Missouri's Curse

New Orleans (1973) Resolution 3-09
MISSOURI’S CURSE
Christian News, July 25, 2011, Vol. 49. No. 28

A liberal professor who takes issues with the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible defended by Herman Otten, editor of Christian News has said never-the-less that the LCMS is cursed because of the way it treated Otten. The final ruling in the St. Louis Seminary vs. Otten case (1960 and 1984) showed that Otten won the case and should have been certified. Yet, the seminary and all LCMS presidents since 1960 have refused to accept the ruling even though the LCMS’s handbook requires them to accept it. Otten may have been the only pastor serving an LCMS congregation who was told not to participate in the installation and communion service where LCMS leaders elected at the LCMS’s 2010 convention were installed. Several times Otten’s congregation has been suspended and expelled from the LCMS. It is currently under the threat of expulsion from the LCMS because of a ruling of the LCMS COP backed by the Kieschnick and now Harrison administration. None of the organized conservatives have registered any protest. Some want Christian News to close.

James Burkee, in his Fortress Press published Power, Politics and the Missouri Synod – A Conflict that Changed American Christianity show how the organized conservatives at times used Otten and then dumped him. They supported those like Jack Preus who did not want Otten certified and ordered Christian News to cease publication.

While Burkee appears to agree with the LCMS conservatives who maintain that Otten is some kook, racist, anti-Semite, he says under a caption of Otten speaking to students at Concordia Senior college, Ft. Wayne: “He shaped Missouri conservatism with a impact magnified by his freedom from church oversight. Otten was the most significant figure in modern LCMS history.”

A Seminary in Crisis, published by CPH and backed by the Schwan Foundation hardly recognizes that Otten and Christian News exist. It was written by Paul Zimmerman, who, like his friend Tom Baker, claims Christian News was responsible for the election of Jerry Kieschnick because CN refused to support Dean Wenthe for LCMS president. Wenthe was the choice of the organized conservatives.

“In Defense of Some Seminex Professors – SEMINEX DID NOT RUIN ELCA” in the June 6, 2011 Christian News mentions what former Valparaiso University, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and Seminex Professor Edward Schroeder reports about some in ELCA who maintain that the Seminex professors who joined ELCA ruined ELCA.

“New Orleans (1973) Resolution 3-09, Missouri’s Curse” is the title of an item in Schroeder’s “The Stars of Missouri that Led to Seminex. Schroeder writes:

Peace did not come to Missouri with the dismissal of the heretics. Even today, thirty-plus years later, when the false teachers, “not to be tolerated in the church of God, much less be excused and defended,” have been gone for decades, good guy and bad guy battles continue. And now the irony is that the one under charge is the synod president, Gerald Kieschnick, the most conservative, Bible-believing, president Missouri has had in ages. Yet he too is under attack from the same alligators of the 1970s—or in some cases, their surviving sons—not so much for the orthodoxy of his doctrine, but for his aberrant practice. I don’t know the details. I’m an outsider. But what I hear is that his proposals for mission and lay-ministry diverge, according to the alligators, from “what we’ve always said and done” in Missouri.

A light bulb went on a few weeks ago about how this never-ending fight inside Missouri might just be “third and fourth generation” consequences of that killer resolution 3-09.

Here’s the scenario. I’d just met the LCMS prexy, Gerald Kieschnick (first time ever), at a Bach Society evening event here in town. That night (about 3 a.m.) a light went on. So I shamelessly posted this e-mail to him next morning. It was shortly before the LCMS convention was to open here in town. I haven’t received an answer. I’m not holding my breath.

Dear President Kieschnick,

One more item to add to our conversation at the Bach Society annual meeting last evening.

Though this was our first face-to-face meeting, you said you knew who I was. I’m guessing that you therefore know how my life was changed at the LCMS convention, New Orleans 1973. From that premise, here’s an add-on to our exchange last evening.

An 8th commandment Aha! about Missouri‘s continuing turmoil—and how to bring it to closure.

1. In a few days it will be the 34th anniversary of the New Orleans convention and resolution 3-09.
2. That resolution declared 45 of us teachers at 801 to be teaching “false doctrine”—and then quoting the Formula of Concord, that we “cannot be tolerated in the church of God, much less excused and defended.”
3. That resolution, when passed as it was, put Missouri on record as officially breaking the 8th commandment. i.e., bearing false witness in a most public way against faithful teachers by calling them false teachers. In Luther’s words that we both memorized from his catechism, the synod did indeed “deceitfully belie, betray, slander, and defame” the neighbor.
4. Even our super-critic Martin Scharlemann (who helped mightily to engineer that resolution) knew that 3-09 was not true, that it was, in fact, false, and thus false witness against us. Here’s prima facie evidence: when Martin (my brother-in-law) became acting president of Concordia after Tietjen’s suspension, he tried to convince most all of us 45 to “stay on” under his leadership because we were clearly “not false teachers at all.” Resolution 3-09 was a lie. Martin was admitting it by asking us to stay on.
5. That resolution and the subsequent cleansing of the 45 of us by the seminary board of control action did not bring peace to Missouri. As you well know, since you are yourself now falsely accused by fellow-Missourians, just as we were.
Here’s the main point.
6. In the Small Catechism, Chief Part 1, Luther makes it a point to quote the Bible’s own words about commandment-breakers—8th commandment-breakers included—that “God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.”
7. Missouri‘s continuing turmoil, according to this Word of God, will continue, since God Himself continues to “visit” Missouri for that 8th commandment violation of 34 years ago. How can that not be true?
8. How to stop God being Missouri‘s critic? You know the answer. It was Jesus’ drumbeat: “Repent,” and having repented, “trust the Good News.”
9. So to bring God’s own peace back into Missouri, Missouri needs to rescind New Orleans 3-09 just as publicly as it gave that false witness way back then. Not for political reasons, but for pastoral ones, for Missouri‘s own peace with God. And then to trust the Good News anew.
10. I know that you know what Jesus says are the consequences of unrepentance in such passages as Luke 13:5. It’s not that we who are still alive (about half) of the original 45 need our names cleared. Christ has already done that. It’s Missouri who is in trouble—trouble with God.
11. Are you not called to the kingdom for just such a time as this? I think so.

Peace and joy!
Ed Schroeder

Back to Zimmermann’s book. From his doxology in the final pages about the “blessed outcome” of Preus’s leadership and his own FFC you’d think that it’s been peachy-keen in Missouri ever since. But it is not yet. Even apart from Kieschnick’s alligators, PZ is a bit hasty in claiming the blessing for Missouri. As Bible-believing folks know, blessing is the opposite of curse. It doesn’t come so long as the curse persists. False witness brings curse, not blessing. Bible-believers know that. It’s scriptural truth. But Bible-believing folks, Missourians included, also know how to get un-cursed. “Repent and believe the Good News.”

Almost half of the Seminex faculty, that ancient “faculty majority,” has died. The rest of us would gladly have our names cleared of the false witness still on the books in New Orleans 3-09. But it’s not we who would be the most benefited. The greatest beneficiary of 3-09 repentance would be the LCMS itself. The blessedness Zim- mermann claims for God cleansing the heretics years ago (even if it were true) is small potatoes compared with getting God’s curse off your back. That’s real blessedness. And for Missouri to get there, Paul Zimmermann, there’s but one way. Your inside story was, and still is, the wrong way.

Peace and joy!
Ed Schroeder

P.S. D.v., there will be a Part III—a word from beyond the grave, you could almost say. Just discovered a few days ago among Bob Bertram’s papers is the text of his address to the New Orleans Convention 1973. In just one page he says it all. Stay tuned.

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