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...
