Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod & Schism

The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod has throughout its history been a conservative enclave.  The immigrants who formed the organization were fleeing from German rationalism and seeking a haven in which to form a purified community, an island of truth within the reprobate society.  But due to inescapable sociological factors, the homogenous refuge was subtly infiltrated over a period of time by diversity of opinion on traditional doctrinal positions.  When these deviations were discovered, a crisis within the synod necessitating a decision about whether to assimilate or evict the dissenters was precipitated.  The inevitability of the outcome of this decision, as well as the origin and perpetration of the "pure doctrine" of the synod, can only be understood through an examination of the historical tradition of the synod and the sociological changes that gradually developed over the years since its inception.

The Missouri Synod was formed on April 26, 1847 as "Die Deutsche Evangelische-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Statten" by 700 immigrants from Saxony and some Loehe missionaries who were unhappy with the Joint Synod of Ohio.  The Saxons left Germany because they were dissatisfied with developments in German theology that they considered rationalism, and they wanted to maintain the pure doctrine of the seventeenth-century Lutheran theologians untainted by the human ego.  A letter to the parish of Christ Episcopal Church from the Right Reverend Jackson Kemper dated March 3, 1839, tells of the arrival of some of the immigrants to St. Louis:

        "A Body of Lutherans, having been persecuted by the Saxon
        government because they believed it their duty to adhere
        to the doctrines inculcated by their great leader and
        contained in the Augsburg Confession of Faith, have arrived
        here with the intention of settling in this or one of the
        neighboring states, and having been deprived of the privilege
        of public worship for three months, they have earnestly and
        most respectfully requested the use of our church that they
        may again unite in all the ordinances of our holy religion."1

The dissatisfaction of the Loehs missionaries with the Joint Ohio Synod was based on three complaints:  "the lack of an acceptable confessional standard, the ascendance of Englsih at the seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and the process of Americanization."2  These two groups, both desiring a return from the acceleration of changes in human thought during the nineteenth century, drew up the constitution of the Missouri Synod.

The LC-MS (Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod) is a confessional church, and the body of teaching that members of the synod must subscribe to was included in Article II of the constitution:

        "The synod, and every member of the synod, accepts without reservation:
          1.  The Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament as the
              written Word of God and the only rule and norm of faith
              and of practice;
          2.  All the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran
              Church as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition
              of the Word of God..."3

The LC-MS "became the first major Lutheran body on American soil to subscribe unconditionally to the...Lutheran Confessions;"4 which clearly shows their "strict adherance to classical dogmas."5

The constitution also contains a clause that the Saxon immigrants were adamant about including, (because of a bad experience with their ex-leader), that limits the authority of the synod over its member congregations.  Article VII of the constitution proclaims that:

            "In its relation to its members the Synod is not
        an ecclesiastical government exercising legislative or
        coercive powers, and with respect to the individual
        congregation's right of self-government it is but an
        advisory body.  Accordingly, no resolution of the Synod
        imposing anything upon the individual congregation is of
        binding force if it is not in accordance with the Word of
        God or if it appears to be inexpedient as far as the
        condition of a congregation is concerned."6

This clause was added primarily as a provision for the possibility of electing dictatorial leaders with different doctrinal positions than those upheld by the body of the synod, for dissension within the body of the synod was unknown and inconceivable to the homogenous population that comprised the synod in its early years.

A concern for "pure doctrine" has gripped the LC-MS from its founding, and one of the prime distinguishing factors of "pure doctrine" is a mandatory emphasis on the Bible as the written Word of God, inerrant in all its parts.  Any human formulation of a theory that is not consistent with the Bible in literal interpretation is false, wrong; and the church must protect itself from those theories and teach only the truth as it is told in the Bible.  C.W.F. Walther, a founding father and president of the LC-MS until his death, said, "the true church also belongs to all those visible societies in whose midst the Word of God is purely taught..."7  Because of the importance of "pure doctrine" in the synod, the LC-MS was not willing to compromise on it in relationships with other Lutheran church bodies.  Fellowship with other synods hinged on complete doctrinal agreement.  Not surprisingly, the LC-MS effectively isolated itself from the "false doctrine" of the other Lutheran church bodies with this policy.

Internally, the LC-MS kept its homogeneity and unity of belief and practice of this "pure doctrine" through the retention of the German language, parochial schools, a rural population, and the continuity of German immigration to the U.S.

Using the German language in all church services, documents of theology, and the educational system kept the synod from assimilating any of the ideas of the English-speaking society around it.  Also, German was a common denominator among the immigrants who joined the church, and it helped to keep strangers in a strange land tied to the familiar surroundings and sounds in a traditional institution.  When "The English Conference of Missouri" was formed in 1872, it found doctrinal agreement with the LC-MS and wanted to join the larger synod, but it was refused admission in 1887 due to the language difference.  The German language was a tradition in the LC-MS, and it holds on to its traditions.

