the St...
...With the exception of Cuba...
...It is Mr...
...Jacob A. O. 3 May 1974:208 Preuss was elected synod president...
...The ELIM leader maintains that in contrast an evangelical church would be open to both moderate and conservative viewpoints...
...3May1974:210 Dr...
...Scharlemann, a former brigadier general in the U.S...
...He said he expected many of the dissident students would return to Concordia in the fall after they learned they could not obtain pastoral appointments through Seminex...
...Tietjen did not come until Jan...
...He withdrew the controversial papers at the 1962 synod convention for the sake of what he calls "the peace of the church...
...Church by-laws now being cited by the conservative administration to threaten the expulsion from the synod of congregations ordaining Seminex graduates were, in fact, initiated by moderates in the late '60s...
...embargo on a sale of locomotives to Cuba by a Montreal-based American company...
...The largest of the three Lutheran bodies, the Lutheran Church in America, has a little better than 3 million members...
...Samuel J. Roth, national president of ELIM and a suburban St...
...We can have no other Scripture than an inerrant Scripture as our norm, and no other Gospel than the Gospel of the Scripture as our message...
...This in fact is what a hemispheric community must mean to Latin America, and what it has meant in the past...
...M.M.C...
...But only the interpretation and not the truth of the doctrine is being disputed...
...Preuss told the rally that Concordia would not only survive the recent departures but would "enter a period of greater importance than ever before...
...Not quite 80 students had registered for the spring semester at Coneordia the day before the interview, but Dr...
...As both sides contend, it is quite possible that there may be no compromise and no split either...
...And if things continue as they have been going in the synod, those people siding with the dissidents could soon be asked to vote with their feet by walking into a new church or one of the other established Lutheran bodies...
...Charges of heresy which could result in his removal from the ministry are still to be decided--although Dr...
...Its headquarters are in Minneapolis...
...the rallies less dramatic...
...And as the heat of the dispute continues to lose intensity, the moderates might discover that synod officials were counting on the walk-out too, counting on it to rid the synod of dissidents in one fell swoop...
...It is the real meaning of the Good Neighbor policy, and of the Alliance for Progress...
...John H. Tietjen...
...Missouri Synod Lutherans--and with them then seminary--began to emerge from their cultural shell only with World War II...
...Preuss came into open confrontation with the young, moderate, seminary president, Dr...
...Whether its people can now be turned around is the question confronting and threatening to split the 127-year-old church body...
...If it is not, the threat of nationalization of the company in question has been made...
...This moderate claim of openness is a sore point with synod conservatives who say they were under attack when moderates controlled synod and seminary administrations...
...The Seminex operation has received its principal support (moral and financial) from Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), a group organized shortly after last summer's convention to provide a voice for the moderate position in the synod...
...A resolution passed at the July synod convention had attributed false doctrine to a majority of the faculty...
...As for his former colleagues on the faculty, Dr...
...Scharlemann expressed satisfaction with the number...
...That will continue to be my position next year, and the following year, and the year after that, and for as long as the Lord sees fit to use me as one of His ministers of the Gospel...
...In 1969 Mr...
...The real question is not how to achieve a hemispheric community, but rather how Latin Americans might escape from such a community...
...And even after the war it was pastors who had worked side by side with other Americans in the war effort at home and abroad--and not seminary professors--who led the fledgling liberal movements in the synod...
...Already Missouri Synod Lutherans are supporting two competing senior seminaries---Concordia, their official 135-year-old institution housed in an Oxford-like complex on a 72-acre campus in the St...
...Preuss said to long applause, "He has been under fire in his own church but he was man enough to ask the church to forgive him...
...It was not until the 1959-60 school year that a bachelor's degree was required for admission to the seminary and not until 1964 that Concordia was accredited by the American Association of Theological Seminaries...
...It is considered the most conservative of the major Lutheran bodies and its strength is greatest in the Midwest and among rural Lutherans of German descent...
...neglected their studies for inner-city work and Vietnam war demonstrations...
...Seminarians took the lead by the next day deCommonweal: 209 claring a moratorium on classes until the school's board of control would declare exactly which professors were teaching false doctrine...
...The changes were taking place in Catholicism and other Protestant denominations too, but this only made them more suspect to many Missouri Synod Lutherans...
...Pastor Roth charges that "a spirit of legalism" has dominated Dr...
...Martin H. Schademann, who was named acting president of Concordia on Dr...
...And I believe that as long as you put the question that way most members of our congregations would agree...
...But as in earlier fights against modernism in other denominations, the changes seemed most visible at the synod's senior seminary...
...When Dr...
