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| ALC President David W. Preus in his later years. |
The ALPBers are explicating the Preus saga for everyone. One issue is - "Would David Preus have been better than Herb Chilstrom as the first ELCA bishop."
For them, everything is a matter of management, politics, and where someone was born. No one there wants to say that two national synods (plus Seminex) merged into one crippled, radical cage of birds.
The answers are really theological. Business mergers do not ask about church affiliation, so church mergers should not be obsessed with business theories. The LCA was modeled after General Motors.
The three candidates for ELCA Bishop were ALC Bishop Preus, LCA Bishop Crumley, and Minnesota Bishop Herb Chilstrom, who won in 1987.
- I met Preus at a convention and heard him speak,
- had dinner at Ad Fontes with Crumley, where he asked me about WELS, and
- had dinner with Chilstrom at a Michigan pastors' event. He asked about my dissertation, since A. D. Mattson was his Augustana Seminary professor. "With Lowell O. Erdahl, he is the author of Sexual Fulfillment: For Single and Married, Straight and Gay, Young and Old." Wiki.
Chilstrom died last year, about age 90. Crumley died in 2015, also at the age of 90.
I wrote to David Preus about his enthusiasm for Reformed-Lutheran communion. He was all for it and mocked the Real Presence (which Calvinists deny) in his letter back to me. He quoted the previous ALC President, which he must have imagined authoritative.
Preus' ALC was also the church body that endorsed Lutherans Concerned. Irony alert - the other Lutheran in the Yale Biblical program (STM, PhD) was Stan Olson, who became a professor at Luther Seminary (ALC), got gendered out of the seminary to pastor in New Ulm, then became bishop of the SW Minnesota Synod, then onto NYC to hold one of the top positions at headquarters, then short interim stays at Cap Seminary (Trinity, Columbus) and Luther Seminary, Decorah. Obviously the grand merger of ELCA was falling apart - largely due to the ELCA leaders flaunting and repudiating Biblical norms.
The ELCA merger was a strengthening of union with the Calvinists (LCMS-WELS, too, via Thrivent), Roman Catholics, and dying sects like the United Church of Christ, which really had no doctrine except to work with everyone. Various leaders of the ALC and LCA figured that success meant following the pressure groups with the biggest clout and the most to gain.
Faithless people are not going to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit, and church bodies led by those who hate Biblical doctrine will never prosper.
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| ELCA published both photos, so I was happy to show how Olson looked when he was called up to do his political duties at an ELCA convention. Mark Hanson was the ELCA Bishop at that time. |
