Civil War in the Synod

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 board.

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, which was based on an eight-month investigation of the seminary by Preus' hand-picked fact-finding committee and was sent to 18,000 leaders in the Synod, urged that the seminary board "deal personally and first of all" with President Tietjen, as to both his own doctrinal stance and "his failure to exercise the supervision of the doctrine of the faculty." Preus further asked the board to ensure that beginning with the 1972-73 school year, which opened last week at Concordia, "no faculty member shall in any way, shape or form, in class lectures, in private consultations with students, in articles written for public consumption, or at pastoral conferences, use any method of interpretation which...questions the historicity or factuality of events described in Scripture."

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.

President Tietjen mounted his own counterattack, delivering to all Synod pastors a 35-page document that declared the fact-finding committee's 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 we won't be able to put the pieces of the Missouri Synod back together again."

The 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 the moderate forces that had dominated the Synod of the '60s. Even if Preus wins the tactical battle of New Orleans, he is not likely to win the theological war. As the history of other U.S. churches illustrates, turning back the tide of modern biblical criticism would be no less a miracle than the parting of the Red Sea.

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