“Dedicating the church PURPLE”
Worship includes
the Sacred Dance
Chants with Katie Ketchum
wear all things purple
Our Mother who is within us
we celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come.
Your will be done,
unfolding from the depths within us.
Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limits
and we let go.
You support us in our power
and we act with courage.
For you are the dwelling place within us
the empowerment around us
and the celebration among us
now and for ever. Amen
Text by Miriam Therese Winter
Medical Mission Sister, Professor
of Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality.
Author of WomanWord and other
books and resources for Ritual.
From LutherQuest (sic) - rare moments of clarity:
In this case it could be that Concordia sold it and Harvard acquired it. HOWEVER, you will find LOTS of books from the Concordia library at St. Louis University (where Seminex first landed) and at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (where they eventually ended up) as well as some other schools -- and Harvard Divinity School could well be one of them. Seminex took books by the truckload after the walkout, along with mountains of other furnishings, equipment, etc. A friend works at the Concordia library and he tells me that occasionally naive, puzzled librarians from other schools will contact them with the same question: We found this (sometimes rare and extremely valuable) book in our collection bearing your library's stamp (sometimes still the pocket, etc.) and don't know how it got here.
Ralph
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Pr Rolf David Preus (Rolf)
Senior Member
Username: Rolf
Post Number: 3135
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - 10:17 am:
The Seminexers sincerely believed that it was their seminary. It had been taken over by hostile forces, but it belonged to the faculty majority and their student followers who walked out in protest at Tietjen's suspension. When they stole things belonging to Concordia Seminary they didn't regard it as stealing. After all, they were Concordia Seminary.
Even after their "Operation Outreach" bombed and the Synod at large did not come to their aid (as they thought would happen) they persisted in their claim that they were the real Concordia Seminary. The name "Seminex" (I think that means "half dead" ) was chosen because they wanted to claim that they were indeed Concordia Seminary ("Sem") but in exile ("inex").
During Operation Outreach (when the students went all over the LCMS to “inform” people of what was “really” going on at the seminary) a second year seminarian happened to be sitting next to my father on a plane. Dad struck up a conversation with him (as was his wont) and the student proceeded to tell Dad all about the terrible things that had been done to Tietjen and the faculty majority. Naturally, he told Dad all about the evil perpetrated by Dad’s brother, Jack (who was LCMS president at the time). Finally, the student got around to asking Dad who he was. Dad told him. The student was embarrassed, to say the least. When Dad tried to give him another perspective on what had happened he refused to believe a word Dad said.
My father had always been a popular professor. During the last years before the walkout, however, new students were steered away from taking his classes. Amazing that a second year student didn’t even know that he was sitting next to a professor at the seminary he attended.
During Operation Outreach, I was a student at Concordia College in St. Paul. A group of us students went to a meeting at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis (a congregation in support of the liberal faculty majority at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis) at which three sem students were speaking to inform the congregation on what was going on.
After they spoke, there was a period of questions and answers. I asked the students if any of them had ever taken a class from any of the following professors: Martin Scharlemann, Richard Klann, Robert Preus, Lorenz Wunderlich, or Ralph Bohlmann. (These were the five minority members of the faculty that did not support the faculty strike.) They consulted among themselves and one of them replied saying, “My roommate took a class from Martin Scharlemann.” The crowd burst into laughter.
Ah, those were the days! The students were overwhelmingly idealistic, passionate, and profoundly ignorant.
While I’m reminiscing, let me share with you all one more little episode. After it became clear that Seminex would not be able to place its graduates into LCMS congregations, some of the students who walked out reconsidered their actions and decided to join the LCMS. They were permitted to do so, but they had to submit to a colloquy before being admitted and, if necessary, take some classes. My father was interviewing a Seminex graduate and he asked the question: “What does dikaiow mean?” The student said he did not know. He was a little rusty with his Greek. So Dad asked, “What does the verb “to justify” mean?” He didn’t know. Dad tried to give him some hints. The young man just didn’t know. He could not say what the central teaching of the Christian faith was and he had just graduated from Seminex, led by the greatest scholars in the Missouri Synod.
Yes, they stole books. They stole a lot more.
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Rev. Joel R. Baseley (Joel)
Member
Username: Joel
Post Number: 153
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - 10:56 am:
I was a student at Concordia Teachers' College, River Forest during the walkout. The OT profs I had there openly taught historical criticism and I used to have a Bible that one of them had us mark up with different colors for the supposed J,E,D and P editors of the OT.
We had a two day moritorium on classes when the Seminary Students came to our campus. I was glad for the moratorium because I could play basketball all day instead of going to classes. The night before the moratorium it was my turn to have devos on my dorm floor. One of the sem students was there too, and he was visibly upset when under my text I told my dorm I thought that some bad politics were happening and that we should listen, but reserve judgement until we understood all sides.
In aftermath, most of the Pre-Sem guys I knew at RF (I was not; I wanted to teach high school but never got there) ended up in ELCA. It was personality they were following more than anything else. Our theology profs were truly nice guys, good guys, smart guys, but they were heretics. And so it is, the devil always shows up as a nice guy and then stabs you in the back when its too late. The Holy Spirit confronts harshly (law) and ends sweet (Gospel).
I also remember ex-President Preus speaking to our Lutheran History class, taught by John Wohlraabe, at the St. Louis sem. He was asked, what would you folks have done if they had repented and returned to the seminary, to which Pres. Jack responded, "that was our biggest fear." Reflecting his assessment of their honestly more than his theological evaluation of repentance.
JRBaseley
Dearborn, MI
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Pr Rolf David Preus (Rolf)
Senior Member
Username: Rolf
Post Number: 3137
Registered: 5-2001
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - 1:26 pm:
It was the clearest display of collective hubris I have ever witnessed. But, as Jesus said, "Whoever exalts himself shall be abased."
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Helen E. Jensen (Helen)
Senior Member
Username: Helen
Post Number: 4621
Registered: 7-2004
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - 3:32 pm:
The Episcopal Seminary in Austin,TX, has at least one book with Concordia labels. (It was loaned to me through Interlibrary Loan.) I was told they had a few Seminex students; I don't know how long that went on.
I wonder if the "hubris" hasn't exalted itself again
and whether it will take all lcms down when it falls.
