Black storm clouds, herded across the Colorado sky by gusty wind, threatened rain as 8,000 Missouri Synod Lutherans gathered for the opening of their forty-eighth regular convention. The first meeting was held in Red Rock Amphitheater outside Denver on a mid-July evening. Helmeted police with billy clubs were stationed beside the stage—ready, perhaps, for the portended appearance of black militant James Forman. He never showed up, and the rain held off.

But an ominous shadow seemed to remain over the convention. Outgoing synod president Dr. Oliver R. Harms encapsuled the mood of the eight-day assembly, noting that the church was “saturated with rumor, suspicion, and competition of all kinds.” Clouds of mistrust separating conservative and liberal forces never quite lifted.

The chief thunderheads hung over the election of new president Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus (see next page), a theological conservative—even in the conservative three million-member denomination, and the thorny, hotly debated, issue of altar and pulpit fellowship with the sister American Lutheran Church.

The fellowship plan—everyone’s major preoccupation—was approved after hours of tedious discussion at the end of the convention’s fifth day. At one point, sixty-five persons were lined up at mikes waiting to speak. The secret ballot gave 522 votes for fellowship and 438 against.

Fellowship with the 2.7 million-member ALC means that ministers of either denomination may preach in the other’s churches and allows for intercommunion between them. It does not involve an official merger.

Reaction against fellowship (thirteen of thirty-seven synod district presidents had publicly opposed it) centered on three sore spots: belief that the ALC is too liberal in its interpretation of Scripture; dislike of ALC ecumenical entanglements (ALC belongs to the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Fellowship, and is in fellowship with the Lutheran Church in America); and a strong aversion to Lutherans’ joining lodges, a view many ALC members don’t hold as rigorously.

Before the fellowship vote, both ALC president Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz and LCA president Robert Marshall spoke in favor of the plan. Asserting that “there is a deep pool of impatience,” Schiotz told the convention: “If you do not find it in your hearts to do this, many of our people will ask … whether God’s spirit may be pointing us to new directions,” a not-so-subtle hint that the ALC and LCA might move toward merger without the Missouri Synod.

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The election of Preus over incumbent Harms was a surprising show of strength by delegates concerned about the church’s apparent drift from biblical inerrancy and confessional adherence. Preus will serve a four-year term, aided by five vice-presidents including re-elected first vice-president Dr. Roland P. Wiederaenders of St. Louis, a theological conservative who favored ALC fellowship, and two non-incumbents closely aligned with Preus.

Early in the convention, synod executive director Walter F. Wolbrecht gave an incendiary report charging unconstitutional politicking among convention delegates working to elect Preus. Wolbrecht especially scored a paid advertisement supporting Preus that had appeared in the Denver Post, something previously unheard of in Missouri Synod circles. A number of lay delegates later confided that Wolbrecht’s remarks, made before the election, were a “low blow” and had angered some so much that they determined to “put Jake in on the next ballot.”

Harms—a gracious and gentlemanly statesman widely admired by both camps—allowed Preus to respond to the charges. Explaining that he “deplored any politicking,” Preus said that the newspaper ad and an article promoting his candidacy in the ultra-conservative Christian News had appeared without his knowledge or consent. He later said the Christian News had exerted a “dis-unifying influence” on the synod.

In precedent-setting action, the synod released women from traditional prohibitions against voting and holding church office at both local and synodical levels. Lest the fair sex get too power-drunk, however, the long-standing Missouri policy that “women neither hold the pastoral office nor exercise authority over men” was retained.

Even before the first day’s business session, nomadic Episcopal priest Malcolm (Are You Running With Me, Jesus?) Boyd, joined by about a dozen non-Missouri Synod Lutherans, challenged the Missouri doctrine of closed communion by communing with Missourians. The “commune-in” was well publicized, and Harms implied that some disciplinary action would be taken.

A group of black Lutherans evoked a sympathetic response when about 600 delegates and guests followed the Reverend Willie Herzfeld of Oakland, California, out of the auditorium for an emotion-charged rally. Herzfeld had presented six demands to the convention, giving top priority to financial needs of Alabama College and Academy in Selma, a predominantly black school.

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In a less epochal convention year, other Missourian actions would have snared greater attention. The synod:

  • Passed with almost no opposition a merger with the 21,500-member Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (Slovak), which must now vote on the matter at its convention this October.
  • Declined action for now on joining the World Council of Churches, and requested its theology commission to study the National Council of Churches. A move to join the Lutheran World Federation was rejected.

Missouri Synod’s New President

“The issue before the convention is the direction the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is going to go,” remarked Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus in his first—and what he said he thought would be his last—press conference. But several hours later, the president of Concordia Seminary at Springfield, Illinois, had scored a stunning upset and a solid blow for theological conservatives within America’s second largest Lutheran body by defeating incumbent president Dr. Oliver R. Harms, who had served seven years.

Preus (pronounced “Proice”), 49, is only the second candidate in Missouri Synod history to unseat an incumbent for the top office. (The other, at Cleveland in 1935, was Dr. John W. Behnken, who turned out elderly Dr. Frederick Pfotenhauer, after the latter had held the post twenty-four years.) Visibly surprised when told of his victory, Preus stammered to the Denver convention delegates: “To say that I’m overwhelmed is to put it mildly.” His election over three other candidates on the second regular ballot came after a preliminary ballot placed twenty-four names in nomination.Missouri Synod policy doesn’t allow for a nomination committee, nominations from the floor, or campaign speeches. One officer said unofficially that on the first regular ballot, which included five contenders, Preus lacked only seven votes of the necessary simple majority. On the second ballot, Preus was said to have received about 20 votes more than Harms.

At his first press conference (before election) Preus outlined his opposition to altar and pulpit fellowship with the American Lutheran Church. Such fellowship, he explained, would weaken the Missouri Synod’s staunch stand on the inerrancy of Scripture and compromise its policy forbidding lay and clergy membership in lodges like the Masons. “The fellowship question is symptomatic of how the Missouri Synod will go theologically,” he told reporters, adding that he believes the Bible to be without error of any kind. Yet the cigarette-smoking professor, who has heavy eyebrows, wavy brown hair and a pixieish expression, intimated that he is impatient with theological nit-pickers and eager to get on with the central teaching of the Bible: the Gospel.

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Preus, a graduate of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, was pastor of the former Evangelical Lutheran Church in South St. Paul, Minnesota, for two years. He received his master’s and doctor of philosophy degrees at the University of Minnesota, joined the Concordia faculty in 1958, and became president in 1962. He has seven daughters and a son.

The Preus name is almost a household word among Lutherans, despite the surprise of Jacob’s unprecedented rise to top leadership. Brother Robert is professor of systematics at the sister Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and an attacker of liberal trends in the ALC. Cousin David of Minneapolis is ALC vice-president. Political savvy should come naturally to Jacob Aall Ottesen Preus; his father was Republican governor of Minnesota.

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