Throwback Thursday: That We May Follow Their Faith and Good Works
Note: On a recent podcast, one of the hosts didn’t seem to know “very well” who the Rev. Herman Otten was, so their guest, the former LCMS president Jerry Kieschnick replied:
“Herman was a pastor. He's deceased now. He was a pastor who graduated from Concordia Seminary St. Louis, but was not certified by the faculty. So, he took it upon himself basically to do everything he could to bring down that seminary. He found everything he he could lay his hands on that indicated a slide toward the left and he published it. He published it every week.”
Of course, President Kieschnick glossed over the entire sordid Seminex debacle, never mentioning that it was Herman Otten and Kurt Marquart who sounded the alarm over the radical liberalism that infected the seminary like gangrene. Like him or not, Pastor Otten heroically saved Concondia Seminary - St. Louis. The liberals walked out and went on to become the so-called Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, a founding part of the ELCA. Pastor Otten was right about all of it, and he suffered for his fidelity. The reason President Kieschnick raised the issue of Herman Otten was to blame him for Kieschnick’s reputation as a liberal. Well, maybe his vilification of Otten and his simultaneous radio silence on the liberal rot that infected the seminary that Otten - while still a seminarian - opposed and helped dismantle, might have something to do with that reputation. That and a few other things, like suggesting that the LCMS should have “prophetesses,” whatever that means.
In case you want to know just how fetid this Seminex crowd was, here is an insightful documentary that is sympathetic to their cause:
At any rate, here is a throwback that was published October 22, 2024, following Pastor Otten’s death. — Ed.
That We May Follow Their Faith and Good Works
This article, written by the Rev. Dr. Korey Maas (a four-time guest on The Gottesdienst Crowd) published by the Acton Institute, is a helpful reflection on the Seminex walkout. For far from being a long-over LCMS historical tempest in a teapot from the distant past, we are still dealing with the fallout: the same fungal liberalism that crops up periodically like mushrooms in humid places. Like unto even the faithful kings of the Old Testament, our tolerance of the high places and the Asherim continue to plague us.
Older folks who bear the scars of divided churches and families often don’t want to talk about it. Younger folks often just consider it to be irrelevant ancient history. But considering that all history is an ongoing chain of cause and effect, and considering what history has taught us - we ignore it at our peril.