Word: preus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...showdown between Theological Hard-Liner Jacob A.O. Preus, president of the 2,900,000-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and more liberal Lutherans in the denomination has long been expected to occur at the national synod convention in New Orleans this July. Since he was elected president in 1969, Preus has been fighting the "historical-critical" approach to the Bible that casts doubt, he says, on the literal accuracy of such biblical tales as Adam and Eve and Jonah and the Whale. Less literal Lutherans have hoped to defeat Preus by nominating a popular moderate candidate, Oswald C.J. Hoffmann...
Cracks began to show in the Synod's uneasy concord last December when Preus put pressure on the board to oust Professor Arlis Ehlen for his unorthodox views on the Old Testament (among other things, Ehlen questioned the historical accuracy of certain details of the crossing of the Red Sea). Then this month Preus declared war on President Tietjen himself, along with a majority of his faculty. Preus unleashed a torrid 160-page attack that accused various professors of tolerating aberrant interpretations on such key doctrines as the Virgin birth and the literalness of the creation narrative. The report...
Judgment Day. "I am saying that there are two theologies in this church," Preus charged last week. But the seminary board seems unlikely to agree with his house-divided report or act to discipline President Tietjen. The board is already on record with a statement that it "has found no false doctrine" in the seminary...
...report "unfair," "unreliable," "untrue," "unscriptural" and "un-Lutheran." Tietjen quoted several faculty members who enumerated the ways in which they felt they had been misunderstood or quoted out of context by the fact-finding committee. While defending the use of modern methods of biblical criticism (rejected by Preus), the faculty argued that their cautious use of these methods at Concordia does not jeopardize basic Lutheran beliefs. What is in jeopardy, Tietjen believes, is the very existence of the church: "I fear that the issuance of the Preus report has set in motion a course of events after which...
...battle of the presidents is bound to continue until the Synod's 1973 convention in New Orleans next July, when both Preus and some board members must stand for reelection. In preparation for that day of judgment, both presidents will be battling for rank-and-file votes. For his part, Tietjen is counting on the aura and prestige of the seminary -which has produced the majority of the church's clergymen-to ensure the election of a moderate board. Preus will undoubtedly rally the grass-roots conservatives who first elected him in 1969 in a coup against...