Saturday, December 1, 2007

Seminex:
Northwestern College and Radicalism in WELS








Richard Jungkuntz taught many future pastors of WELS at Northwestern College, Watertown, before moving to Concordia, Springfield, and finally to the ALC. Each time he was bumped up, from college instructor in Watertown, to seminary professor in Springfield, to Provost at Pacific Lutheran University, 1972. He was even acting president of PLU in 1974!

The Wisconsin sect is far more radical than most people realize. Trying to look more retro than the other synods, WELS has pursued a radical apostate streak for many decades.

Two packages brought that home to me. One was from a woman who was excommunicated for objecting to their new budgeting plan, many years ago. She thinks the plan preceded the LCA plan, which was similar in its manipulative schemes. Anyone can recognize today how abused the fudge-it figures are. One minute the sect is in receivership and needs to sell Michigan Lutheran Seminary for $1. The next day they are building a $7 million chapel at MLC (nee Dr. Martin Luther College), sending a new team of missionaries to Africa, and building a new student center in Madison, Wisconsin for $6 million or so.

The other package came from another state, another person (Grey Goose). That contained material for the congregational self-study, another man-centered Fuller-inspired stunt. The details are too tedious to list. Organizational navel-gazing is a sure sign of decline.

As I mentioned months ago, WELS was the birthplace of Seminex. My friend, a WELS pastor, tells me that Northwestern College reunions often have cars with Seminex stickers on them. When the break with Missouri came, a number of Northwestern graduates joined the Seminex faction.

Richard Jungkuntz, PhD, was teaching the historical-critical method (HCM) to the future WELS and LCMS pastors. No one knew this until the student submitted papers they wrote for Jungkuntz to another instructor, I believe at Mequon. The instructor raised holy heck and Jungkuntz was ousted. WELS pastors laugh, "They only found out by accident." That confirms the legend of WELS: sniffing out false doctrine everywhere but never seeing it under their own noses.

At some point another Watertown instructor left for supporting HCM. According to a favorite student of Jungkuntz, Richard egged on his partner in crime and left him hanging on a limb. Clever man, that Jungkuntz.

So the two apostate instructors influenced a number of classes of WELS pastors, whose bone-breaks and secret ritual humiliations united them by the time they were graduated from the Sausage Factory at Mequon. Those are the same classes in control of the Love Shack's machinery today. I can pick them out easily from my source (not a friend, but a CG fan) who got tears in his eyes over Jungkuntz being the best teacher he ever had. All I have to do is locate the Jungkuntz fan and look over the Mequon classes below him. That is where the Church Growth stars shine brightest.

Jungkuntz went on to become divisive at Concordia Seminary, Springfield, when Jack Preus was the president. According to legend, Jack supported the apostates and also the conservatives, depending on who was talking to him in his office. One famous Jack Preus quote: "Help me gut Jungkuntz." Nevertheless, Preus eventually finessed Missouri into a temporary return to basics. Preus' style was to ease people out of positions, which launched Jungkuntz into a higher orbit. It pays to apostacize, in the short run.

The introduction of the fraudulent historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation as the essential groundwork for Church Growth in WELS, Missouri, the Little Sect on the Prairie, and ELCA. HCM teaches that the Bible is just another book, to be eviscerated like Homer's Iliad, Marco Polo's Journals, and Moby Dick. The difference is that Melville argued for the Book of Jonah being accurate in Moby Dick, while the HCM professors made fun of the same book of the Bible. The difference is that Melville knew whales while the HCM gurus memorized lecture notes from skeptics. (Nonetheless, Jonah reveals God constantly at work in fulfilling His will, whale anatomy aside.)

The historical-critical method is sterile and fading away, but its damage will not pass away so quickly. The nexus with Church Growth is simple. HCM thinking was foundational for Fuller Seminary's repudiation of its former (albeit weak) inerrancy stance. Once pastors and theologians think of the Bible as another book, a pretty good book but still just a human creation, then every other error can pour in unabated.

