Download Audio In the synod of Walther, Pieper, and Engelder By late 1961, Scharlemann had received many letters both sup- porting and condemning his views. In the Milwaukee area, widespread rumors had Scharlemann resigning his teaching position in St. Louis. President Behnken wrote Scharlemann “a very kind letter advising and suggesting (not demanding or asking) […]
Download Audio Missouri’s official response, however, was that the Affirmation “was not charged with any doctrinal error.” No modification of its doctrinal content was required, although some observers feared that certain phrases of the Affirmation failed sufficiently to exclude doctrinal errors and required clarification. Wisconsin remained unconvinced that changes in terminology alone would render the […]
Download Audio Yet, during the 1950s, Concordia experienced a quiet, unheralded “revolution,” as some professors investigated and embraced methods of biblical interpretation practiced for decades at many other seminaries but previously unknown at St. Louis. footnote: According to one researcher, “Nearly all the evidence points to the fact that throughout the 1940s the historical-grammatical method […]
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 […]