What Sasse Says: Sasse to Hebart, Christmas 1948
Sasse about American Lutheran synods:
That is the deep distress of our American sister churches, that they either live in a ghetto or that they sink into modernistic Americanism. I am deeply troubled over the development of the ULC in respect to theology since the dismissal and death of Knubel. What has occurred in Maywood, Springfield and Mount Airy, which I have visited again, can only cause concern for the future of these important branches of American Lutheranism. And in the ALC the decline is evident since Reu’s death. Bodensieck has taken his place.
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GJ - Sasse saw the old guard being replaced by the moderns in the ULCA and ALC (Iowa, Ohio, and Buffalo Synod merger). In each case, the orthodox men were replaced by unionistic liberals. This same thing happened in the LCMS, and everyone remained in quiet denial.
Before WWII, American Lutherans were quite close in terms of doctrine, worship, and the theologians they admired.
Sixty years of unionism have splintered the Lutherans groups, like a hammer hitting a puddle of mercury. Hymnals and translations have multiplied. Every sect is a rainbow coalition of Pentecostalism, Unitarianism, and Romanism. Lutherans are the exception.
Doctrinal knowledge is feeble and fading fast.
The seminaries used to take farm boys and teach them Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Now the task is too great, to get the city boys off their digital devices. Everything is dumbed down while tuition has reached Ivy League costs.
ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
