Seminex in Print

[Brian Stoffregen]

An example.  The daughter and grand-daughter of members has a child.  They live long states away.  The first one we baptized on the understanding that they would find a church home.  The second one, a few years later, the same request comes along.  Have you found a church home? No. Okay, I will need you to do that.  I'll repeat the task I did three years ago, but more completely.  Here are three congregations: the closest, one about 10 mins further which I would heavily recommend, and one the same distance in the other direction.  What do they pick?  The closest.  What is that one practicing? Well, they encourage virtual attendance.  And guess what, they also have virtual communion. (Of course that is on days they have communion.  Mostly they don't.) So my brother's practice destabilizes 4 generations associated with mine. (Why can't we do this? Well, its wrong.  The church is the incarnational body of Christ gathered around the sacrament.  It is not some gnostic dream.  But they are doing it. Yes, well, that is the reason I suggested your daughter go to the one a further 10 mins away. But aren't we in the same body? Well, good question...)  Have they physically attended a real service? No.  Have they made actual contact with actual living people in a congregation? No. Do I have any founded hope that once this family baptism is performed they will follow through on this? Not really. And if they do, what is my confidence in that church raising people in the faith? Well, not great Jim.

And that is just the most recent.  We have endless discussions and non-binding opinions and people can still just do whatever they want.  We have districts where passive aggressively one seminary's grads aren't welcome, and others that respond.  Neither one of our seminaries really teaches leading CoWo, but we have lots of congregations that are basically only CoWo, and stock their ministry with SBC hires. You bring people into the ministry and teach them in the liturgy, and then release them with nothing more than a good luck to congregations that often don't want what they've been trained in. And then hold them responsible for trouble. We have confirmed generations that have never even read Luther's Small Catechism.  What does closed communion mean is such an institution? (I took my shot at defining that.)

An LCMS clergy friend faced an issue with his own daughter. She had married. Moved to another town where there was no LCMS congregation within a reasonable distance, but there was an ELCA congregation. Should she join that Lutheran congregation or some other denomination? She joined the ELCA congregation. They had a child. She asked her pastor if her father could come and baptize the child. He agreed. Then the father had to decide if he would participate in an ELCA worship service. He did.


Going back another generation, two of my uncles had grown up Lutheran. They married Roman Catholic women. They ended up joining the Roman Catholic church. My grandparents were quite upset about this until another uncle, their youngest brother, and a Lutheran minister, told his mother that he would rather see them be good Catholics than poor Lutherans. He would rather see the family go and worship together rather then be split. (Conversely, as I've mentioned, my dad married a Jewish girl, and she was baptized and joined the Lutheran church.)

[aletheist]

The Kansas City recension to the Augsburg Confession and its repeal.

You meant Wichita, right?

[Dave Benke]

Looks like an important and helpful work for those interested in American Lutheranism.

https://www.cph.org/p-35190-seminex-in-print-a-comprehensive-bibliography-of-published-material-and-selected-archival-resources-for-historical-research.aspx

One would think the best source for the bibliography would be/have been the Christian News storage facility and archives, not so?  The first sentence of the blurb stuck out for me:  Nothing has shaken American Lutheranism more than the conflict within the Missouri Synod in the early 1970s.  Agree or disagree? 

Dave Benke

It is the most significant event for two reasons:

1) It inaugurated the "Boomer Peace", an interim that we've all been living under right up until today, which the biggest rule is that we will not collectively make resolutions on our life together that have actual impact. That fight was considered so devastating that crippling the institution as a coherent body and fostering the attitude of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes was preferable.  And that generation continues to white-knuckle that peace and keep a lid on any conversations of significance.

2) It alerted the progressive hierarchies of all mainline institutions that both: a) the actual congregations were not with them and b) they could lose if the crisis was forced. Learning the lesson of the early warning, they all adopted slow-roll revolutions from the top-down, boiling the frogs.

Responding to your first point, Mark, using a systems approach and understanding the church body as similar to its component congregations as an emotional system and to a great extent clergy dominated, the behaviors are pretty much in line with the normal pastoral emotional approach, which is passive/aggressive.  Whatever resolutions make it through the more political national pre-convention process are aired out in the body as a whole.  And by the third day, the room temperature has been taken and the lay delegates begin to call the question and move the whole thing along in a more straight down the line manner.  Usually the edge speakers have made their attempts to commandeer the assembly repeatedly, and are no longer seen as effective.  That's just kind of group psychology more than what you're driving at. 

