Download Audio The Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures On the front page of the March 3, 1969, issue of Christian News, Herman Otten, editor and publisher of the unofficial Lutheran Church Missouri Synod weekly journal, reviewed sociologist Jeffrey Hadden’s new book, The Gathering Storm in the Churches. “Many clergymen and laymen within the major Protestant […]
Download Audio 1961 At the 1961 convention, it became clear that Wendland was not alone in his contention that the synod’s theses on church fellowship were unclear. Henry Koch, pastor in Greenleaf, Wisconsin, concurred with a letter received from the Overseas Commission, charging Wisconsin’s fellowship theses with being “unscriptural.” footnote: Following the convention, Koch faulted […]
Download Audio In 1958, Gehrke was assigned the doctrinal essay at the Western Wisconsin District convention, held, ironically, at Northwestern College, where Kowalke delivered his essay on Romans chapter 16 in 1956 and where both professors taught. The official convention report, authored by yet another Northwestern professor, Carleton Toppe, noted only that Gehrke “identified the […]
Download Audio Church of the Lutheran Confession withdrawal But by voting as they did, delegates could no longer preserve the synod’s own fragile fellowship. As the convention came to its conclusion, Paul Albrecht, district president of the Dakota- Montana District, rose to the floor and said: I know the Bible passage, “Thou shalt rise up […]
Download Audio Less than a month after the conclusion of the 1953 convention, Wisconsin’s Egbert Schaller, pastor at Nicollet, Minnesota, addressed a long letter to the synod’s Committee on Church Union. Schaller wrote: I see no honest or God-pleasing way by which we can approach the question of our future course in its relation to […]
Download Audio There was “a Missouri with which we would be glad to stand shoulder to shoulder,” Reim wrote, the Missouri “trying manfully to counteract the modern trend in its own midst,” the Missouri “of Walther, of Stoeckhardt, of Pieper, which we have known in the past.” But the new Missouri was “very much in […]
Download Audio The unit concept Although the term unit concept did not appear in Wisconsin writing until 1959, footnote: Wisconsin Proceedings, 1959: “Should church fellowship be treated as a unit concept covering every joint expression, manifestation, and demonstration of a common faith? . . . To this question we answer yes, and the Missouri Synod […]
Download Audio “A Sterner Kind of Admonition and Love” On August 6, 1945, the Milwaukee Journal reported that “an atomic bomb, hailed as the most terrible destructive force in history and the greatest achievement of organized science” was loosed by American B-29 bombers on Japan. The city of Hiroshima was covered with “an impenetrable cloud […]
Download Audio Romans 16:17 and 18 As fellowship questions grew increasingly contentious, the proper interpretation and application of Romans 16:17 and 18 came under greater debate. Missouri’s Brief Statement had applied the passage to all heterodox Christians, including non-Synodical Conference Lutherans, even over such nonfundamental doctrines as millennialism, election, and conversion. footnote: Missouri’s citation of […]
Download Audio A different fellowship history? To Confessional Lutheran writers and readers, the 1938 Union Resolutions, and the American Lutheran’s support for them, revealed a changed understanding of the practice of prayer fellowship. Conservatives sought to demonstrate that their position – prayer fellowship based on full agreement in doctrine – was the position Walther, Pieper, […]