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| The Universalists of WELS/ELS/LCMS are right at home with the Fuller Universalists. That is why they work so well with ELCA. |
bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "A 21st Century Formula of Concord: RESURRECTION AN...":
One of seven UCC seminaries is closing in May 2013: Bangor Theological Seminary of Bangor, Maine. It's the only accredited seminary in all of northern New England.
The CS Monitor cover story says that the traditional mainline denominational churches (read: liberal) in New England are emptying out, and conservative churches are moving in: Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and others are moving in. Of course, NE was a Reformed/Puritan hotbed, so they probably aren't too keen on Lutheranism (just in case some CRM guys were going to set out to start up a church there):
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/1223/Who-s-filling-America-s-church-pews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangor_Theological_Seminary
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| Watch Missouri and WELS gay up in the next few years. |
GJ - This decline has been going on for many years. Hartford Seminary in Connecticut became a liberal foundation with some staff. One of them lectured ELCA-WELS-LCMS leaders at the 1991 Snowbird gathering funded by Ur-Thrivent.
Here is a choice quote from that confab:
"William
McKinney, dean and professor of religion and society at Hartford (Connecticut)
Seminary, disagreed with the popular view that conventional Protestant
churches have moved from mainline to sideline." [Hartford is very Reformed
and very liberal.]
Lutheran
Brotherhood, Bond, "Preparing
the Church for the Next Century," Fall,
1991, 68, p. 12.
After I published a series of articles in CN about LB and AAL gathering WELS, LCMS, ELS, and ELCA together, AAL/B stopped publishing the facts. They still work together.
So McKinney disagreed from his ivy tower about the very thing his shell of a seminary symbolized, only to be followed by Bangor a few decades later. Other mergers and dissolutions have been taking place, too.
I disagree with BC that mainline domination means an area is a bad place for a new congregation. Luther said - Go to the village opposite you (like Christ) - go to the opposition, not where there are easy pickings, like the affluent suburbs of Minnesota.
