Thanks to the Ankle-Biters
LutherQueasy is on another round of free associating, set off--much like a turkey farm--by Clyde Nehrenz asking Captain Queeg to behave himself. The Queeg tantrums have become the talk of the Net.
I appreciate all the extra business. More people than ever before read Ichabod and check out our worship service. The page-reads this morning were higher than the 24 hour totals a few months ago. The statistics mean nothing, of course, which is why Queeg fulminates about why they mean so little.
History
Some say that America differs from Europe in our utter lack of historical perspective. For Europeans, Harvard is a new university, not to be compared to some that are nine centuries old.
Historical facts should matter, at least as much as DNA. The only history questions in the Syn Conferences are: "Do you know who my father was?" and "Do you know who my grandfather was?"
I was looking for the history of Grace (WELS) in Milwaukee and found nothing about Gausewitz, who was head of the entire Synodical Conference and the author of a famous catechism. First VP Huebner provided his own hagiography, which I assume he wrote himself.
Gausewitz himself was praised and consigned to the sub-basement archives, so they could roll out the expensive and dreadful Kuske catechism. I did not have Kuske in class, but his students tell me he was awful as a teacher. But Kuske was useful for swinging the sect to UOJ and promoting cell groups.
Likewise, the felonious history of the Missouri Synod is blanketed by a fog of self-congratulations and outright deceit. Two Lutheran pastors (CFW Walther and his brother) kidnapped their niece and nephew from their father's parsonage, because the minor children wanted to go to America. Of course, we do not the truth of that claim. The excuse is something shopped around at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, back in the 1970s.
Everyone with a slight grasp of LCMS history knows that Bishop Stephan was a womanizer. Few realize that he was already busy with the same woman (Louise) in Europe and under house arrest for his illicit behavior.
The founders of the Missouri Synod organized a mob, stole the life savings of their bishop, the equivalent of armed robbery, and kidnapped him, forcibly removing him across the river. They threatened his life to get him out of the house--another felony--which may have caused his battle with lung disease for the next year, since he camped in a tent near the river.
Stephan was definitely guilty of adultery, already in Europe, but no one seemed to notice or care. Modern examples of the same deliberate clergy blindness can be found in WELS, Missouri, the Little Sect, and the CLC (sic). Known adulterous pastors and their enablers are leaders in their synods today.
In fact, their Sugar Daddy, Marvin Schwan, was known for the same, marrying the wife of his manager, causing the break-up of two marriages at once. But--the indulgence promptly paid--the conservative clergy praised St. Marvin into heaven while he was still alive and explained, before anyone asked, that he had a "Scriptural divorce." I heard that term so often that I asked, "Is that like Scriptural murder"?
