Caution: Deconstruction Ahead
The LCMS is a conservative church body in a conservative confession, grounded in the inerrant Scriptures according to a quia subscription to the Book of Concord. We privilege our fathers in the faith, and look askance at innovation. This is not to say that we never change things, but we are reformers, not revolutionaries.
To liberals in our midst, this is a source of frustration. Those who want to see change have an uphill battle.
In the post-World War II era, liberals wanted to bring change to the century-old change-resistant Missouri Synod. They cast their vision. They began to strategize. They knew that a frontal assault would not work. They had to be patient and stealthy. They correctly understood that the educational apparatus of synod - especially the seminaries - was the key. If liberals could dominate the faculty, they could begin populating the church with liberal pastors. These pastors could, in a couple generations, turn the synod liberal without a lot of noticing.
In time, they took over the faculty of Concordia Seminary - St. Louis. They began indoctrinating seminarians and sowing the seeds of change. What they didn’t count on was that in the late 1950s, a couple of seminarians would see what was happening and blow the whistle: Kurt Marquart and Herman Otten. They really didn’t expect the Reverend Otten to found and run a newspaper, resist efforts to strongarm him (including refusing to certify him), find a way to be ordained and take a call and serve a congregation for 55 years in spite of lack of certification, and simultaneously carry on a decades-long carpet-bombing campaign against the liberal incursion. Nor did they expect the Reverend Kurt Marquart to serve for decades as the distinguished seminary Professor Marquart, writing the definitive book on the entire sordid affair.
Of course, we all know what happened. Fifty years ago, the liberal contingent lost, as the courageous synod president J.A.O. Preus suspended the CSL president and forced out other liberal professors. The liberals responded with the Walkout, hit the exit ramp of the synod, founded their own alternative seminary (“Seminex” - Latin: “half-dead”), and went on to co-found the ELCA (which, of course, today has female “pastors” and “bishops,” promotes all of the deviant sexualities in the ever-growing acronym, has swallowed the left-wing agenda feathers and all, and has the freakiest of the freaky-deaky theology - up to and including goddess worship.
We were spared Ashtoreth worship in our synod thanks to Pastor Otten - who, frankly, deserves a posthumous award and a statue at St. Louis.
But, of course, the remaining liberals, those who neither left nor were driven out, continued to spread the carcinogen around the body like a cancerous tumor. They tried to shut down Concordia Theological Seminary - Fort Wayne in the early 1990s, and shamefully mistreated the seminary’s beloved president, the Rev. Dr. Robert Preus (brother of J.A.O Preus). You can read the tell-all book written by the Rev. Dr. David Scaer.
Sadly, over the course of a few decades, CSL allowed the voices of change to infest the sacred space of the chapel - permitting “praise bands” and, on one occasion, allowing a pastor to distribute slices of pizza for students to chomp on in the sanctuary as some kind of performance art sermon. I hope someone reconsecrated the sanctuary after this desecratory abomination. Kyrie eleison!
Deo gracias, CSL is in good hands today - including the chapel. While our two seminaries are not identical - nor should they be - there does seem to be a happy concordia between them that has not necessarily been the case in the past.
After the turn of the millennium, liberals managed to elect a synod president who made bizarre utterances about the synod establishing some kind of female prophetic office. He managed to make structural changes to the LCMS in anticipation of winning reelection and pushing the agenda of change. But his particular brand of change and vision-casting was a bridge too far, and his presidency seems to have been yet another high-water mark of success for the forces of change in our synod.
But once again, the high places have not been destroyed, and the liberals keep coming back - like the proverbial tumor in remission.
We have seen examples of the “Tale of Two Synods” again and again. Social media has made it harder and harder for the liberal insurgency to operate under the radar screen.
Politically, their campaigns and projects just never quite get there. In 2014, the Charismatic group Renewal in Missouri finally gasped its last. The female “ordination” consortium Daystar has long since faded into obscurity - though their moribund online journal has an interesting archive. The now-sainted President Kuhn addressed their liberalism here. So-called Jesus First rebranded into Congregations Matter - and their recent candidates have all gone down in flames.
While in the 1980s, the Church Growth Movement (CGM) made significant inroads in displacing the liturgy, they too seem to have reached a high-water mark, and the traditional liturgy has made a strong recovery among younger generations (a phenomenon we are seeing across the church of every denomination, jurisdiction, and confession).
There seems to be a growing fatalism among our dissident liberals. They are casting visions that the majority of us want no part of. They must realize that the most successful of the synod’s liberals were the Seminexers - who successfully founded a new seminary and a new synod.
And that brings me to this thoughtful piece by Ad Crucem News: Building Exits from the LCMS. I highly recommend reading it, and subscribing to ACN.
The author puts forward the lay of the land as it is today. He makes a strong case that the liberal tribe - which often self-identifies as “missional” along with employing other buzzwords - are starting to build an offramp from the LCMS. And as in times past, the forces of change understand that the key to the future of the LCMS is the educational apparatus - especially in how pastors are trained. They seem to have given up on subverting our two seminaries, and are now looking to bypass and work around them. And while they continue to try to change us, they are at the same time “building exits,” knowing that it is unlikely that they will impose their will on the rest of us.
