From Discordia to Concordia

Hillsdale College professor of history and LCMS member Korey D. Maas has written Discordia: A Lutheran Seminary Wrecked and Reborn.  He gives a blow by blow account of the controversies that arose in the denomination between 1969 and 1974, a church spat that was covered by the New York Times and Walter Cronkite, culminating in the dramatic walkout, which the media described as the “climax to the top religious news story of the past few years.”

Maas notes that some people interpret what happened as the theological victory of orthodoxy over theological liberalism, while others view it as primarily a political struggle.  Maas acknowledges that it was actually both, and he details the political tactics practiced by both sides.  Not just the conservatives, as has often been charged.   I was glad to learn about what was happening in the trenches, and Maas’s account taught me a great deal that I was glad to know.

For example, the mystery of Martin Scharlemann.  In 1958, the New Testament professor presented a paper to the faculty in which he advocated the higher critical approach to the Scriptures and stated “The book of God’s truth contains errors.”  When this became known outside the seminary, thanks to a dissident seminary student named Herman Otten, the theological “Battle for the Bible” that would lead to the walkout was ignited.  And yet, in 1962, when the denominational convention was considering a resolution to oust Scharlemann, the scholar appeared before the assembly and renounced everything he said earlier.  Was this just a craven collapse to save his job?  Not necessarily.  After that, Scharlemann became one of the synod’s most outspoken defenders of Biblical inerrancy, a scholarly opponent of the historical critical method, and a leader of the orthodox remnant on the faculty.

Maas also gives support to the notion, which I had heard but hadn’t really grasped, that it was the laypeople who kept the LCMS orthodox.  As theologians equivocated and pastors took sides, it was the lay men and women of the church who rose up in outrage about what they were hearing about the seminary and consistently, over this entire period, kept electing conservatives to the conventions, the boards, and the synodical offices, eventually forcing the issue.

And when the schism finally happened, when the seminary president was fired and 90% of the faculty and 85% of the students walked out in ecclesiastical procession in his support to form a Seminary In Exile (hence, “SEMINEX”) and later started their own church body, to their surprise only 4% of LCMS congregations voted to join it, with 96% staying with the now theologically strengthened LCMS.

The small denomination they started, the American Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC) did, however, serve as a catalyst for the union of the other more liberal Lutheran denominations, the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America.  The three church bodies formed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  Today the ELCA is one of the most progressive of all American denominations, with its early embrace of same-sex marriage and its transgender bishop.

Though some continue to insist that those who departed were orthodox Christians who were the victims of an ultra-conservative purge, Maas points out that those who left the LCMS were some of the prime instigators of the radical theologies later embraced by the ELCA:

Would such have been the fate of the LCMS if Concordia’s faculty majority and student acolytes had remained? Offering confident answers to counterfactual questions is a fool’s errand, but two things might at least be noted about the Seminex trajectory. The first is that many of the former LCMS pastors and professors who entered the ELCA were not simply passive observers of that denomination’s moral and theological radicalization. More often they spearheaded it. As their new colleagues observed already in the 1980s, “they became advocates of progressive agendas in their new ecclesial setting,” and “when the umbilical cord was cut those dissidents tended to run amok.”

He quotes one departing Concordia faculty member who said,  “I have problems with the virgin birth, real presence [of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar], bodily resurrection.”

Not only did the LCMS come out stronger and more unified than before, so did Concordia Seminary.

Whether the ELCA’s trajectory would have been the LCMS’s if the faculty majority had gotten its way, it can at least be said that their departure made possible the maintenance of—or return to—traditional Missouri Synod orthodoxy. When the formation of the AELC provided congregations the opportunity to vote with their feet, 96% remained with the LCMS. A similar vote of confidence for Concordia itself proved the seminary’s mock funeral premature. Accreditation was maintained, the faculty was quickly rebuilt, and already by the 1980–81 academic year, enrollment was back up to more than 700 students.

The seminary went from Discordia to Concordia.

Actually, Maas points out, the walkout did the church a favor.  If the professors had stayed, they would have been almost impossible to dislodge.  He concludes,

Given the typical pattern of American church schisms, in which the liberal party gains control of denominational institutions and conservatives split off to form new ones, one might assume there are some practical lessons that might be learned from the contrary LCMS experience. Frankly, though, it’s not at all clear what these might be. Though a theology of glory might still tempt some to speak proudly of routing the forces of liberalization and saving orthodoxy, LCMS traditionalists did not in the final analysis maintain control of Concordia because they had the better arguments, because their messaging was more effective, or even because their politics were more Machiavellian. They “won” because their opponents simply walked away.

Photo:  Concordia Seminary by Eric Allix Rogers  via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0