Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Loehe Gets a Hall at Ft. Wayne, But Who Is Grabau?...":
If anyone is a disciple of Grabau it would be ELS President Moldstad who violently usurped Christ's authority and maliciously undermined Pastor Preus' ministry and eventually had him removed from the Pastoral office.
I was mocked by ELS Pastor Dalke for describing the heinous actions of President Moldstad as violent.
After a little research I produced the following quote which I believe vindicates my use of the adjective and condemns the apathy shown by the ELS clergy.
(C.F.W. Walther’s article posted in Der Lutheraner, 1867), “As our readers know, Pastor Grabau shamefully dismissed and expelled his former so-called 'Deacon' (Diakonus), Pastor Hochstetter, from his office when he no longer wanted to allow himself merely to be Grabau's compliant slave. Grabau himself dismissed Hochstetter with no "appearance of right," without any due process, simply by the brutal authority of his trustees whom he urged on and mislead into such action. This was all the more shameful because earlier Pastor Grabau himself had battled against this sort of thing as if against a barbarism when the Trustees here in America had ventured to establish and dismiss pastors, to open and close churches, to promise church property according to their own wishes to this or that party that pleased them, and in addition to misuse the authority given to them thorough the civil laws in several of our states. Pastor Grabau, who earlier apparently battled for the holiness of the preaching office, committed a horrendous crime against a sacred thing, a robbery of the church, when against all right he carried out this violent expulsion of a Christian preacher, a minister of Christ and His church. It appears to him also, now that the deed is done, not to have been an especially praiseworthy thing to do. It seems his conscience accused him and bit at him and the thought came to him that he had revealed and branded himself before the entire church, indeed, before the entire world to be an enemy of all divine and Christian order (wherever these stand in the way of his plans and especially of his desire to rule).
In light of Walther's own history this also seems self condemning.
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GJ - The ELS condemned itself by re-electing the Mankato Mauler. One early writer in American Lutheranism said this about removing a pastor, paraphrased - There are three valid reasons to remove a minister:
1. Failure to do his pastoral duties.
2. Leading a scandalous life.
3. Teaching false doctrine.
However, he also cautioned that when valid reasons are provided, there must be due process, to avoid the papal actions of a Moldstad or the supine attitude of a Little Sect on the Prairie.
WELS DP Buchholz bragged that he could remove any pastor at any time, by fiat. His predecessor did that eight times. Somehow all the Church and Change Shrinkers survived, as they have under Buchholz.
The same disgusting violence has been used against various laity recently, no longer kept as a secret, as the evil and corrupt leaders used to command.
Name a Shrinker leader and I will show how he prospered under the leadership of SP Mark Schroeder and Jon Buchholz. Kelm? Gunn? Witte?