Also of extreme importance in the preservation of "pure doctrine" was the synod's network of parochial schools.  The Missouri Synod was second only to the Roman Catholics in the number of parochial schools it established.  And the children of the members of the Missouri Synod has to go to them, or their families ran the risk of excommunication.  The German language was used in the schools; and, of course, "pure doctrine" was taught and offensive human theories, such as Darwinism, that contradicted the literal meaning of the Bible were banned.  Parochial schools were hightly effective assurance of unity of doctrine.

Throughout the history of Lutheranism, farming has been the primary occupation.  So it is not surprising that Lutherans immigrating to the U.S. settled rural areas where they could continue to live in a familiar way.  This physical isolation from American society enabled the immigrants to set up their own culture.

As the German-speaking church pulled together the immigrants through cultural familiarity, it also strengthened its doctrinal position and homogeneous membership.  A similar ethnic background keeps the people tightly knit, especially in a foreign society.

During the years between 1830 and 1900, more than five million German immigrants settled in the U.S.  With such a large and steady stream of new members who welcomed the familiar language and religion in a strange country, the LC-MS did not have to worry about third and fourth generation members who might not learn German or who might marry outside the church and leave.  The Missouri Synod grew from 4000 members in 1947 to 1 million in 1917.  The DC-MS did not have to look to English-speaking Americans for new members and it did not have to water down its traditions.

As these four factors (the German language, parochial schools, rural life, and continued immigration) were so integral to maintaining the doctrinal unity of the Missouri Synod; the breaking down of these factors opens up the Synod to external influences that affect the traditional doctrinal positions.

The Missouri Synod adopted the previoulsy-mentioned "English Conference of Missouri" as their English District in 1911.  So the German language tradition was already beginning to break down, even before the first World War, when the activities of the Ku Klux Klan against the German-speaking immigrants and churches persuaded Die Deutsche Evangelische-Lutherisch Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Statten to change its name in 1917 to The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.  And by 1920 the opening service of the converntion of the Missouri Synod was in English.  The transition was also aided by state legislatures that passed laws against the use of foreign languages in churches and schools.  During the first and second World Wars, being blatantly German was not a good idea; so the Missouri Synod learned to tone it down a bit.  The use of the German language in the synod did not die an instant death, however.  Many years passed before the language change completely trickled down the church hierarchy.  But the damage was done.  Mainstream American culture began to subtly filter into the synod that could now understand the words.

The parochial schools also began losing support.  Urbanization was creeping into the church body and more families were sending their children to public schools.  Often public schools were used because there were not enough Lutheran families in an urban or suburban area to be able to afford a parochial school for their children.  And the later generations of member families were not learning German as frequently and wouldn't go to a school in which it was used.  In 1920, only 30 percent of the congregations had their own school and less than 50 percent of the members' children went.  Now the children of the Missouri Synod were being exposed to Darwinism and other ideas despised by the church, and this was bound to have an influence on the way these people as adult members interpreted doctrine.

Urbanization did more than cause people in the LC-MS to use public schools.  The exposure to people from different backgrounds and with different beliefs generated more tolerance in many of the congregations.  The cultural isolation broke down as more of the outside culture was absorbed.

The mass immigration of Germans stopped short at the first World War.  And with many of the members of the Missouri Synod going to cities away from many Lutheran churches and joining other denominations, the Missouri Synod had to turn to people from different backgrounds to convert as members.  This led to the assimilation of different ideas and cultures into the membership, and certainly did much to break down the ethnic unity of the LC-MS.

With all of these sociological forces at work reshaping the ethnic, isolationist character of the Missouri Synod, the force of the "pure doctrine" that had been passed on through that character was weakened.  The constitution could be interpreted more laxly than was intended by the founding fathers; the inerrancy of Scripture in all matters was not clearly laid out for all to follow.  Before he died, Franz Pieper, a beloved theologian of the synod who had been its president from the time of Walther's death (1881) to his own in 1931 (both Walther and Pieper have left the strongest stamp on the traditional doctrine of the synod), decided to lay out clearly the traditional Missouri doctrine of inerrancy in "A Brief Statement."

        "We teach that the Holy Schriptures differ from all
        other books in the world in that they are the Word
        of God...Since the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God,
        it goes without saying that they contain no errors
        or contradictions, but that they are in all their
        parts and words the infallible truth also in those
        parts which treat of historical, geographical and
        other secular matters."8

Until the time of Pieper's "Brief Statement," the explicit doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture had "gone without saying."  But before the sociological changes in the synod it had been understood.  After the synod began to acculturate (against its will) this doctrine became more obscured in the general understanding.  The older members who had been thoroughly indoctrinated had no trouble with their comprehension, but the younger members were a bit vague about the importance of this tradition.  So Pieper set everyone straight.  And to certify his efforts, the LC-MS adopted his "Statement" as its official doctrinal position in 1932.

