Word: tietjens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Piepkorn suddenly died of a heart attack in 1973 at age 66, leaving behind 2,900 pages of manuscript and a file-crammed study. His friend, Concordia President John Tietjen, undertook to edit the project for publication. Soon Tietjen was ousted in the Missouri Synod's ongoing doctrinal war, and only three years later is the first of a projected seven Piepkorn volumes reaching print. The initial installment of Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada (Harper & Row; 324 pages; $15.95) covers Roman Catholicism, 48 Eastern churches, and 18 groups related...
...While Tietjen and his friends work on the remaining volumes, they are operating a "Seminary in Exile" and forming denomination No. 736, a schism from the left of the Missouri Synod known as the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. That is the problem with Piep-korn's goal of listing everyone. The job never ends...
...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, on charges of fostering "false doctrine." Supporting Tietjen, the majority of Concordia's faculty and students walked out, starting a rival seminary in exile (Seminex), also in St. Louis...
...split does occur, it is uncertain how many would leave the Missouri Synod. Tietjen predicts that more than 1,500 congregations will depart. Others put the figure much lower, at a maximum of 500 congregations encompassing some 250,000 members. Whatever happens, the moderates themselves reject the word schism...
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...