...He said he objected to a social concerns committee supported by the administration which did nothing but "criticize U.S...
...Tension between parish and seminary is the precursor of that between town and gown...
...Louis suburb of Clayton, and Seminex, the two-month-old "seminary in exile" founded after a walk-out at Coneordia and using makeshift facilities at St...
...Tietjen's suspension...
...We have a large overhead right now, but that's only for the short haul...
...Kissinger met in Mexico City recently with Latin American and Caribbean foreign ministers...
...The real issue," says the Rev...
...My colleagues and I feel very passionately that it is...
...But they are being asked to take sides...
...When Dr...
...The dissidents, or liberal side in the dispute (usually labeled "moderate" on the assumption that there are no liberals in the Missouri Synod), deny any reservations about important scriptural passages...
...There is little indication that enough districts are ready to defy the synod expulsion threat to place the approximately 125 Seminex seniors who will be seeking pastoral appointments at the end of the school year...
...There, it was said, young men studying for the ministrythe men who would become their pastors and guardians of the word---openly participated in the worship services of other denominations...
...The same church differences that split Concordia in January of this year threaten the synod's Missions Office, with dissidents prepared to set up parallel domestic and world mission organizatiom if current talks between the conservative board and liberal staff result in an impasse...
...He cited also "strange talk about love" on campus and a demonstration protesting the shootings at Kent State University...
...Franz Fanon has already remarked that "objective" studies always seem to favor the imperialist position...
...Scharlemann maintains that he and the few other conservative faculty members were subject to "harassment and persecution that you wouldn't believe" under the administration of Dr...
...the headlines are getting smaller...
...This is the basic thrust of the Monroe Doctrine...
...The battle raged for more than three years, with the seminary faculty being cleared in one investigation and condemned in another, doctrinal papers being issued from all sides, and the American Association of Theological Schools placing Concordia on probation for its manner of dismissing one faculty member...
...In the Mexico City meeting, one foreign minister was missing...
...Seharlemann resigned the post as acting seminary president, citing nervous exhaustion and his doctor's recommendation...
...That is hardly the dissidents' understanding of dialogue...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...There are also four small Lutheran church bodies in the United States with a combined membership of about 400,000 members...
...The American Lutheran Church, with 2.5 million members, is considered middle-of-the-road...
...About 60 students remained at Concordia and spring enrollment boosted the number of students there to about 80...
...Latin Americans who must, willy-nilly, share a hemisphere with the United States, have been treated to yet another "new relationship" with the United States as Mr...
...Preuss' election was brought about (his opponents say engineered) by conservatives who were worded about changes in their church...
...By our very nature we would let the two groups live together...
...The synod operates a parochial school system as extensive for its numbers as that of the Catholic Church...
...Scharlemann's contention that synod members are by and large conservative both theologically and politically...
...Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said that sharing a continent with the United States is like sleeping with an elephant...
...But, the synod's official leaders say the people never really took those steps...
...With legalistic bickering on both sides, the actual removal of Dr...
...Scharlemann also readily acknowledges that he once was the victim of conservative forces in the synod...
...Kissinger's new diplomacy...
...The battle lines were clearly drawn and immediately Dr...
...They say they want the synod to be a missionary church as opposed to an isolated denomination and an evangelical church as opposed to a legalistic one...
...Given the history of Latin America's relationships with the United States, it is not surprising that the idea was rejected...
...Further, the affirmations declared it the work of the church to "extend justice, social acceptance, and a full share in God's bounty to all people who are discriminated against and oppressed by reason of race, class, creed, or other unwarranted distinctions...
...Lutheran Churches tn the U.S...
...Wary Missourians could find these changes lurking everywhere in their church in the turmoil of the '60s...
...and shrugged off as parables or even myths, the biblical mysteries and miracles that had sustained their forefathers...
...The biblical dispute centers on the Lutheran doctrine of biblical inerrancy...
...The affirmations described the synod as "a confessional movement within the total body of Christ rather than a denomination emphasizing institutional barriers of separation...
...Few moderates would dispute Dr...
...Thus in the '60s when the seminary faculty--swelled by postwar graduates--took over the liberal leadership, the conservative membership of the synod held them twice guilty...
...to carry out its proposals for a new partnership...
...Louis...
...After several unsuccessful attempts at mediation, the seminary board ordered the faculty to return to classes and when they did not terminated their employment...
...Preuss and other conservative officials and sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" with a gusto that proclaimed the fortress had prevailed again...
...The changes included moves toward fellowship with other Lutherans and dialogue with other Christians and moves toward social action as an application of the gospels to contemporary conditions...
...He said the need for new ministers had fallen anyway and the seminary could be rebuilt by the time the need increased...
