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| This ugly monstrosity was the late Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. They had to sell it to the U. of Chicago and sign up for rental space in a Roman Catholic center for orphaned Catholics and Protestants - schools, groups, whatever. |
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| W. Passavant bought this land on Lake Michigan because he anticipated the need for a seminary and the local pastors would not do it themselves. Later they saw the light and built the first seminary, which later became Wrigley Stadium. The new seminary was in Maywood, and later up to seven Lutheran seminaries merged into the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, which looked like Darth Vader's Command Center. |
The entire faculty of LSTC today, including the President.
The big picture is all denominations closing down parishes and schools. Mergers help this process because the title to properties, once owned by people who knew each other, often individually owned. Merging "to save money" really meant - "a cool way to put the money under our control."
Each church merger has proved to be a wonderful experience in getting the apostates in charge of colleges, seminaries, and denominational offices. Never overlook the importance of extra helpers paid juicy wages for overseeing "mission churches" and mortgaged churches, plus special duty pastors paid to promote stewardship and sales of irrevocable charitable trusts (or - there goes Grandma's estate).
LSTC sold their building to the Rockefeller University of Chicago, for $18.5 million. That sounds like a lot, but all those seminary mergers were melted into that one figure. The shrunken size of the faculty is almost down to one (1) faculty member for each degree offered.
The hilarity of bigger being better comes from the fact of future ELCA pastors being able to graduate from almost any seminary in North America, for almost any reason. Yale Divinity has merged with three other seminaries - Episcopal, Andover, and Newton. (Andover-Newton merged earlier for survival.)
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Needless to say, these combinations and mergers water down doctrine and allow the radicals to jettison the conservatives. They are just loaded with diversity, equity, and inclusivity, which makes it easier to replace the faithful, the highly trained, and the heterosexual.
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ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton (Harvard MDiv) has completed five of the six months allotted for her leave of absence.    |