Where I think you're wrong is having convention resolutions be the marker of some kind of forced peace.  Who cares, really?

The bigger issue is at another level, which is the Rules for Dissent and comment/conversation on doctrinal issues.  That whole area of the LCMS bylaws came through just before the split in the early 1970s, and was meant to foster reasonable discussion.  However, as it has gotten tightened down and down and down some more - even as it's way less possible to control because of the types of information dissemination multiplying exponentially - there's really no trust in an honest discussion without fear of reprisal.  You can use the Koinonia Project as the template.  We actually had the dialogs between Atlantic District and Wyoming District pastors, and a great percentage participated, but in other precincts a ton of people refused to participate because either they would hear something they didn't want to hear as discussable or they feared being exposed.  So that to me is the more actual passive/aggressive nature of our so-called "walking together." 

Koinonia meetings began with a couple of hours of lecture on the meeting being a safe place.  And some of the interactors had their handbooks open to the section on sending in information on doctrine-practice perceived miscreants.  I'm no doubt out of the loop but I have heard zero, zip, zipinsky about any further Koinonia-like gatherings in our denomination. 

Safe spaces - where are they?

Dave Benke

Has not the church typically had councils that eventually issued creedal statements, or updates to canon law, or anathemas and like things?

I'm with you on the passive aggressive stuff.  Although I would tend to say that any institution given over to the amount of passive aggressive display as ours is simply due to bad or dishonest leadership. Call me a conciliarist, but it is leadership's role to guide the institution to making decisions.  I just don't really care about endless koinonia projects and dialog. Without skin in the game, none of it is very fruitful.  There probably have only been two meaningful processes in my entire life.  The Kansas City recension to the Augsburg Confession and its repeal. Right now there are a slew of practices across the synod that interfere with daily life.  And while I may have personal opinions about some of them, they are just that.  On many I could honestly walk with either.  But what I have significant trouble with is maintaining a coherent institution that neither says yes or no.

An example.  The daughter and grand-daughter of members has a child.  They live long states away.  The first one we baptized on the understanding that they would find a church home.  The second one, a few years later, the same request comes along.  Have you found a church home? No. Okay, I will need you to do that.  I'll repeat the task I did three years ago, but more completely.  Here are three congregations: the closest, one about 10 mins further which I would heavily recommend, and one the same distance in the other direction.  What do they pick?  The closest.  What is that one practicing? Well, they encourage virtual attendance.  And guess what, they also have virtual communion. (Of course that is on days they have communion.  Mostly they don't.) So my brother's practice destabilizes 4 generations associated with mine. (Why can't we do this? Well, its wrong.  The church is the incarnational body of Christ gathered around the sacrament.  It is not some gnostic dream.  But they are doing it. Yes, well, that is the reason I suggested your daughter go to the one a further 10 mins away. But aren't we in the same body? Well, good question...)  Have they physically attended a real service? No.  Have they made actual contact with actual living people in a congregation? No. Do I have any founded hope that once this family baptism is performed they will follow through on this? Not really. And if they do, what is my confidence in that church raising people in the faith? Well, not great Jim.

And that is just the most recent.  We have endless discussions and non-binding opinions and people can still just do whatever they want.  We have districts where passive aggressively one seminary's grads aren't welcome, and others that respond.  Neither one of our seminaries really teaches leading CoWo, but we have lots of congregations that are basically only CoWo, and stock their ministry with SBC hires. You bring people into the ministry and teach them in the liturgy, and then release them with nothing more than a good luck to congregations that often don't want what they've been trained in. And then hold them responsible for trouble. We have confirmed generations that have never even read Luther's Small Catechism.  What does closed communion mean is such an institution? (I took my shot at defining that.)