...For most of its existence, seminary officials served simultaneously as synod officials...
...But the unofficial dispute----or real dimensions of the ecclesiastical battle---embraces the understanding of Lutheranism, Christianity and life...
...Scharlemann stressed that the dispute which split the seminary was doctrinal...
...Showing that he understood the "gravity of the situation" all too well, Dr...
...In fact, the professors' teachings on the Bible could be viewed as the root cause of all the other problems...
...The problem might just go away through the twentieth-century version of schism--attrition...
...Considered as a whole, the country's 8.8 million Lutherans make up the third largest Protestant group in the United States...
...Nixon proposed a new Latin American policy, and it turned out to be old Latin American policy, in which the "hemispheric" idea is central...
...Headquartered in New York with a substantial Eastern membership, it is considered by far the most liberal of the three Lutheran organizations...
...The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is the second largest of three major Lutheran church bodies in the United States...
...Tietjen has said he will not participate in further proceedings "whose outcome has already been determined...
...The moderates insist they will not leave the synod, but they are far from demonstrating that they will be able to stay in on their terms...
...The rally cheered Dr...
...There may have always been the town suspicion of scholarship, but it was to the seminary that the synod always looked for settling doctrinal controversies, to the seminary that it looked as its seat of orthodoxy...
...Louis Review, is on the editorial staff o] the St...
...In April of 1970, he announced that an investigation would be made of the teaching at Concordia Seminary to assure against heresy...
...If it comes, the Missouri Synod, the church militant still, could find itself free for another century of talk of fellowship and love and peace, free to get back to Bible reading, hymn singing and other preparation for becoming the church triumphant...
...Louis, it has almost 2.9 million members across the country and has districts in Canada and South America...
...Scharlemann maintained...
...With Martin Luther, both sides hold that "God's word cannot err...
...For the young, there might be some toleration, but it was said also that in all these things the seminarians were being aided and abetted by their professors...
...Canada has apparently resorted to softer, but effective methods...
...Late in April, however, Dr...
...The synod president said nothing about talking with the dissidents or persuading them to come back...
...This was made quite clear by Dr...
...But he says the present problem in the church has come about because "on the other side are folks who say that if we have theological differences the only way to deal with them is to get rid of those who differ...
...These differences had been causing skirmishes in the synod for some time but open warfare did not break out until July of 1969 when the Rev...
...Tietjen was suspended his supporters were ready...
...Both sides in the denominational controversy insist there will be no schism or split...
...Until 1930, only men who had received their entire education in synod schools could teach at the seminary and it was not until the 1950s that seminary scholars began studying at other universities in any significant numbers...
...But such tension in the Missouri Synod had been markedly less than that experienced in other U.S...
...Their hope is that the Concordia walk-out was dramatic and symbolic enough to force the people to turn their attention to openly discussing and settling the issues that previously had been more quietly dividing the church...
...20, 1974 and then only in the form of suspension from his post for teaching false doctrine and for very minor and very questionable charges of administrative malfeasance...
...Rather, synod officials maintain, the people were dragged, usually unwillingly and often unwittingly, by those dissident and now deposed leaders who advocated the advance...
...Of course not...
...On the other side is the fact that the highly efficient United States economy consumes--as E. F. Schumacher has pointed out--forty percent of the world's resources to provide for six percent of the world's population...
...Preuss in his talk to the convention...
...The evangelical emphasis that moderates stress is a church openness to the Spirit which they claim is part of their heritage from Martin Luther...
...the endless proposals for mediation less interesting...
...But they maintain that the charge of doctrinal liberalism made against the dissidents is a red herring and that if the lay people can be brought to understand the real issue in the dispute they will support the dissidents...
...The seminary was established in rural Perry County, Mo., eight years before the synod was organized in St...
...Kissinger has insisted that the United States is not trying to create a new political bloc in Latin America...
...In February the dissident faculty and administration members set up the "seminary in exile" and close to 400 of the original 500 ministerial students at Concordia enrolled...
...Argentina has yet to get a decision on whether similar sale of Argentine-built automobiles can be made to Cuba...
...Commonweal: 211 But the seminary walk-out is now more than three months old...
...Some diplomatic observers said that the fact that the Cuban issue was not discussed was a sign of the success of Mr...
...No amount of window-dressing or new hemispheric proposals can alter the facts of today's coexistence...
...Preuss had pledged to halt liberalizing trends throughout the synod and shortly after his election as president took his most public stand against such trends at the place where they were most visible and irritating to his constituency...
...Three days of discussion were not enough to bring the Latin Americans around to open acceptance of colonial status...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 9
