Norman Teigen provided this link about the LCMS wars. The review is from Day Star, not exactly the confessional redoubt of Missouri. Still, it contains plenty of information and some dubious facts. America really favors liberalism, according to the article. That would have surprised Reagan.
I have met or known most of the main characters: Herman Otten, his sister Marie Meyer, David Scaer, Waldo Werning, Carl Hofmeyer, Fred Rutz Sr, Ralph Bohlmann, Al Barry, and that Jesuit Paul McCain.
Otten and his group played politics and won a few battles, losing the war.
The most effective weapon is the Word, which is hardly used. The WELS district meetings will probably be proxy fights, with people hoping everyone gets the hint about what they are saying on the floor or in conversations. It is a mortal sin to be direct in WELS, scaring the apostates half to death. More obviously, it makes them resentful, and they get even.
Meanwhile, it is no sin to copy directly the so-called sermons of Babtists who deny the efficacy of the Word, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, baptismal regeneration, and infant faith. Their attitude toward Holy Communion is the same - denying the Sacrament, denying forgiveness.
This week I am teaching an MA class about plagiarism and copyright laws. When a minister publishes a sermon on the Net or anywhere else, it is copyrighted by default. When another minister copies that sermon, changing a few words, and publishes/preaches it as his own, he is a liar, a thief, and a plagiarist. WELS does absolutely nothing about that.
But dare to question Holy Mother WELS...
3 comments:
If the liberals win elections and kick conservatives out, liberals says everything's on the up-and-up. If they lose, it's all sour grapes and conspiracy theories, and someone's on the take.
Bruce,
This reminds me of politics where I came from. In my birth country, no one loses the election, anyone who loses must have been cheated.
LPC
Thank you for re-distributing this link. I think that the report is probably pretty accurate.
I was glad to see that the Preus-ELS connection was mentioned. There is no doubt that the ELS suspension of fellowship with Missouri in 1955 was engineered by the Preus brothers. The Preus brothers were brighter than any of the others in the ELS.
It was painful to my father and my uncle that the Preus brothers did what they did and then went to Missouri. It was opportunism at every turn.
The Jim Adams account of Preus and the ELS should be considered as completely reliable.
Of course, my father and my uncle were supportive of Jack Preus and his internal Missouri battles.
My uncle passed away in 1970. My father and Robert were reasonably close to the end.
Jack rejected my Dad's analysis of Chemnitz. Jack torpedoed the idea that CPH would publish his book. I think that it might be fairly safely put forth that Jack was in the tradition of Missouri receptionism when he passed away.
CPH in recent years would have published my Dad's book (I think that this is true) but we survivors decided to make the book freely available through LOGIA.
Robert Preus, the record will show, was responsive to my father's work on the Chemnitz question. Robert got beyond receptionism.
Robert was described by Bohlmann as a church politician. Who wasn't? I have always felt that the treatment of Robert Preus by the Missouri Synod was one of the saddest things to have occurred in that era.
Now, the Preus family continues to be prolific. Some might suggest that the Preus family gene pool has gone into decline. Old Governor Jake and then Jack and Robert were pretty strong guys.
I don't know the family but some think that the family isn't as bright as it had been in earlier times. These assessments are based on 'Luther Quest' posts.
Thanks again, for this post. I hope that the discussion of who owns the history of the church continues.
Norman Teigen
ELS layman
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