Word: concordiae
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Louis headquarters of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The demonstration was aimed at Dr. Jacob A.O. Preus, conservative head of the denomination, who this month fired four district presidents (roughly equivalent to bishops). Their sin: ordaining graduates of Seminex, the breakaway school from the synod's Concordia Seminary that was founded during the Lutherans' long-running doctrinal dispute over biblical interpretation (TIME, March 4, 1974). The dismissed leaders, who favor a flexible view of the Scriptures, head three districts which cover a large area of the Northeast and the English District, with congregations scattered across...
Synod seemed to be moving slowly in the same direction. Attempting to tighten discipline and doctrine on what he saw as a drifting ship, Preus cracked down. His main targets were faculty members of the denomination's major academic arm, Concordia Seminary of St. Louis. These teachers, who in the ensuing debate styled themselves moderates, take a less rigid view of the Bible, accepting modern interpretation that explains the story of Adam and Eve, for instance, less as history than myth. In 1974 Preus won the ouster of the seminary's president, the Rev. John H. Tietjen...
Last January, the Concordia board suspended John Tietjen as the seminary's president on charges that included the fostering of heresy (TIME, Feb. 4). The action incited a wholesale student and faculty rebellion and prompted the rebels to establish a liberal-oriented Seminary in Exile (Seminex) that almost stripped the official seminary of teachers and students. Evangelical Lutherans in Mission, founded a year ago, has become the organizational voice of the dissidents and the funding channel for the breakaway seminary...
...instead of reeling from the dissidents' vigorous challenge, the Synod's conservatives have recovered remarkably. This week, as registration begins at Concordia, no fewer than 170 full-time students are expected to enroll in the standard master of divinity program, along with 20 other graduate students; that total is well above the most optimistic predictions after the split last winter, even though far below the 650 enrolled before the controversy began. Acting President Ralph A. Bohlmann, who has been Preus' theological aide-de-camp, has fielded a full-time faculty of 18 (compared with four last spring...
...conservatives, of course, take an opposite view, especially in the wake of Concordia's astonishing rebound. Seminex, predicts Church President Preus, "will wither away in a couple of years." Preus dismisses talk of any actual schism. "E.L.I.M. is mainly a clergy movement," he observes. "There will not be any split, primarily because the lay people are not cranked up." Moreover, Preus insists, he is not going to do anything "to stir things up further." With the conservatives' firm grip on the seminaries, "there's no reason for heresy hunts in the parishes...