LCMS Doctrinal Commission;
Pacific Lutheran University (ALC)
Mark Braun, Those Were Trying Years
Jungkuntz and Ralph Gehrke resigned their professorships at Northwestern College shortly after the 1961 convention. E. E. Kowalke, Centennial Story: Northwestern College 1865?1965 (Watertown, WI: Northwestern College, 1965), 270, reported that one of the two (not identifying which one) said simply, "I share the Missouri position." Jungkuntz accepted a call to Concordia Seminary, Springfield, Gehrke to Concordia College, River Forest, following the 1961 convention. Northwestern's Board of Control refused to grant them a peaceful release of their calls, citing their "public rejection of the Synod's position regarding the principles of church fellowship."
From Lawrence White:
The issue of woman suffrage cannot be viewed in isolation from other questions about the role of women in the church, ultimately including that of ordination to the pastoral office. In historical perspective, it is undeniably clear that for the liberal elites which controlled the Synod throughout the 1960's, the approval of woman suffrage in the church was only one step, albeit an important step, in the achievement of complete gender equality in the church. Dr. Richard Jungkuntz, the Executive Secretary of the CTCR in the late "60's" and one of the chief architects of approval for woman suffrage, most certainly held this view. Jungkuntz would later recall a discussion within the Commission with Dr. Martin Scharlemann, one of the St. Louis Seminary's leading New Testament Greek scholars, in this way:
"Just as the discussion was drawing to a close, Dr., Scharlemann observed, 'But if those positions that Jungkuntz has taken, and his arguments in support of them, if they are valid, that means women's ordination should be permitted.' And I said, "Well, you're the one who said it,' and I did not pursue it further because that would have led us down this other path and utterly derailed the suffrage question. My feeling (and that was a political choice) was that if we can get suffrage in, at least there's a foot in the door or a camel's nose under the tent."(47)
Had liberal dominance not been interrupted by the 1969 conservative coup, that process would almost certainly have culminated in approval of women's ordination at some point in the 1970's. Woman suffrage was deliberately intended to be " camel's nose under the tent" for the ordination of women, to use Dr. Jungkuntz's apt image. The only thing the liberals failed to anticipate was that by the time the camel's nose had slipped in, the tent would be under new management. The theological linkage between suffrage and ordination is reflected in the subsequent declaration of Seminex Faculty in favor of women's ordination. Throughout this period of transition the faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis played a prominent role in shaping the Synod's theology. In 1974, following the removal of Seminary President John Tietjen, the majority of the faculty departed into self-styled "exile" to form "Christ Seminary - Seminex." A few years later, in 1979, these same professors issued a document on the role of women in the church entitled "For the Ordination of Women." Their appeal for women pastors included this very specific comment about the relationship between suffrage and ordination:
"If they (that is, 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 and 1 Timothy 2:8-15) do apply to the ordination of women they should apply equally to the question of woman suffrage in the church, to the role of women as congregational officers and to any situation in which women would teach or exercise authority over men. There is nothing inherent in the pastoral office which would make it logical to restrict the application of these passages to it."(48)
Church historian Dr. James Weis, a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Springfield, had also suggested an unavoidable linkage between suffrage and ordination. In a 1970 article in the seminary's theological journal The Springfielder, Weis reviewed the development of the Synod's position on women in the church. He noted that the same convention which had approved woman suffrage had also called for "a study of the ministry of women in church and society; including any areas where prejudices because of sex may be in evidence." The seminary professor went on to note: "If this proposal is acted on, future conventions of the Synod will likely be faced with the task of considering the question of the ordination of women into the parish ministry." Dr. Weis concluded:
"It is without question that the position of the Synod and its leaders on the place of women in the church has changed a number of times during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century...The old restrictions on woman suffrage in the congregations and in the synod have now been lifted. It remains to be seen what decisions the Synod will arrive at in the future in the matter of the ordination of women into the parish ministry."(49)
47. Richard J. Jungkuntz, Ibid., p. 189.
48. The Faculty of Christ Seminary-Seminex, "For the Ordination of Women," St. Louis: n.p. 1979, p.5.
49. James Weis, "The Status of Women in the Missouri Synod in the Twentieth Century," The Springfielder, Volume XXXIII, No. 4 (March, 1970), pp. 40-41.
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GJ - One reader remembered Jungkuntz only as a lightning rod in the LCMS. The pastor was unaware of Jungkuntz' role in the Wisconsin Synod. A study of those pastors who were trained by Jungkuntz and Gehrke at Northwestern College will reveal the apostate leaders of WELS and (to a degree) Seminex.
Jungkuntz and Gehrke were martyrs frequently mentioned and pictured in Missouri in Perspective, the tabloid published by the Seminex leaders.
Why are women performing pastoral acts in Missouri and WELS?
Short answer - Jungkuntz.
At the Purple Palace, Paul McCain went into denial-overdrive when I told him of the ELCA women vicars (Columbus, Ohio) baptizing and consecrating in LCMS congregation. I knew because I read the letters of the young women at the Trinity Seminary (ELCA) library in Columbus.