An institution that was interested in fulfilling its mission and forming souls would address these things in binding ways with its members.  I could imagine an LCMS that says: The Small Cat isn't a necessary teaching device and we are removing lines like "as you have learned it from Luther's Small Catechism" from the agendas, that adopts CoWo as DS6 and starts teaching it to everyone, that decided virtual everything is just fine.  The way that the ELCA has just become another Mainline Progressive outlet, the LCMS becomes just another Denom-Non-Denom outlet. And if it made those decisions, I'd then be freed to decide if I could abide by them as a minister.  But right now? It's just confusion.

What I take from this, Mark, is that you're not so much interested in the dialog/conversation/the mutual conversation of the brethren as you are in more hard and fast decisions made by a majority vote at a national convention of your denomination.  OK - certainly that has been a road well-taken through the LCMS history.   Your main objection seems to be Contemporary Worship or taking the option of Divine Service 6.  I suppose there's a way to legislate that, by determining through convention resolution that DS6 may contain X and not contain Y.  That will seem invasive to some, and if/as enforced through hymn and song selection by ecclesiastical supervisors might be perceived as heavy-handed.  Nonetheless, the system allows for it even now.  I do remember a few years ago someone or group/commission attempting to vet a list of usable hymns and songs.  Again, why not?   I wouldn't support it personally, but I carry no weight at the level you want to reach.

Dave Benke

[peter_speckhard]

Looks like an important and helpful work for those interested in American Lutheranism.

https://www.cph.org/p-35190-seminex-in-print-a-comprehensive-bibliography-of-published-material-and-selected-archival-resources-for-historical-research.aspx

One would think the best source for the bibliography would be/have been the Christian News storage facility and archives, not so?  The first sentence of the blurb stuck out for me:  Nothing has shaken American Lutheranism more than the conflict within the Missouri Synod in the early 1970s.  Agree or disagree? 

Dave Benke

It is the most significant event for two reasons:

1) It inaugurated the "Boomer Peace", an interim that we've all been living under right up until today, which the biggest rule is that we will not collectively make resolutions on our life together that have actual impact. That fight was considered so devastating that crippling the institution as a coherent body and fostering the attitude of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes was preferable.  And that generation continues to white-knuckle that peace and keep a lid on any conversations of significance.

2) It alerted the progressive hierarchies of all mainline institutions that both: a) the actual congregations were not with them and b) they could lose if the crisis was forced. Learning the lesson of the early warning, they all adopted slow-roll revolutions from the top-down, boiling the frogs.

Responding to your first point, Mark, using a systems approach and understanding the church body as similar to its component congregations as an emotional system and to a great extent clergy dominated, the behaviors are pretty much in line with the normal pastoral emotional approach, which is passive/aggressive.  Whatever resolutions make it through the more political national pre-convention process are aired out in the body as a whole.  And by the third day, the room temperature has been taken and the lay delegates begin to call the question and move the whole thing along in a more straight down the line manner.  Usually the edge speakers have made their attempts to commandeer the assembly repeatedly, and are no longer seen as effective.  That's just kind of group psychology more than what you're driving at. 

Where I think you're wrong is having convention resolutions be the marker of some kind of forced peace.  Who cares, really?

The bigger issue is at another level, which is the Rules for Dissent and comment/conversation on doctrinal issues.  That whole area of the LCMS bylaws came through just before the split in the early 1970s, and was meant to foster reasonable discussion.  However, as it has gotten tightened down and down and down some more - even as it's way less possible to control because of the types of information dissemination multiplying exponentially - there's really no trust in an honest discussion without fear of reprisal.  You can use the Koinonia Project as the template.  We actually had the dialogs between Atlantic District and Wyoming District pastors, and a great percentage participated, but in other precincts a ton of people refused to participate because either they would hear something they didn't want to hear as discussable or they feared being exposed.  So that to me is the more actual passive/aggressive nature of our so-called "walking together." 

Koinonia meetings began with a couple of hours of lecture on the meeting being a safe place.  And some of the interactors had their handbooks open to the section on sending in information on doctrine-practice perceived miscreants.  I'm no doubt out of the loop but I have heard zero, zip, zipinsky about any further Koinonia-like gatherings in our denomination. 

Safe spaces - where are they?

Dave Benke

Has not the church typically had councils that eventually issued creedal statements, or updates to canon law, or anathemas and like things?

