How One District Pope Was Removed

Bow down before Me and despair.

Michigan District Pope Robert Mueller tried to manipulate his district into voting for the merger of Dr. Martin Luther College and Northwestern College. Everyone knew it was a liberal absorption of NWC, but no one had the guts to say it. The district voted down all four proposals to snuff NWC. Mueller went to the WELS convention and spoke on the floor in favor of ending NWC. The district saw this as the worst kind of back-stabbing.

Soon after, at a ministers' gathering, Mueller entered a room full of Michigan pastors. Every single one left.

Mueller decided not to run for district pope. The same convention voted his buddy Vice Pope (appropriate title) Paul Kuske out of office completely. In hide-bound WELS, that was the equivalent of defenestration.

Tyrants eventually learn that they need support too.

In the Little Sect on the Prairie, Pope John the Malefactor could heal the savage wounds he caused by resigning. There will be no reconciliation in the ELS until that happens.

Studying Luther's Doctrine

A Luther Statue Is Expected
At Our Anti-Luther Seminaries.
Stare long and hard, children. One look is all you get today at conservative schools.
A former Roman Catholic asked me about studying Luther.

Roland Bainton's Here I Stand is still a fine book about Luther and the Reformation. My wife, son, and I heard Bainton lecture, visited him at Sterling Library. He helped me with my dissertation. He was a fine historian but a Unitarian at best. He earned his PhD in New Testament but earned tenure as a church historian. His Scriptural views are Unitarian at best. Nevertheless, he opened all his classes with prayer.

The five-volume Luther's Sermons is the best place to start. He is the greatest theologian, preacher, and Biblical expositor of the Christian Church. We know Luther's doctrine best through his sermons. Read them and re-read them. Read them out loud to someone.

What Luther Says is another fine book to own.

I love his Commentary on 1 and 2 Peter.

His Galatians Commentary is enormous but worth careful studying. John Bunyan read it almost as much as the Bible. But who reads The Pilgrim's Progress anymore? Far more edifying is something by C. Peter Wagner or Paul Y. Cho.

Roman Catholics might want to read Luther's Catholic Christology, published by Northwestern Publishing House. That would be good to read along with Chemnitz' Two Natures of Christ.

Many of the Luther classics are printed in Grand Rapids. Gasp. That is a Calvinist center. Yes, they pay more attention to Luther than the Lutherans do.