Theoretical
Puritan Board Professor
Rediscovering the Issues Surrounding the 1974 Concordia Seminary Walkout (Kindle)
https://www.cph.org/rediscovering-the-issues-surrounding-the-1974-concordia-seminary-walkout - hard copy
Machen brought me into Presbyterianism. Yet for a time in college I was seriously considering confessional Lutheranism and was attending a faithful parish, and it was from them I really learned to value confessionalism as Protestant. In the back of my mind, I'd known a little bit about the Missouri Synod being the first denomination to push liberalism out rather than be pushed out.
Listening to a podcast of Aaron Renn's last year, my jaw dropped when he described just some very basic stuff from the wikipedia page (he later had an interview with someone more directly knowledgeable. I think hungrily sought all of the information I could find about it, especially in light of the PCA's issues with Revoice and other threats like it.
The PCA's 50 year anniversary was last year. This year is the 50th Anniversary of the LCMS renewal. The actions of J. A. O. Preus and his brother Robert are, in my opinion, the flipside of the Machen coin and provide a LOT of valuable perspective for Presbyterian and Reformed churchmen in the courts of the church. How bad was it? 44 of 49 faculty quit/were fired and 90% of the student body left. The exiles from the Missouri synod basically swung from a locally conservative/nationally moderate to liberal denomination to being the far left of the ELCA and largely responsible for the mess that is the ELCA (a body to the left of the PCUSA).
It's unapologetically Lutheran, so they're not too fond of us Reformed folk, so reader be aware with a thick skin.
Here's my Amazon review:
----
I'm probably one of the first/only non-Lutherans to have purchased this book, but as a confessionally Reformed Presbyterian who greatly appreciates J. Gresham Machen, anyone in that camp or those concerned about liberalism either in the classical authority/reliability sense or in the sufficiency of scripture sense that's more common in modern evangelical churches and denominations needs to see what the other side of the coin is. This is a great essay collection summarizing this controversy in a way that I think has value beyond the Missouri Synod's circles.
In summary, German liberalism had been long opposed in the Missouri Synod from the start when its founders retained a German language church and interacted with/opposed the happenings on the Continent. One of the unintended consequences of anti-German sentiment in World War II was the decoupling of and Anglicization of the Lutheran church, disconnecting a lot of knowledge about and refutations of German Liberalism that had been already done by the German language forbears here in the US. A generation passes and after World War II, there's a larger conference in Germany that infects many of the seminary professors and prominent pastors who see this as avant-garde and start to teach it in the 1940s and 50s. Alarming reports start happening that alert the laity, including the work of some small-scale but well distributed publishing efforts. Eventually you see the confessionalists elect a man named J.A.O. Preus to be the denominational President and gradually he investigates the faculty at Concordia Seminary St. Louis as to what they're teaching, records it and reports it to the denomination, gains additional authority to pressure the faculty and the President to actually teach orthodoxy, and the denomination is finally able to replace the seminary board members to get the Seminary President John Tietjen suspended. 90% of the faculty and students then walk out in protest in 1974, but the denomination closes the door on them and only loses about 250 congregations but quickly rebuilds the seminary back to its previous enrollment and faculty.
The Preus brothers' work is the other side of the Machen coin, because they (and ultimately) the Gospel won in the Missouri Synod and the Bible's unique authority and role was upheld. The liberals exited and were kept out, much to the flourishing/revitalization of the denomination. If you're Reformed and reading this, I urge you to not be offended by some of the characterizations and summaries of Reformed thought generally (like in the brief discussion about Barth who I also don't claim/want) because that's NOT the thrust of the book - there's a LOT of inside baseball that happens to be quite applicable to past and current Presbyterian and other mainline controversies. If I hadn't spent about a year and half in the Missouri Synod before becoming Reformed, I'd definitely have had to look some more things up, so be prepared for that.