I'm with you on the passive aggressive stuff.  Although I would tend to say that any institution given over to the amount of passive aggressive display as ours is simply due to bad or dishonest leadership. Call me a conciliarist, but it is leadership's role to guide the institution to making decisions.  I just don't really care about endless koinonia projects and dialog. Without skin in the game, none of it is very fruitful.  There probably have only been two meaningful processes in my entire life.  The Kansas City recension to the Augsburg Confession and its repeal. Right now there are a slew of practices across the synod that interfere with daily life.  And while I may have personal opinions about some of them, they are just that.  On many I could honestly walk with either.  But what I have significant trouble with is maintaining a coherent institution that neither says yes or no.

An example.  The daughter and grand-daughter of members has a child.  They live long states away.  The first one we baptized on the understanding that they would find a church home.  The second one, a few years later, the same request comes along.  Have you found a church home? No. Okay, I will need you to do that.  I'll repeat the task I did three years ago, but more completely.  Here are three congregations: the closest, one about 10 mins further which I would heavily recommend, and one the same distance in the other direction.  What do they pick?  The closest.  What is that one practicing? Well, they encourage virtual attendance.  And guess what, they also have virtual communion. (Of course that is on days they have communion.  Mostly they don't.) So my brother's practice destabilizes 4 generations associated with mine. (Why can't we do this? Well, its wrong.  The church is the incarnational body of Christ gathered around the sacrament.  It is not some gnostic dream.  But they are doing it. Yes, well, that is the reason I suggested your daughter go to the one a further 10 mins away. But aren't we in the same body? Well, good question...)  Have they physically attended a real service? No.  Have they made actual contact with actual living people in a congregation? No. Do I have any founded hope that once this family baptism is performed they will follow through on this? Not really. And if they do, what is my confidence in that church raising people in the faith? Well, not great Jim.

And that is just the most recent.  We have endless discussions and non-binding opinions and people can still just do whatever they want.  We have districts where passive aggressively one seminary's grads aren't welcome, and others that respond.  Neither one of our seminaries really teaches leading CoWo, but we have lots of congregations that are basically only CoWo, and stock their ministry with SBC hires. You bring people into the ministry and teach them in the liturgy, and then release them with nothing more than a good luck to congregations that often don't want what they've been trained in. And then hold them responsible for trouble. We have confirmed generations that have never even read Luther's Small Catechism.  What does closed communion mean is such an institution? (I took my shot at defining that.)

An institution that was interested in fulfilling its mission and forming souls would address these things in binding ways with its members.  I could imagine an LCMS that says: The Small Cat isn't a necessary teaching device and we are removing lines like "as you have learned it from Luther's Small Catechism" from the agendas, that adopts CoWo as DS6 and starts teaching it to everyone, that decided virtual everything is just fine.  The way that the ELCA has just become another Mainline Progressive outlet, the LCMS becomes just another Denom-Non-Denom outlet. And if it made those decisions, I'd then be freed to decide if I could abide by them as a minister.  But right now? It's just confusion.

What I take from this, Mark, is that you're not so much interested in the dialog/conversation/the mutual conversation of the brethren as you are in more hard and fast decisions made by a majority vote at a national convention of your denomination.  OK - certainly that has been a road well-taken through the LCMS history.   Your main objection seems to be Contemporary Worship or taking the option of Divine Service 6.  I suppose there's a way to legislate that, by determining through convention resolution that DS6 may contain X and not contain Y.  That will seem invasive to some, and if/as enforced through hymn and song selection by ecclesiastical supervisors might be perceived as heavy-handed.  Nonetheless, the system allows for it even now.  I do remember a few years ago someone or group/commission attempting to vet a list of usable hymns and songs.  Again, why not?   I wouldn't support it personally, but I carry no weight at the level you want to reach.

Dave Benke

I think the CoWo example was merely about sending pastors in to situations where doing what they were trained to do lands them in hot water and the support network available to him doesn't support him. But the main example was not the problem of a church doing CoWo, it was a church not being sacramentally serious. At all. There tends to be a lot of overlap between those churches and CoWo churches, but the issue Mark highlighted was one of sacramental unseriousness and how it undermines the wider church.

