The Isolated Synod

"Beware of false prophets," Jesus warned, and St. Paul urged the church at Ephesus to "mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them." For the 350,000 members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, these injunctions forbid taking part in the "false ecumenicism" of modern Christianity, and even sharing worship with other Lutherans who interpret differently the doctrines of the Reformation. Carrying out this belief, the Wisconsiners at their biennial convention in Milwaukee last week broke away from their oldest ally among the nation's conservative Lutheran churches.

"In solemn protest against the departure of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod from the historical position of the Lutheran Synodical Conference," the delegates voted overwhelmingly to leave the conference and end co-sponsorship with Missouri of several joint welfare and missionary programs. Missouri's sin: working with more liberal bodies who belong to the National Lutheran Council, which Wisconsin regards as a center of downright heresy.

The break with Missouri leaves the nation's fourth largest Lutheran Church as isolated as when it began. Founded in Granville (now a Milwaukee suburb) by three German missionary pastors in 1850, the Synod later joined with Missouri and four other Lutheran groups in the Synodical Conference "to encourage and strengthen one another in faith and confession." Neither Missouri nor Wisconsin took any part in the mergers that led to the creation of the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America.

Without question, Wisconsin is now the most rigidly fundamentalist of all Lutheran groups. All pastors must teach that the Bible cannot err even in details, that God created the world in six 24-hour days, that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Wisconsin churches hardly ever join with other Christian groups in sponsoring civic projects. But "we aren't ogres," says Pastor James Schaefer of Milwaukee's Atonement Church. "We enjoy a martini once in a while, and some of us even say 'dammit' from time to time."

Wisconsin's president, Pastor Oscar J. Naumann, 54, is similarly tolerant in secular affairs. "But on a matter which affects our hope for salvation--Scripture--there can be no compromise," he says. Until Missouri reforms, adds Pastor Schaefer, "we cannot pray with them, we cannot work with them, we cannot worship with them and, by extension, with anyone else who does."

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