One of the first things that stood out to me were the liberals hijacking of the Law-Gospel hermeneutic into something where they could pick and choose which Scripture was authentic (Gospel Reductionism). Orthodox Lutheranism asks the question of the passage whether it's law or gospel, but considers both equally valid, authoritative, and inspired. Gospel Reductionism basically says only "gospel" is authoritative and inspired, with everything else being manmade, and what IS gospel is up to the interpreter.
Another part was in the form of the discussion of Unionism, which is where a lot of Lutheran-Reformed animosity in Germany and the States comes from. The easiest analogue I can see for Lutheran animosity to the Reformed is that in Germany the Prince forced the Lutheran and Reformed churches to unify and liturgically in a Reformed direction (including on the supper), which led to the founders of the LCMS setting up a German continuing church in St. Louis. The Reformed analogy would be the Great Ejection of 1662 where the Puritans were kicked out of the Church of England because they refused to adopt a set liturgy that violated their consciences. A lot of the less confessional Lutheran bodies were trying to unify and work together as part of the ecumenical movement that required confessional distinctives to be downplayed, consistent with other pieces of the American mainlines. What it highlights is that ignoring and downplaying legitimate secondary issues that separate denominations has potentially perilous consequences because what's primary and nonnegotiable in one generation becomes secondary and up for grabs in the next.
In my opinion, confessional Presbyterians/Reformed and confessional Anglicans need to read this book to see that liberal takeover of a denomination is not inevitable and can be successfully overcome. For my Missouri Synod friends and brethren, I'd highly recommend this book and also recommend you take a look at J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism and D.G. Hart's biography of Machen Defending the Faith to see what the coin looks like when the valiant fight is lost and alternate institutions have to be built (in Machen's case Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church).
For those wondering the difference, where the tipping point in the Northern Presbyterian church was when Charles Erdman was elected moderator in 1925 and rather than risk the liberals leaving the denomination, he punted their potential discipline to a study committee, the Missouri Synod was arguably in at least as bad of shape in the mid-1960s but the laity elected a strong confessionalist willing to work through the layers of bureaucracy and procedure to protect the church.
https://www.cph.org/rediscovering-the-issues-surrounding-the-1974-concordia-seminary-walkout - hard copy
Machen brought me into Presbyterianism. Yet for a time in college I was seriously considering confessional Lutheranism and was attending a faithful parish, and it was from them I really learned to value confessionalism as Protestant. In the back of my mind, I'd known a little bit about the Missouri Synod being the first denomination to push liberalism out rather than be pushed out.
Listening to a podcast of Aaron Renn's last year, my jaw dropped when he described just some very basic stuff from the wikipedia page (he later had an interview with someone more directly knowledgeable. I think hungrily sought all of the information I could find about it, especially in light of the PCA's issues with Revoice and other threats like it.
The PCA's 50 year anniversary was last year. This year is the 50th Anniversary of the LCMS renewal. The actions of J. A. O. Preus and his brother Robert are, in my opinion, the flipside of the Machen coin and provide a LOT of valuable perspective for Presbyterian and Reformed churchmen in the courts of the church. How bad was it? 44 of 49 faculty quit/were fired and 90% of the student body left. The exiles from the Missouri synod basically swung from a locally conservative/nationally moderate to liberal denomination to being the far left of the ELCA and largely responsible for the mess that is the ELCA (a body to the left of the PCUSA).
It's unapologetically Lutheran, so they're not too fond of us Reformed folk, so reader be aware with a thick skin.
Here's my Amazon review:
----
I'm probably one of the first/only non-Lutherans to have purchased this book, but as a confessionally Reformed Presbyterian who greatly appreciates J. Gresham Machen, anyone in that camp or those concerned about liberalism either in the classical authority/reliability sense or in the sufficiency of scripture sense that's more common in modern evangelical churches and denominations needs to see what the other side of the coin is. This is a great essay collection summarizing this controversy in a way that I think has value beyond the Missouri Synod's circles.