I remember an FL article many years ago in which Richard Johnson expressed dismay on a confirmation retreat that the other pastors there weren't bothering to teach the creed because the kids didn't find it relevant (or something to that effect). They weren't using the catechism, either. He was so irritated by that that he went out in the woods by himself and started shouting the words of the creed and the catechism explanation. It explained in part the importance of STS for him and likeminded clergy. My point is that the ALPB has long been about sacramental seriousness. Whether Richard Johnson, Salzman, or Neuhaus, the "evangelical disdain" with which FL and the ALPB have unserious Lutheran congregations and practices is well documented over many years. So here is a story of a faithful pastor going way out of his way to do the faithful, pastoral thing in a winsome way and encountering nonsense from his fellow clergy that undoes all his efforts. The ALPB should be his ally in that context, not his critic.

[John_Hannah]

Has not the church typically had councils that eventually issued creedal statements, or updates to canon law, or anathemas and like things?

I'm with you on the passive aggressive stuff.  Although I would tend to say that any institution given over to the amount of passive aggressive display as ours is simply due to bad or dishonest leadership. Call me a conciliarist, but it is leadership's role to guide the institution to making decisions.  I just don't really care about endless koinonia projects and dialog. Without skin in the game, none of it is very fruitful.  There probably have only been two meaningful processes in my entire life.  The Kansas City recension to the Augsburg Confession and its repeal. Right now there are a slew of practices across the synod that interfere with daily life.  And while I may have personal opinions about some of them, they are just that.  On many I could honestly walk with either.  But what I have significant trouble with is maintaining a coherent institution that neither says yes or no.

An example.  The daughter and grand-daughter of members has a child.  They live long states away.  The first one we baptized on the understanding that they would find a church home.  The second one, a few years later, the same request comes along.  Have you found a church home? No. Okay, I will need you to do that.  I'll repeat the task I did three years ago, but more completely.  Here are three congregations: the closest, one about 10 mins further which I would heavily recommend, and one the same distance in the other direction.  What do they pick?  The closest.  What is that one practicing? Well, they encourage virtual attendance.  And guess what, they also have virtual communion. (Of course that is on days they have communion.  Mostly they don't.) So my brother's practice destabilizes 4 generations associated with mine. (Why can't we do this? Well, its wrong.  The church is the incarnational body of Christ gathered around the sacrament.  It is not some gnostic dream.  But they are doing it. Yes, well, that is the reason I suggested your daughter go to the one a further 10 mins away. But aren't we in the same body? Well, good question...)  Have they physically attended a real service? No.  Have they made actual contact with actual living people in a congregation? No. Do I have any founded hope that once this family baptism is performed they will follow through on this? Not really. And if they do, what is my confidence in that church raising people in the faith? Well, not great Jim.

And that is just the most recent.  We have endless discussions and non-binding opinions and people can still just do whatever they want.  We have districts where passive aggressively one seminary's grads aren't welcome, and others that respond.  Neither one of our seminaries really teaches leading CoWo, but we have lots of congregations that are basically only CoWo, and stock their ministry with SBC hires. You bring people into the ministry and teach them in the liturgy, and then release them with nothing more than a good luck to congregations that often don't want what they've been trained in. And then hold them responsible for trouble. We have confirmed generations that have never even read Luther's Small Catechism.  What does closed communion mean is such an institution? (I took my shot at defining that.)

An institution that was interested in fulfilling its mission and forming souls would address these things in binding ways with its members.  I could imagine an LCMS that says: The Small Cat isn't a necessary teaching device and we are removing lines like "as you have learned it from Luther's Small Catechism" from the agendas, that adopts CoWo as DS6 and starts teaching it to everyone, that decided virtual everything is just fine.  The way that the ELCA has just become another Mainline Progressive outlet, the LCMS becomes just another Denom-Non-Denom outlet. And if it made those decisions, I'd then be freed to decide if I could abide by them as a minister.  But right now? It's just confusion.

MARK,

I think your grievance is about the lack of sacramental seriousness as Peter writes.

Juridically the problem is reinforced positively by the almost total lack of interest by the Synod in liturgical enforcement. It is not willing to do anything except that concerning admission and corporate, cooperative worship with anyone outside of Missouri. What we do about cognitive, doctrinal issues (to the point of obsession) we are unwilling to do about liturgy. We fail to understand that liturgy shapes the understanding of our people much more than formal theological propositions.

