 |
| "Not Stephan...again?" |
Luther has a great statement about false teachers seeing through a red filter. No matter what Scripture passage the false eachers are given, they said, "It is still red."
I have listed many examples of this when giving Universal Objective Justification (forgiveness without faith) its due. It is worthwhile to see how propaganda affects us.
I became a Lutheran at the age of 16 and found Lutherans really excited about Luther, Roland Bainton, and his Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther. A few years later I got to meet Bainton and hear him lecture.
When I was ordained, the LCMS was going through its Seminex crisis. Within a few years I knew the LCA was getting worse, but the Missouri Synod was not much of an alternative. By the time we left the LCA, the new propaganda was in place and the LCMS was promoting its heroes.
I heard all the slogans that were never mentioned in the LCA - inerrant Scriptures, quia subscription to the Book of Concord, opposition to the historical-critical method of attacking the Scriptures. The Missouri Synod sounded like Paradise compared to the LCA.
 |
| Your precious Objective Justification and Subjective Justification inventions are not yours. Oh no! They were an explanation of the Halle Pietistic lectures - Knapp's, in the Calvinist's translators own words. And Woods, the translator, was not only a Calvinist but a superstar Protestant in his own era. |
Missouri Popular Myths
According to popular notions, Walther began the LCMS (not true - Loehe did). Details of the origins were murky, so it was discussed as have a virgin birth at Altenberg, when Walther rode in on a white charger and showed who knew Luther best.
Who wants to say that the real leader - Martin Stephan - abandoned his family in Dresden, taking his mistress, his oldest son, and his blindly obedient cult followers to America?
At one point I read Zion on the Mississippi, but the early pages did not sink in, due to my lack of education in the real history. The Preus faction won at that point, and they raised the banner of the glorious Synodical Conference, its power and purity restored...at least in some spots.
I have owned Zion on the Mississippi several times, but the more recent readings were the most productive. The Saxon Migration was a traveling scandal, a cancer transplanted from Dresden to America. Stephan talked about leaving with his disciples, but the command to go did not happen until the government tried him and found him guilty of adultery, breaking various laws, and misuse of money.
Missouri Synod clergy and laity normally agree about the LCMS myths they learned and re-learned. I know the Perryville-Altenburg Holy Land perpetuates the falsehoods. At the very least, they keep up the spin on the real history.
When someone is related to key figures in all this, the pressure mounts to keep from telling the truth. We might say, "I am not related to anyone in the LCMS," but there is a marriage and - boom - an entire family tree has been spliced into one's life. And one can end up talking to a key figure in the new Creation crisis in the LCMS - in his own living room.
