NEWS

The American Lutheran Church (ALC) leaned perceptibly toward its generally more liberal sister, the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), at the former’s convention in San Antonio October 21–27.

Following the LCA’s lead (see July 17 issue, page 33), the 1,000 delegates at the ALC’s fifth biennial convention approved the ordination of women, the administering of Communion before confirmation, and merger talks between the two denominational publication boards.

A resolution urging that those who object to particular wars for “reasons of conscience” be granted the same rights as those who oppose all war for religious reasons was approved also, though it drew the most thorough debate of all convention issues.

The ten-year-old denomination elected Dr. Kent S. Knutson, described by friends as a “mediating theologian,” as its new president (see story following). There was little doubt that just such mediating prowess will be required if the tenuous “altar and pulpit fellowship” established last year with the more conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) is to survive Before the convention was over, the super-conservative Christian News, an independent publication persistent in its criticism of creeping liberalism within Lutheranism, editorialized: “The election of Dr. Kent Knutson … clearly shows that [the ALC] is controlled by theological liberals.” The weekly called for “loyal” ALC and LCMS members to sever all ties with Knutson, insist that the 1969 altar and pulpit fellowship be rescinded, and unite. (see August 1, 1969, issue, page 34).

While the LCA approved the ordination of women at its own convention in June, Missouri Synod president Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus has specifically spoken against it on biblical and theological grounds. Preus, visiting the ALC convention to deliver a meditation, repeated in an interview what he had said about women’s ordination at the June LCA convention: “It will not be a move that will strengthen fellowship.”

Since many Missouri Synod conservatives had already promised to attack the ALC fellowship tie if women were ordained, Preus’s comment may prove to be the understatement of the convention. The LCMS president would not speculate on any forthcoming official reaction.

He was, however, mildly hopeful that Knutson’s presence at the helm might be a stabilizing influence. “Knutson is a trained theologian,” he said. “He will have a good understanding of the tensions.” Preus then bounded off to continue what he said was his main work these days: “To get the LCMS united after the division created last year by the question of fellowship.”

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The ordination proposal passed by a vote of 560 to 414. Some opponents objected on scriptural grounds, others because they felt an inter-church study produced by all three of the largest Lutheran bodies left the concepts of ministry and ordination ill-defined and confusing. One pastor said his church had favored women ministers until studying the material, then was 75 per cent against it because of the study’s lack of guidance. “I don’t see how this convention can vote on something so poorly defined,” he said. Objected another clerical delegate: “The overwhelming weight of the Old and New Testaments places the direction of spiritual life in the hands of men.”

The inter-church study vaguely disagreed. It viewed such biblical passages as First Corinthians 11:2–6 and 14:33–36 as opposed to each other, pointed out several hermeneutical difficulties, and concluded inconclusively that a “variety of practices” might be acceptable at any given time. In general, however, the study seeks to question “to what extent doctrinal matters in the strict sense are here involved.”

While the convention was still in process, LCA headquarters in New York announced that Elizabeth Platz of Baltimore will become the first LCA woman minister. She will be ordained November 22, to become a chaplain at the University of Maryland.

The changes in confirmation and Communion practice approved by the ALC will allow a child to take communion from about age 10, instead of waiting till he is confirmed, formerly at about age 14. The new ruling redefines confirmation as a learning process more than a single rite. A committee report recommended the change because “confirmation day has been widely accepted as graduation from regular participation in the educational program of the church.” Proponents advocated the measure not only to curtail teen-age drop-outs but also as a means of communicating the Christian faith at camps for youngsters, and because “Communion should be treated as a sacrament and not some kind of a reward.”

Unsuccessful opponents feared confirmation was being blurred to the point of neglect and perhaps eventual dismissal. One delegate asked pointedly: “How long before we drop the other shoe?” As a compromise measure, an earlier age for confirmation was finally approved.

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If merger negotiations are successful between the ALC’s Augsburg Publishing House and the LCA publishing arm, Fortress Press, it will mean the combining of the nation’s fourth- and fifth-largest religious publishing firms. The third-largest is the LCMS Concordia Publishing House. Augsburg general manager Albert E. Anderson said merger talks with Concordia “make no sense until … the LCMS is ready to enter into a full joint parish education development program and until they discontinue a censorial system.”

A statement approving liberalized abortion laws was referred back to the Commission on Research and Social Action. Most observers attached little importance to the convention’s refusal to act on the statement, since many state laws are being liberalized anyway, and a four-year-old ALC statement approves of therapeutic abortions.