Peace, JOHN

[Dave Benke]

The ALPB should be his ally in that context, not his critic.

The ALPB is his ally in helping, if Mark is looking for help, find a way to be faithful and fruitful.  National convention resolutions is one of those ways.  I don't think it's the best one right out of the box.  Legislative options are findable, and I listed a couple.  I don't recommend that lifestyle in general as well as in specific. 

You may remember that I did the ecclesiastical supervision thing for a couple of decades.  Locally, my concept was to put the two pastors who were the irker and irkee together and see what the Lord had in mind.  If someone was irked at someone regionally, then I'd set up a three-way call, or figure out with the other supervisor what the bug was that was afflicting the brother from somewhere else.  I don't think you would find at the end of the day that the Atlantic District lacks sacramental seriousness.  Maybe Mark just needs to find his way downstate.  I hasten to add I'm no longer in charge of getting that done.

Dave Benke

[Rev. Edward Engelbrecht]

David Berger, who developed this project, was head librarian while I was a reference desk librarian at CSL. Wonderful person, good researcher. This publication should be a very helpful tool for those who wish to understand what happened in the controversy.

[Mark Brown]

Has not the church typically had councils that eventually issued creedal statements, or updates to canon law, or anathemas and like things?

I'm with you on the passive aggressive stuff.  Although I would tend to say that any institution given over to the amount of passive aggressive display as ours is simply due to bad or dishonest leadership. Call me a conciliarist, but it is leadership's role to guide the institution to making decisions.  I just don't really care about endless koinonia projects and dialog. Without skin in the game, none of it is very fruitful.  There probably have only been two meaningful processes in my entire life.  The Kansas City recension to the Augsburg Confession and its repeal. Right now there are a slew of practices across the synod that interfere with daily life.  And while I may have personal opinions about some of them, they are just that.  On many I could honestly walk with either.  But what I have significant trouble with is maintaining a coherent institution that neither says yes or no.

An example.  The daughter and grand-daughter of members has a child.  They live long states away.  The first one we baptized on the understanding that they would find a church home.  The second one, a few years later, the same request comes along.  Have you found a church home? No. Okay, I will need you to do that.  I'll repeat the task I did three years ago, but more completely.  Here are three congregations: the closest, one about 10 mins further which I would heavily recommend, and one the same distance in the other direction.  What do they pick?  The closest.  What is that one practicing? Well, they encourage virtual attendance.  And guess what, they also have virtual communion. (Of course that is on days they have communion.  Mostly they don't.) So my brother's practice destabilizes 4 generations associated with mine. (Why can't we do this? Well, its wrong.  The church is the incarnational body of Christ gathered around the sacrament.  It is not some gnostic dream.  But they are doing it. Yes, well, that is the reason I suggested your daughter go to the one a further 10 mins away. But aren't we in the same body? Well, good question...)  Have they physically attended a real service? No.  Have they made actual contact with actual living people in a congregation? No. Do I have any founded hope that once this family baptism is performed they will follow through on this? Not really. And if they do, what is my confidence in that church raising people in the faith? Well, not great Jim.

And that is just the most recent.  We have endless discussions and non-binding opinions and people can still just do whatever they want.  We have districts where passive aggressively one seminary's grads aren't welcome, and others that respond.  Neither one of our seminaries really teaches leading CoWo, but we have lots of congregations that are basically only CoWo, and stock their ministry with SBC hires. You bring people into the ministry and teach them in the liturgy, and then release them with nothing more than a good luck to congregations that often don't want what they've been trained in. And then hold them responsible for trouble. We have confirmed generations that have never even read Luther's Small Catechism.  What does closed communion mean is such an institution? (I took my shot at defining that.)

An institution that was interested in fulfilling its mission and forming souls would address these things in binding ways with its members.  I could imagine an LCMS that says: The Small Cat isn't a necessary teaching device and we are removing lines like "as you have learned it from Luther's Small Catechism" from the agendas, that adopts CoWo as DS6 and starts teaching it to everyone, that decided virtual everything is just fine.  The way that the ELCA has just become another Mainline Progressive outlet, the LCMS becomes just another Denom-Non-Denom outlet. And if it made those decisions, I'd then be freed to decide if I could abide by them as a minister.  But right now? It's just confusion.

