Good schools prevent academic inbreeding.
Lutheran schools do not,
and the results can be frightening,
as seen above.
I wonder why.
Universities do not like to use their own graduates to teach their classes, because this leads to academic inbreeding and uncritical thinking. If someone receives a PhD from Yale, the new professor is expected to teach somewhere else even if the school wants him back as a valued teacher.
Just the opposite is true in the Lutheran synods. They want graduates of their own little seminaries, although Ft. Wayne has been known to load up on Notre Dame graduates.
The Sausage Factory would never want an ELS pastor to teach at their school. He might not have enjoyed the physical and emotional abuse or GA. Even worse, he might know only 99% of the 6,418 unwritten rules of WELS. In short, that will never happen.
The ELS is far more comfortable hiring a New Testament professor with no college degree (and the right DNA) than calling one with a graduate degree and outside influences. The Little Sect on the Prairie suffers from always having a sidecar of WELS influence. WELS pushes its favorite heresies. If the ELS gets something right, such as the Word consecrating the elements, the Wisconsinites have to water it down so the Book of Concord is never taken too seriously.
Missouri has plenty of short-circuits in its thinking too. Many people think of Harrison's election as a triumph of Walther. No one is allowed to suggest that CFW was ever wrong about anything. Walther represents the zenith of
Everyone is going to be saying, "But WELS has to make sure the right people teach."
What does Mequon teach? The WELS professors advocate Groeschel, Sweet, Stanley, Wagner, McGavran, and Driscoll. WELS is terrified of LCMS education but promotes Fuller Seminary, Trinity in Deerfield, and Willow Creek. Instead of cross-pollinating in Missouri and the Little Sect, they are planting weed seeds funded with the offerings of their own members.
No one can question that because every single pastor in WELS is related to the rest of them.
Missouri is just the same. They are either genuflecting to Walther or sinuflecting to Mary. If you want your son to become a priest, send him to the Concordia seminaries. If he learns quickly, he will become Roman Catholic. If he is a little slow and timid, he will become Eastern Orthodox.
Inbreeding is not all bad. Look at how happy the boys in the photo are. They just finished an update on their newest video. They may not have much of capacity in Lutheran doctrine, but do they need it in the Emergent WELS? They only need to copy and paste, to parrot all the repeat-after-me responses they learned in the system. They are not going to question anything.
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Daniel Baker has left a new comment on your post "Academic Inbreeding in the Lutheran Synods":
I agree with your premise, but in practice, it proves hard for the synods I'd imagine. With such strict fellowship practices, how could they rationalize inviting in professors from other synods? For example, WELS/ELS could trade as you suggested, but in the end that wouldn't help much as far as diversity in thought is concerned.
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GJ - "With such strict fellowship practices..." That is pretty funny. WELS members still believe that myth, and the ELS may also.
Professor Al Sorum got his DMin from Wesleyan. Bivens, Valleskey, and Gerlach went to Fuller Seminary.
WELS had beaten a door to Trinity in Deerfield so often that the sect was named twice in the Trinity catalogue. Yet people hoot at ELCA's Southern seminary training Methodists and Babtists.
The president of the Little School on the Prairie, Seminary Division, earned an STM from a gay feminist Episcopal seminary.
Missouri voted overwhelmingly to work with ELCA.
They are all unionists. The definition of a unionist is "Someone who loves every denomination except his own."
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "Academic Inbreeding in the Lutheran Synods":
Pr. Greg,
What you say is so true about academic in-breeding. My observation is that Lutheran Seminaries including ours here, do not train pastors to do independent thinking. They do not seem to be exercised at the tools so they can evaluate things on their own.
Fundamentalist Cultism is the end result of in-breeding.
Some faculties here also do not like to hire their own PhDs though most are less afraid of this. It is because the norm here is that your thesis is passed externally by international examiners from another university. In effect, it is actually blind peer reviewed and so you are actually passed not by your internal faculty but the examiners from somewhere around the world.
There are so many funny points in this post. As you explained, I now know why they are not laughing.
God bless,
LPC
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GJ - Walther wanted to monopolize seminary education and almost succeeded. He managed to be synod president and seminary president at the same time, an idea so bad that they repeated it with Francis Pieper, who was culled from the herd by Walther to be a Walther clone.
Al Barry was a one-man Lutheran Federation. His official bio only admits to his membership in two synods, Missouri and WELS, but he also studied in two others - the ELS and one of those mini-micros where the school was the church basement. I can see why Barry said he was "building a foundation" in his first term. He had been there before.
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This is a photo which Ski published on his blog.
Strict Fellowship Practices in WELS: Ski's sermons at The CORE
http://open.lifechurch.tv/series/3683
From Twitter @GoToCore:
A new series begins this Sunday at 5:30. Join us for Elijah - "Making of a Man of God". See you then. #fb 6:15 AM Aug 20th via SocialOomph
Week 2 will be:
"Which God Do You Serve"
Week 3:
"Elijah Prays"
Week 4:
"Depression"
How relevant...