A $23.7 million budget for 1971—only $36,000 above that of 1970—was approved in the convention’s final hours.

Bishop Kent Knutson At The Alc Helm

The president of Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, was precise, cool, and collected as he faced the press in San Antonio after being elected president of the American Lutheran Church last month.

Dr. Kent S. Knutson was named to the post on the fourth ballot of a tense race that had been marked by open and widespread political campaigning, a new departure in American Protestantism. Although Knutson himself did not campaign, he had earlier approved the way two other candidates brought their vote-gathering efforts “out in the open,” as he put it to the press. As it turned out, some efforts were not altogether in the open: retiring president Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, 69, rebuked unnamed campaigners for placing pastors’ names on endorsements without consulting them.

The smallish, slightly shy theologian, the father of six, was the youngest (46) of ten candidates for the top post in the 2.5-million-member denomination. On the last ballot, he defeated Dr. David W. Preus, cousin of Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. David Preus was later reelected vice-president.

Knutson was described by a former student as “the best teacher I ever had—demanding, but the kind who always provided very much before demanding.” A specialist in Christology and ecclesiology, Knutson has been a leader in Lutheran talks with Roman Catholics. He was a featured speaker at the recent gathering of Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians at Evian, France.

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While Knutson favors the ordination of women, he expressed hope that it would not cause “occasion for objection or withdrawal” by the Missouri Synod Lutherans who oppose it. He went on to predict unity among the nation’s three largest Lutheran bodies, with a combined membership of nearly nine million, within the decade.

Although the new president was not so optimistic about ecumenism in general (the convention voted not to apply for membership in the National Council of Churches), he said he approved of the title of bishop—a designation for the ALC’s district and national heads approved at San Antonio for experimental use. Dr. Schiotz was named “bishop emeritus,” thus becoming the first bishop in the history of Lutheranism in this country.

Knutson, a native of Goldfield, Iowa, earned a degree in chemical engineering before studying theology in this country and Germany and receiving his Ph.D. degree at Union Seminary in New York. His undergraduate work may be a valuable adjunct as he analyzes and catalyzes the changing chemistry in the ALC, and the uneasy colloid of inter-Lutheran relations.

Will The Real Accc Please Come To Order?

The man who led thousands of Americans in a march for victory in Viet Nam October 3 (see October 23 issue, page 36) suffered a personal defeat of his own making among his brethren in Pasadena, California, twenty-five days later. But he doubtless will claim it a victory.

With fifty-five pre-pledged delegates in tow, radio preacher Carl T. McIntire, president of the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC), invaded the twenty-ninth convention of the American Council of Churches (ACCC) determined to wrest control from the present administration. Ironically, it appeared later that he had enough delegates to pull it off but fired his majority gun too early. Judging from the American Council’s ensuing drastic action, he may also have lost the long-smoldering war with the separatist agency he helped organize in 1941.

The McIntire mutiny was expected, but not in the first hour of the convention held at Pasadena’s historic old Huntington Sheraton. A business session was scheduled for 2:15 P.M. As a devotional period ended at 10 A.M., however, chairman Donald McKnight recognized McIntire, who asked that the business meeting be convened immediately. McKnight decided to call for a scheduled recess.

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After the unsuspecting delegates left for coffee, McIntire quickly took the podium and accepted the nomination for temporary chairman. By the time ACCC president J. Philip Clark and newsmen arrived, McIntire had a firm grip on the “business meeting” and had been elected “president.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” McIntire kept repeating as astonished delegates swarmed around. “This meeting is still in session, and I have been duly elected president of the American Council of Christian Churches. We can’t help it if the others walked out.”

Confusion reigned a full hour. Neither faction would sit down or surrender the platform. Dr. Robert T. Ketcham, co-founder of the ACCC and grand old man of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, cried angrily above the bedlam: “This is piracy of the worst order!” A little lady held up two Bibles, her eyes pinched shut in an attitude of prayer. Someone lamented: “Shame! Shame!”

Embarrassed laughter could be heard among the 125 persons when a hand duel for the microphone began. Clark won the battle when the hotel management installed a second mike over which he announced that the scheduled 11 o’clock meeting would continue.

Law and decency were both against McIntire. No roll call, certification, or any other action had yet been taken to determine who was eligible to vote. The duly appointed nominating committee had not yet met or reported. McIntire in his takeover had disenfranchised those duly appointed voting representatives who did not plan to arrive before the hour legally set for the business session.

By mid-afternoon McIntire finally retreated, proclaiming himself ACCC president and replacing the entire Executive Council with men of his choosing. (ACCC legal counsel ordered the doors locked at the council’s Valley Forge headquarters.)

