A Move Toward Unity

Ever since the 1830s, when sectionalism and new waves of immigration began to splinter American Lutheranism, denominational unity has seemed an all but unattainable dream. Ethnic, political and doctrinal differences have frustrated efforts toward ecumenism; by the turn of the century there were 21 separate Lutheran church groups in the U.S. But the goal of unity remained. Last month it became more attainable than ever when the dogmatically conservative Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod (2.8 million U.S. members) narrowly voted to accept "altar and pulpit fellowship" with the slightly more liberal American Lutheran Church (2.6 million members).

In Lutheran parlance, fellowship means that members of the two bodies will be permitted to take communion in one another's churches, and ministers of one group will be permitted to preach in the pulpits of the other. For the Missouri Synod, which grew out of a single, 19th century immigrant German church, the decision was a major break with tradition. It was not such a landmark, however, for the ALC, which recently reached a similar agreement with the larger (3.1 million) and even more liberal Lutheran Church in America. Unlike Missouri, both the ALC and the LCA are themselves the results of four-way mergers by Scandinavian and German churches.

Although all three bodies agree on the supremacy of the Bible and subscribe to two of the same traditional Lutheran confessions, the Synod believes strictly in the historical accuracy of Scripture--including the entire Book of Genesis. Until now it has stubbornly shunned contact with churches it felt interpreted the Bible more freely. It has rejected most of the ecumenical movement, and is not a member of either the World or the National Council of Churches, or even of the Lutheran World Federation.

Grass-Roots Reaction. After the election of Dr. Oliver R. Harms, a former Texas pastor, as president in 1962, the Synod did make a few cautious gestures toward other groups. Three years ago, for example, it joined the ALC and the LCA (as well as a tiny Slovak Synod) in founding the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., a national agency that coordinates certain welfare, mission and other activities, and serves as a meeting ground for theological discussions. But at this year's convention, the moderate Harms was turned out by a grassroots conservative reaction that elected as President Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus (rhymes with choice), head of the Synod's Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Ill. The election of Preus, a learned conservative who opposes fellowship, was seen as an implied vote of no confidence in the Harms-backed plan for fellowship with the ALC. Despite Harms' personal defeat, however, years of subtle campaigning by backers of the proposal itself paid off. When the secret ballots were counted, the resolution had passed 522 to 438.

The affirmative vote on fellowship assured the continued allegiance of the liberal wing, which feels that the Synod has been falling behind the times. And the election of the doctrinally pure Preus, who pledged himself to carry out the convention's mandate for unity, may serve to mollify most of the large minority in the Synod who voted against fellowship.

For U.S. Lutherans, the Synod's action may be a long step toward greater status in the American religious spectrum. If fellowship with the ALC is followed by fellowship with the LCA, says Dr. Richard Jungkuntz, executive secretary of the Missouri Synod's Commission on Theology and Church Relations, there will probably be "some major restructuring" of U.S. Lutheranism within ten or 15 years. Jungkuntz doubts that the final result should be a massive, centrally directed national Lutheran body. Instead, he suggests, the reorganization might encourage decentralized, unified, regional synods, all in communion with one another, meeting regional needs on their own and national needs in concert.

Such a basically unified Lutheran Church could come to have considerable influence. As Lutherans see it, neither of the two other major Protestant groupings now emerging--the Protestants in the ecumenical Consultation on Church Union and the various Baptist groups --will be "credal": they will not, as groups, adhere to a fixed creed. On the other hand, nine million Lutherans with an orthodox set of beliefs that include such traditional doctrines as the Trinity and original sin would occupy a unique and important position between the rest of American Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

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