MARK,

I think your grievance is about the lack of sacramental seriousness as Peter writes.

Juridically the problem is reinforced positively by the almost total lack of interest by the Synod in liturgical enforcement. It is not willing to do anything except that concerning admission and corporate, cooperative worship with anyone outside of Missouri. What we do about cognitive, doctrinal issues (to the point of obsession) we are unwilling to do about liturgy. We fail to understand that liturgy shapes the understanding of our people much more than formal theological propositions.

Peace, JOHN

Peter and John, thank you.  That is exactly it.  We are just a sacramentally unserious church.  And even our arguments are a sick joke. We'll grind to death esoteric doctrines and sit like Little Jack Horner what a good boy am I at how right we get everything, meanwhile our practice, what actually forms people, is Laodicean. 

[Jim Butler]

A lurker on this board, who has an association with the Concordia Historical Institute (CHI), wrote to me and asked me to share a bit about the background of this book.

It seems that CHI received a significant bequest from a former member of CSL's Board of Control (as it was called in the 1970s) for the purpose of archiving, documenting, researching, and publishing on the Walkout. Seminex in Print is the first monograph to be published as a result of that bequest. CHI hopes to publish more books and monographs about the Walkout (in conjunction with CPH) leading up to the 50th anniversary in 2024. In addition, CHI will be sponsoring the publication of other monographs about LCMS history, e.g. a translation Koestering's early history of the LCMS in conjunction with 175th anniversary of the Synod next year.

Finally, I think it was Dave Benke who asked if there was any mention of Herman Otten's archives in Berger's book. While the person who wrote to me did not say if there was, he did note that people from CHI met with Pr. Otten prior to his death and received his permission to photocopy his vast archives for CHI.

[D. Engebretson]

Some of us who are now nearing our retirement years were actually in our teenage years when the "walkout" occurred in 1974 (I was still only 13).  Those who lived through the events of this time are either now long retired or deceased.  For the sake not only of my generation, which knew of these events when they occurred, but were only tangentially impacted, but especially for those generations following my own who only know them as summarized in print, a thorough record of this time is not only helpful, but necessary for the sake of a later recounting of its history.  For that reason I thank those who are funding and compiling works such as Seminex in Print.

[Charles Austin]

Of course, one has to wonder and ask whether CHI, representing, as it does, one "side" in that whole dispute, intends to present a complete history or a history of that side.
Herman Otten's archives would include dozens of documents from the Lutheran Counci in the U.S.A., the LCA and ALC, and one hopes these would have a role to play in the future publications.
Or what of the historical documents of Seminex leaders?
Several books have been written, some of them discussed in this modest forum, about the years of Jack Preus' tenure and the "Seminex" events. "Preus of Missouri" by James Adams, religion writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is one. John Tietjen's memoir is another.
I suspect the documents of the AELC and its leaders are now part of the ELCA archives.
I found book discussed far upstream here, and I cannot remember the author, to be compelling and it jogged many parts of my memory.
LCUSA's archives probably include some oral histories of those times.

[John_Hannah]

LCUSA's archives probably include some oral histories of those times.

Where are LCUSA's archives? ELCA (Elk Grove Village, IL)?

[Charles Austin]

I suspect, John, they are with the ELCA archives. I sort of remember discussions about what to do with the archives as the LCUSA was closing down. There would be much of value in the records of the cooperative agency that represented the LCA, ALC and LCMS even during the Seminex era.

[Richard Johnson]

LCUSA's archives probably include some oral histories of those times.

Where are LCUSA's archives? ELCA (Elk Grove Village, IL)?

Yes.

CHI is staffed with professional archivists who would not see themselves as representing "one side" in the controversy. (CPH may be another matter.) But in any event, history is never an objective discipline; it is always interpretation. We are perhaps approaching the time when a history of those events which is at least even-handed could be written by a historian with no ax to grind, but I suspect that will not happen for another 20 years or so when virtually everyone with personal memories is dead and gone. That's usually the way it works. The important task at present is to preserve the archival material so that that history can be written some day.

[John_Hannah]

There would be much of value in the records of the cooperative agency that represented the LCA, ALC and LCMS even during the Seminex era.

Indeed, they are most important for those decades of American Lutheranism.