Fifth Annual Emmaus Conference:
The Fifth Annual Emmaus Conference on “The History and Prospects of Lutheran Free Conferences” was held at Parkland Lutheran Church and School in Tacoma, WA, on 9 – 10 February 2012. While this is the fifth annual free conference, it is the second time the presidents from The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and The Evangelical Lutheran Synod met together “to share information on a selected topic of interest to confessional Lutheranism in a setting outside the realm of church fellowship…. The conference is not to be viewed as having any official status of formal doctrinal discussions between church bodies.” The organizers of the Emmaus Conference did express the desire that this conference in Tacoma might lead to “the establishment of such official free conferences among confessional Lutheran church bodies in America.”
In 1856, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, President of the Missouri Synod, first proposed the idea of free conferences to “bring together American Lutherans who unreservedly confessed the Augsburg Confession.” The proposal of free conferences was Walther’s “first major ecumenical effort.” President Harrison noted, “The now famous free conferences were proposed by Walther in Lehre und Wehre in 1856, and actually held during: October 1856 at Columbus; October 1857 at Pittsburgh; August 1858 at Cleveland; and July 1859 at Fort Wayne.” Unfortunately, Walther was unable to attend the fourth free conference. A large section of President Harrison’s paper addressed the historical trifecta that threatened Lutheranism: Reformed Theology, Pietism, and Rationalism. This “three-fold battering ram,” manifested as Samuel Simon Schmucker’s Definite Synodical Platform – An American Recension of the Augsburg Confession of 1855, threatened Lutheranism in America and was the impetus for the free conferences based upon the Augsburg Confession.
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