Because of the disruption and other ACCC-ICCC troubles, the ACCC dropped the ICCC from its constituent membership. It also dropped the Bible Presbyterians and four other affiliated denominations that had participated in McIntire’s rump convention: the Independent Protestant Church, the Methodist Protestant Church, the South Carolina Baptist Fellowship, and the United Christian Church.

“These groups have not participated in ACCC for years,” general secretary John E. Millheim said. “It seems strange that they should suddenly show up now with full delegate strength.”

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The new Westminster Biblical Fellowship was added to accommodate Bible Presbyterians who had just lost their standing in the council.

At the close of its convention the ACCC had eleven member denominations with approximately the same half-million people represented as in the fifteen denominations it had when the convention began.

NORMAN ROHRER

Opposition To Presbyterian Union Mounts In South

Negotiators of a union between the United Presbyterian Church U. S. A. and the Presbyterian Church U. S. are going ahead with their work even though more than half the number of Southern (PCUS) presbyteries needed to block the merger have already opposed it.

At a late October meeting in Washington, D. C., the Joint Committee of Twenty-four approved a timetable for presenting the plan, decided on a name, and worked on the polity section of a draft plan.

In the month before the committee gathering, ten presbyteries passed resolutions opposing any denominational action (including merger) that would dilute or demean the church’s confessional position. Similar documents were being considered in other judicatories of the Southern church.

The resolutions differed in their emphasis from presbytery to presbytery. Most went beyond simply recording opposition to a united church not using the Westminster Confession of Faith as the principal doctrinal standard to which ministers and lay officers subscribe.

The language used in some said the courts “will not accept any dilution of the system of doctrine set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith; nor will we accept the demeaning of our confessional standards by including them in the Book of Confessions; nor will we accept such changes in ordination vows as will no longer require officers of the Church to adhere to our present Westminster standards.”

Confessions Of A Church

Wallace Memorial United Presbyterian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, is asking the Presbytery of Washington City to join it in requesting General Assembly to include the Frankfurt Declaration in the denomination’s 1967 Book of Confessions. (For background on the declaration see June 19 issue, page 3, and October 9 issue, page 56.)

Pastor Robert Shires said Wallace Memorial also had bought 350 copies of the declaration for distribution to every church and pastor in the presbytery.

After hearing reports on the state of the churches, including a review of the presbytery resolutions, the joint committee decided to send a draft plan to the 1971 general assemblies of the denominations. A year of study and comment would be requested, and a final plan would be submitted for action in 1972. The proposed name for the united church is “Presbyterian Church (USA).”

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If the Southern assembly has not reduced its number of presbyteries by 1972 (another committee is submitting a proposal to do so again next year), the ten presbyteries already opposing union without current doctrinal safeguards could go a long way toward defeating the plan. Currently, the PCUS constitution requires a three-fourths vote to approve union, and there are seventy-one presbyteries.

ARTHUR MATTHEWS

Episcopal Derring-Do Spreads To Youth Project

Episcopalians may have a new program that will rival the denomination’s controversial special project to fund poor and minority groups in its no-strings, avant-garde approach.

In closing hours of the sixty-third General Convention of the church in Houston last month (see also report in November 6 issue, page 43), delegates approved at least $250,000 annually for three years to fund a bold youth project giving sub-culture and minority young people almost complete control in determining and running their own programs. The project closely parallels the church’s General Convention Special Program (GCSP) that has roused a storm of protest because some grants have been made to groups whose leaders have been implicated in violence.

The heart of the new youth venture (another $250,000 a year is being sought for it from an Episcopal women’s offering) is to reach minority youth and those caught up in various youth movements on the margins of the church and society itself.

Other late action in Houston:

• Trial approval of a new rite that will allow baptized children to take Communion before they are confirmed, usually about age 12.

• Changes involving trial revision of one-half of the Prayer Book, including several new liturgies for the Lord’s Supper, new prayers, and rubrics.

• Recognition of deaconesses as deacons, thus putting women on the first step of holy orders. But female deacons, unlike men, may not advance to the Episcopal priesthood or bishopric.

• Refusal by the lay-clerical House of Deputies to back a bishops-approved statement on Viet Nam, a strong criticism of U. S. policy that called for Nixon and Congress to drop support of the “repressive” Thieu-Ky government and withdraw all U. S. troops from South Viet Nam by December, 1971.

• Adoption of a $12.7 million budget for 1971, plus another $11.1 if it can be raised. The GCSP will get $1.3 million from basic funds.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

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