Fellowship with the ALC was adopted in 1938, although it was never implemented due to opposition within the synod and it was eventually retracted.  Still, a step out of isolation from other church bodies had been taken.  The Missouri Synod forbade its members to worship with Lutherans who teach "false doctrine" or with any other denomination of Christianity for that matter.  The synod felt that it was better not to worship at all than to worship with those who believe "false doctrine."  ( a Pieper paraphrase)  The ALC did not (and does not have the "pure doctrine" of the Missouri Synod; so even the consideration of fellowship with the ALC shows a major relaxation of strict adherence to Missouri Synod tradition.

In 1945, forty-four pastors and professors and one layman of the LC-MS released "A Statement" complaining about some traditional Missouri Synod practices (such as lack of fellowship with other Lutheran synods) as being unscriptural.  Theodore Graebner wrote an essay supporting this protest, which he had also signed, warning that, "When we have made the Church the interpreter of Scripture then we have popery, full blown, then we have the mother of all modernism and radicalism in the Church, an unscriptural, schismatic, loveless separatism...Legalism and a loveless zeal for orthodoxy is going to breed radicalism, liberalism, strife, and division."9

This "Statement" was not forced into retraction, a habit the synod had long practiced with all documents that "erred."  But, since professors of Concordia Seminary had signed the statement, the synod's suspicious eye for false doctrine began rolling that way, and a request was made for an investigation of the faculty in 1950.

An attempt was made to declare Pieper's "Brief Statement" an official confession of the synod, and in 1950 the convention approved the move.  The traditionalist forces within the synod were beginning to close down on mutant trains of throught.  An uneasiness was developing within the church body;  the traditionalists sensed a threat but as yet had nothing concrete to fight, no targets.

In 1959 a target appeared.  Martin Scharlemann, a professor at Concordia Seminary, released a document entitled, "The Bible as Record, Witness, and Medium."  The essay supported the historical-critical method of interpretation of the Bible, and criticised the usage of the term "inerrancy" to describe Scriptures.  He stated, "What the sacred writers record and what they give their witness to is God's faithfulness in keeping his promises.  They do so, moreover, from within their own personal limitations in terms of historical, geographical, or scientific information...[the Scriptures are an] infallible rule of faith and practice, but this is quite different from insisting that every piece of information given in the Bible is factually accurate in our contemporary sense."10

This was much more than the traditionalists could tolerate.  On June 27, 1962, Scharlemann was forced to retract his essay.  The lines of war had been drawn and the synod was forced into two camps; either that of the traditionalists who felt that they were protecting the Bible from human rationalism and wielded the words of Walther and Pieper, or that of the historical-critics who felt that they were defending the church from Bibliolatry and the suppression of the glory of faith in Christ.

In 1965, the Detroit convention of the Missouri Synod declared that the events in Jonah are history.  In 1967, a resolution stating that the world was created in six twenty-four hour days was brought up.  The traditionalists were not letting anything slip by.  And in 1969, J.A.O. Preus was elected president of the Missouri Synod and the conservatives knew they had the battle won.

The same year, John Tietjen was elected president of Concordia Seminary, much to the disappointment of Martin Scharlemann, who had hoped for the position himself.  Scharlemann had joined the fundamentalist wing of the Missouri Synod after he had retracted his essays; and since Tietjen was a historical-critic; he saw his opportunity.  On April 9, 1970, Scharlemann sent Preus a letter requesting him to appoint a committee to investigate the doctrine taught by the faculty at Concordia Seminary.

Preus was pleased to be handed the opportunity to bring the "Bible-doubters" to task, and he submitted to the Board of Control of Concordia Seminary "A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles" by which the faculty were to be measured for false doctrine.

The traditionalist position of the inerrancy of all parts of Scripture comes from C.W.F. Walther and Franz Pieper, who controlled the synod until 1931 (and then took immortal hold with the acceptance of Franz Pieper's "Brief Statement" as confessional doctrine for the synod).  Walther gives the general relationship of church to Scripture within the Missouri Synod in this statement, "Our church has taken for the foundation on which she stands the Holy Scriptures, and on it she stands honestly and squarely; from this foundation she will not depart one finger's breadth."11  The rebuttal of the liberals to this is, "To place other "foundations" under the one Foundation which is Jesus Christ is ultimately to deny that Foundation."12