The Jungkuntz classes from Northwestern College had no problem going to Fuller Seminary, where Church Growth started after inerrancy was repudiated. Church Growth is sociology and marketing, not neutral but anti-Christian in substance.


***

Read this from the New York Times

EDUCATION: LESSONS
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LEAD: Richard Jungkuntz flew across country this week to sit in conference with some of higher education's most powerful leaders. It is the last time this provost of a small Lutheran college will formally attend such a gathering. This spring, at the age of 70, he plans to end his 30-year career as an educator and retire to the tennis courts.

Richard Jungkuntz flew across country this week to sit in conference with some of higher education's most powerful leaders. It is the last time this provost of a small Lutheran college will formally attend such a gathering. This spring, at the age of 70, he plans to end his 30-year career as an educator and retire to the tennis courts.

Mr Jungkuntz is a self-described conservative, a minister and educator who holds, as he put it, ''old-fashioned ideas.'' In an age and at a conference where the expression of some of those ideas might be misconstrued as, say, sexist or otherwise offensive, the provost decided to ''hold my darn tongue.'' Often, hearing something that seemed nonsense to him, he would just slip out of the meeting rooms into the corridors for a smoke.

But at one point here at the 70th annual meeting of the American Council on Education, a gathering of presidents, chancellors and deans from academies across the country, Mr. Jungkuntz listened to a panel debate the difficulties of training teachers and he could no longer maintain his silence.

Psychometrics, budget shortfalls, poverty and social structure aside, the failure of American education, the argument goes, begins with the hand that puts the lesson on the blackboard. Thus, in a room full of college administrators, many from schools with teacher education programs, the subject was bound to raise professional passions.

Robert Corrigan, Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, said, ''We still see teachers as if they were members of a blue-collar profession. They have no control of the classroom, the curriculum or their working conditions. They are treated like people in a factory milieu.''

A dean from San Antonio complained that his State Legislature changed teacher certification requirements so often, that professors of pedagogy could not figure out where they were ''supposed to go or how to get there.''

Another insisted that the problem was ''content versus process.'' That is, too much emphasis on the methods of teaching and not enough on what teachers were supposed to be learning.

A third voice suggested that bad teachers, in all likelihood, were once bad students, so the solution was to attract bright people to the profession. To lure such candidates, Joan Straumanis, dean of the faculty at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., had in mind ''a huge Federal loan program'' in which the brightest students in the country would be guaranteed low-cost loans if they they became teachers.

There also was talk of ''turfism,'' institutional ''musical chairs,'' ''flawed paradigms'' and, in the words of one administrator, ''that wonderful piece of heresy that there is indeed a relationship between the way students learn and the way faculty teach.''

It was about this time that Mr. Jungkuntz, from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., raised his hand, cleared his throat and asked for the floor.

''We haven't taken a historical look at the problem,'' he began. ''Let me put it this way: What would you say was the quality of elementary and secondary schooling in the first quarter of our century and before that? I think it was an age in which the quality was superior. What were the incentives to going into teaching in those days? Lousy. Salaries were worse than the worst salaries are now. But what was the communities' preception of the teaching profession? Relatively high.

''My father in 1921 was addressed as professor by people. He was a grade-school teacher and a good one and he was regarded highly, at the same level as the clergy in town and perhaps somewhat higher than the mayor.''

The place was Jefferson, Wis., and the classroom was in a three-room Lutheran school, where teachers went heavy on the basics, the classics and homework. The provost knew that for a fact. He, after all, had been one of his father's students.

***
Books by Jungkuntz:

The gospel of baptism by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1986)
12 Used & new from $9.85
Other Editions: Unknown Binding

2.
El Evangelio del Bautismo / The Gospel of Baptism by Richard Jungkuntz (Paperback - Sep 2001)
2 Used & new from $4.88

3.
A project in Biblical hermeneutics by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1969)
5 Used & new from $7.00

4.
Christian approval of Epicureanism by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1962)

Currently unavailable

5.
The analogy of faith: A historical study by Richard Jungkuntz (Unknown Binding - 1963)

Is There No Help
For a Widow's Son?