I think ACN is right, and I think this is, in the long run, a welcome development. We do not walk together. We cannot coexist. We are not compatible. There is no compromise position today, just as there wasn’t during the Seminex walkout. There must be a winner and a loser. And even if the liberals were to achieve their victory and take control of the LCMS, we conservatives would make their lives utterly miserable by our refusal to adopt their mindset. They would probably have to throw us out, and their facade of niceness notwithstanding, they probably would. Don’t be fooled!
It stands to reason that separation is the best alternative for everyone. Professor Marquart was saying as much decades ago.
That said, conservatives must be wary. For if they are able, the liberals will seize control of our institutions. They are making contingency plans, but they are not surrendering. And even if they fail, they will inflict damage, and will take down some parts of our infrastructure. The recent secession of Discordia - Texas (Semitex) is perhaps another high-water mark of the rebellion. They wanted to defy the biblical order of creation, and have a female president. They wanted to defy synod oversight and to be able to do whatever they wanted to do regardless of bylaws and the mission of the Concordia System to be a Lutheran institution primarily tasked with educating Lutheran church workers. They had cast a different vision. So they lawyered-up - and now the case is being litigated. Perhaps it will remain tied up for years while they simply continue give the synod the finger, refuse to seat board members duly elected by the synod, and continue to do what they want to do. They wanted their girlboss, even if it cost them the ability to certify church workers. Well, there you go. Their agenda is out there in the open for all to see.
If the liberal faction within our synod finally takes the exit ramp, watch for them to try to take as many people and resources with them as they can. Twenty years ago, when we had a small exodus of LCMS pastors to the Eastern Orthodox church, they went on a recruitment barrage - trying to take as many of us with them as they could. And even after they left, many of these guys lurked around in LCMS online forums trying to lure pastors and seminarians - and even entire congregations - into their proverbial van with candy. It was creepy and gross. Expect more of the same in the case of a split within the LCMS. Expect it to be as ugly as the aftermath of Seminex.
As ACN points out, we are seeing alternative seminaries popping up already - schools with no hope of being able to certify LCMS pastors. And the people supporting these unofficial institutions attend the same conferences, cast the same visions, read the same authors, and speak the same lingo. I know of four recent resignations from the LCMS roster by pastors whose congregations had abandoned the Divine Service in favor of worship that looks like every other big-box Big Eva “We Do Church Differently” (yawn) hipster congregation. Clearly, they are frustrated at not being able to win over a larger percentage of us in the LCMS so as to make reality match their vision-casting. They just can’t get traction. There was also a fairly recent defection from the LCMS to the ELCA. And about five years ago, an LCMS pastor retired after performing a homosexual “wedding,” lamenting in a video (now removed) that his entire reason for becoming a pastor was to change the LCMS’s view of “gay marriage.” But even his “progressive” congregation demurred. He had lost hope of ever winning that battle. I know of another pastor, whose rostered wife was president of a group agitating for female “ordination” in the LCMS, who retired and then joined an Episcopal congregation.
While liberal boomer pastors are retiring in defeat, there are millennial liberals keeping the flame alive. They need to be dealt with - both officially and unofficially. When they promote unbiblical doctrines, they should be disciplined by their presidents. But whether or not this happens, they should also be marked and avoided by those of us who are members of synod who do not want to see our synod become just another rotten mainline abomination like the ELCA. Separatists are not our brothers. They should not be made to feel welcome. We should not entertain their suggestions. We should have our eyes wide open regarding what is actually happening. They should be encouraged to do the honest thing and either join the ELCA, join the LCMC, or start their own church bodies. We are far too nice, and that has been our downfall in the past.
We don’t tear down all of the high places.
We must be watchful and not fall for the cunning of the forces of change. One of these alternative seminaries is a pan-Lutheran project headed up by a lady “pastor.” This is treated as normal and acceptable by the gaslighting liberals who want our pastors to be able to be certified by this institution. In a recent public exchange on Facebook, an LCMS pastor who is involved in the establishment of yet another new alternative seminary, was asked, “Were CSL and CTSFW consulted in the creation” of this startup project?” He responded: “Yes, there has been a lot of conversation with them and continues to be.” There was a swift response from an official representative from one of our seminaries:
The answer [to the above question] is no. The [seminary] leadership was not consulted. We learned of the launch of this project just days before it was publicly announced…. I have directly expressed my concern about forming this new seminary… that it will cause further division in our synod…. Please stop recruiting men from within the LCMS who desire to serve as LCMS pastors to attend this non-LCMS program that doesn’t qualify them for pastoral ministry in the LCMS. This is not walking together, and it will cause great confusion and further division in our synod.
Mark and avoid.
It is time for conservatives to grow up and stop believing the rhetoric of the liberal wing. We know them from their history. They are playing us. We know what they want to do from their own words and conferences and podcasts and alternative institutions.
Liberals should not be invited to write divisive essays in LCMS doctrinal publications. They should not be included, mollycoddled, and given a seat at the table. We should fight them and stop playing around. We should oppose their benign-sounding buzzword-laden calls for change. We should encourage them to cast their visions somewhere else. We should not forget the lessons of the past, nor fail to put a future liberal synod in our mind’s eye as we contemplate the future - one that our posterity will have to live in, with, and under. We should not tear down our house with our own hands. Let those who want us to change instead go and change themselves.
We are a conservative church body in a conservative confession, grounded in the inerrant Scriptures according to a quia subscription to the Book of Concord. Don’t let them forget it.
But more importantly, let’s not forget it ourselves!