Another prime argument used by the traditionalists in their refutation of the historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible comes from Pieper, "If Scripture were a mixture of God's Word and man's word and not God's own infallible Word, it would be subject to human criticism--and that would spell the end of the absoluteness of the Christian religion."13  Pieper's fear was echoed in the writings of both previous and later synod theologians.  Earlier, Dr. F. Bendte had written, "the entire theological edifice is undermined and hollowed out if it is no longer borne by the inspired, infallible Word of Scripture...If the Bible is no longer the infallible Word of God, but a human, fallible record of the things of which it treats, the loci classici and dicta probantia are no longer of any avail.  A veritable deluge of all manner of all manner of all manner of skeptical questions concerning the origin and content of Scripture is unloosed which cannot be checked and controlled."14  A recent Committee on Theology and Church Relations released a statement joining Walther's idea of Scripture as the foundation for the church with Pieper and Bente's fear of infallibility and carried the tradition even further by a continuation of that logic;  "The Bible was written to bear witness to the action of God in human history to accomplish the redemption of fallen mankind.  If Biblical historical records are unreliable or even false; than God's saving actions in history are called into question, too.  The Christian faith rests so squarely on God's actions in human history, centering in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, that if Biblical historical methods are false, our faith is left without a foundation."15  The more recent theologians have followed the logic of their forefathers through to its conclusion; and in their way, they believe that they are protecting the truths of God's Word from a path that will lead to atheism.  Naturally, the more liberal thinkers protested.

One of the liberal concerns is reflected in this passage from "A Confession of Faith and Declaration of Protest,"  "We protect the developments within our synod which place the Scriptures under the authority of the synod.  Explications of the Scripture in human documents and synodical resolutions may be helpful for the purposes of study and discussion, but they cannot be considered as "official interpretations" and cannot bind the faith of the individual believer...Even the carefully phrased limitation that such resolutions are binding "only insofar as they are in accord with the Word of God" implies that it is the synod in convention which has the authority to decide what is in agreement with the Word of God."16  The liberals felt that the church's "legalism and..zeal for orthodoxy" was leading it to take the ultimate step and define how Scripture can be interpreted, an "unscriptural and un-Lutheran" idea.

Indeed, that was just what the traditionalists wanted.  When a resolution was passed at the New Orleans Convention saying that all matters other than doctrinal ones were to be decided by majority vote, the traditionalists wanted the vote to also decide matters of doctine, for according to C.W.F. Walther, "the purpose of a vote on a doctrinal issue was 'not to decide the correctness of a doctrine, but to learn by way of the vote whether all have recognized what is right and are in agreement with it.'"17  At any rate, the New Orleans Convention of 1973 removed the causes of the synodal anxiety by adopting Preus'' "Statement" as official doctrine and by voting to remove John Tietjen from office as well as certain members of the faculty to be decided on by the Board of Control for propagating "false doctrine."

From the fundamentalist history of the Missouri Synod, it is easy to see that the results of such a clash were inevitable.  "Pure doctrine" and the tradition of the Missouri Synod still have the power to unify masses of people brought up under their grasp.  And unifications to "save the Bible" convinced many that their original doctrine was right, and any deviance wrong.  Now that the synod feels stronger, since it has weeded out the dilutive elements within, it is beginning to return to its older tradition of isolation.  Fellowship with the ALC, which was adopted in 1969, is being disputed on doctrinal positions, and the last convention declared that this fellowship be modified by a warning:  fellowship in protest.  The next convention will decide whether the LC-MS will return wholeheartedly to the policy of isolation that gave it the strength to keep its doctrine pure.  Tradition will prevail.


FOOTNOTES:

1  Frederick W. Danker, No Room in the Brotherhood (Clayton Publishing House, New York, 1977) p.7.

2  Lutherans in North America, p. 179.

3  Handbook of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, 1977 edition, p. 11.

4  James E. Adams, Preus of Missouri, (Harper and Row, New York, 1977) p.17.

5  Ibib. p.17.

6  Handbook, p.17-18.

7  Lutherans in North America, p. 178-179.

8  Adams, p.20; quotation from Franz Pieper, "A Brief Statement."

9  Danker, p.25-26; quotation from an essay by Thomas Graebner.

10 Ibid.  p.6; from the Bible as Record, Witness, and Medium; by Martin Scharlemann.

11 Commission on Theology and Church Relations, LC-MS, The Inspiration of Scripture, p.18-19, from CWF Walther (Lehre und Wehre, 1871, p.11).

12 From A Confession of Faith and Declaration of Protest, p.2.

13 Franz Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (Concordia, St. Louis, 1950).

14 Comm. of Theol. and Church Rel., from F. Bente (Lehre und Wehre, 1902, p.130).

15 Ibid. p.4.

16 Conf. of Faith, p.4.

17 Ibid.