The Masonic Distress Signal, Illustrated


Some comments about WELS and the Mormons prompted me to find the Masonic distress signal, which the Mormons supposedly use. The hands are held up, like the authentic Masonic illustration above, and the victim says, "Is there no help for a widow's son?" That is said four times, facing the four cardinal points of the compass. There are many surviving Masons, so the signal must work, as it did once when a lodge brother was captured by pirates. (Some think the Knights Templar, known for their ships, became pirates when the evil King of France captured Demolay and liquidated the KTs. That would explain why the pirates set him free and gave his dog a biscuit. But then, the story is from Masons, whose stories are as credible as Jack Casione's.)

Is there any help for Confessional Lutherans? The extremes of Recessional Lutheranism may bring about its own demise. The crypto-Baptist-Pentecostals will eventually declare themselves, as a number of WELS Church Growth pastors have already done. They were lionized by the Love Shack at 2929 N. Mayfair Road, before they bolted for greener pastures and louder beehives. I can name many of them. They went from WELS bulletin insert to Pentecostal storefront church in short order.

The Eastern Orthodox Recessional Lutherans will probably do the same. A number of LCMS pastors have already joined the Church of Rome, moving from Universal Objective Justification to Universal Purgatorial Atonement. Who is sponsoring these defections? Could someone get seminarians to defect to the Concordia Triglotta?

The question is whether there will be a number of younger men who know the Scriptures, Luther, and the Book of Concord sufficiently well to re-establish the Lutheran Church on American soil. The Missouri Synod had some strong theological leaders at one time, but they have died. Apostates know that they only need to control a few key offices to run the seminaries and boards their way.

The conservatives never fought hard enough to keep this from happening. No, I do not mean fighting with elections. A doctrinal battle has to be fought with the Word and the Confessions, not with compromising candidates, deals, bylaws, and even more synod worship.

Find one example of synod worship or organizational concern in the entire Book of Concord.

Members and pastors can insist on liturgical services, Lutheran hymns, creeds, and sermons. The Episcopalians have shown that a whole region can vote to leave Holy Mother Church.

Ichabod Predicts

Here is my 21st Century prediction for WELS: both prep schools will close in time, due to high costs and diversion of funds to pet projects (like the new mission to Africa). When that happens, the college will close and the seminary will be threatened. As District Pope John Seifert said to his pastors, "We hope we can keep the seminary."

In the next 15 years, Andrew will carry away the bulk of the WELS members who now attend and give. WELS will merge with Missouri, perhaps as a non-geographical synod, to save face.

Many congregations are now merging. Schools are closing, too.

The Wisconsin sect tried to seize the future (and youth!) by abandoning its past principles. Instead, it institutionalized the dumbest and most anti-Christian ideas they could find. Apostasy is officially supported and promoted on the WELS.net site.

One prominent pastor said about the new but aging feminist hymnal, "We decided to alienate the older members to attract the younger ones." Brilliant strategy. How is it working?

Back to the Prairie Days
In times past, just as now, people did not have many orthodox pastors. There were many shams and frauds, and they didn't even have Fuller Seminary in the 19th century. Some people sat at home and read from sermon books. Luther was popular then. Others had churches but no pastor, so they had laymen read the liturgy and read from a trusted sermon book. Some pastors rode circuits and served many congregations.

Abundance came to American Lutherans and gratitude to God for His Word faded. More than one conservative Lutheran has asked me to approve adultery with the proper justification. Ministers have cared more about approval from man and their own personal security than about being faithful to the Scriptures and the Confessions. Instead of teaching, they are being taught, by the doctrinally indifferent.