Word: preus
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Ever since its biennial convention a year ago, the 2.9 million member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been on the brink of a civil war between the supporters of its aggressively orthodox president, Dr. Jacob A.O. Preus, 52, and those of Dr. John Tietjen, 44, the moderate president of the denomination's large, influential Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. The 1971 church convention, acting on its theme "Sent to Reconcile," attempted a kind of Missouri Compromise, supporting Preus in his theological investigation of the St. Louis seminary but leaving the moderates in control of the seminary's governing...
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...
...sent a team to the Concordia campus to determine whether the seminary's accreditation should be withdrawn. The A.A.T.S. does not enforce academic freedom as such, but it insists that theological discipline be handled by a seminary's board and not by church officials. Regardless of whether Preus takes any further action, the Ehlen case is sure to be an issue when the denomination holds its convention in 1973, a meeting at which Preus will be bidding for a second four-year term as president...