In summary, German liberalism had been long opposed in the Missouri Synod from the start when its founders retained a German language church and interacted with/opposed the happenings on the Continent. One of the unintended consequences of anti-German sentiment in World War II was the decoupling of and Anglicization of the Lutheran church, disconnecting a lot of knowledge about and refutations of German Liberalism that had been already done by the German language forbears here in the US. A generation passes and after World War II, there's a larger conference in Germany that infects many of the seminary professors and prominent pastors who see this as avant-garde and start to teach it in the 1940s and 50s. Alarming reports start happening that alert the laity, including the work of some small-scale but well distributed publishing efforts. Eventually you see the confessionalists elect a man named J.A.O. Preus to be the denominational President and gradually he investigates the faculty at Concordia Seminary St. Louis as to what they're teaching, records it and reports it to the denomination, gains additional authority to pressure the faculty and the President to actually teach orthodoxy, and the denomination is finally able to replace the seminary board members to get the Seminary President John Tietjen suspended. 90% of the faculty and students then walk out in protest in 1974, but the denomination closes the door on them and only loses about 250 congregations but quickly rebuilds the seminary back to its previous enrollment and faculty.
The Preus brothers' work is the other side of the Machen coin, because they (and ultimately) the Gospel won in the Missouri Synod and the Bible's unique authority and role was upheld. The liberals exited and were kept out, much to the flourishing/revitalization of the denomination. If you're Reformed and reading this, I urge you to not be offended by some of the characterizations and summaries of Reformed thought generally (like in the brief discussion about Barth who I also don't claim/want) because that's NOT the thrust of the book - there's a LOT of inside baseball that happens to be quite applicable to past and current Presbyterian and other mainline controversies. If I hadn't spent about a year and half in the Missouri Synod before becoming Reformed, I'd definitely have had to look some more things up, so be prepared for that.
One of the first things that stood out to me were the liberals hijacking of the Law-Gospel hermeneutic into something where they could pick and choose which Scripture was authentic (Gospel Reductionism). Orthodox Lutheranism asks the question of the passage whether it's law or gospel, but considers both equally valid, authoritative, and inspired. Gospel Reductionism basically says only "gospel" is authoritative and inspired, with everything else being manmade, and what IS gospel is up to the interpreter.
Another part was in the form of the discussion of Unionism, which is where a lot of Lutheran-Reformed animosity in Germany and the States comes from. The easiest analogue I can see for Lutheran animosity to the Reformed is that in Germany the Prince forced the Lutheran and Reformed churches to unify and liturgically in a Reformed direction (including on the supper), which led to the founders of the LCMS setting up a German continuing church in St. Louis. The Reformed analogy would be the Great Ejection of 1662 where the Puritans were kicked out of the Church of England because they refused to adopt a set liturgy that violated their consciences. A lot of the less confessional Lutheran bodies were trying to unify and work together as part of the ecumenical movement that required confessional distinctives to be downplayed, consistent with other pieces of the American mainlines. What it highlights is that ignoring and downplaying legitimate secondary issues that separate denominations has potentially perilous consequences because what's primary and nonnegotiable in one generation becomes secondary and up for grabs in the next.
In my opinion, confessional Presbyterians/Reformed and confessional Anglicans need to read this book to see that liberal takeover of a denomination is not inevitable and can be successfully overcome. For my Missouri Synod friends and brethren, I'd highly recommend this book and also recommend you take a look at J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism and D.G. Hart's biography of Machen Defending the Faith to see what the coin looks like when the valiant fight is lost and alternate institutions have to be built (in Machen's case Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church).
For those wondering the difference, where the tipping point in the Northern Presbyterian church was when Charles Erdman was elected moderator in 1925 and rather than risk the liberals leaving the denomination, he punted their potential discipline to a study committee, the Missouri Synod was arguably in at least as bad of shape in the mid-1960s but the laity elected a strong confessionalist willing to work through the layers of bureaucracy and procedure to protect the church.
