A Century of Fundamentalism

One hundred years ago, 34 determined Lutherans fresh from Saxony met in a tiny Chicago church. There was one thing about this big new country that they could not abide--U.S. Lutherans were backsliding from the strict, exacting faith of their founder. To combat this trend, the 34 founded the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Last week in Chicago, the Synod ended a ten-day celebration of its centennial, attended by 950 delegates representing nearly 5,000 congregations all over the U.S. Stern fundamentalists, they did nothing more revolutionary than to vote in favor of shortening their official name to the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. On the subject of church unity, the delegates were even more cautious than usual. Though they declared a "sincere desire [for] true scriptural unity" with the middle-of-the-road American Lutheran Church,* they rescinded unity measures which had been adopted by the 1938 convention, on the grounds that efforts to reconcile theological differences have "admittedly not been satisfactory."

Anxious as ever to protect their young from the doctrinal indifference of the secular world, the delegates resolved that the Synod should aim during the next 25 years to get 50% of its children into parochial schools. Present percentage: 27.8%, in 1,090 parochial schools. For Missouri Synod Lutheran theological students they voted a new $1,500,000 senior college. They also agreed to raise $2,500,000 for world relief.

In addition, the convening Missouri Synod Lutherans harked back the hundred years and wondered at the Synod's present size compared with its mustard-seed beginnings. Exclaimed the Rev. Dr. Arthur Brunn of Brooklyn: "Some said the new Synod was too straitlaced, too hidebound to live in the land of the free!"

* The middle-of-the-road American Lutheran Church has 624,714 members. U.S. Lutheranism's largest group is the "liberal" United Lutheran Church in America: 1,810,076. The Missouri Synod: 1,469,213.

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