NOT JACOB PREUS – KURT MARQUART – GOD’S CHOSEN INSTRUMENT

[Marquart’s Works, Volume X, pp. 100-102]

Who was God’s chief chosen instrument in The Lutheran Church-Mis­souri Synod’s Great Battle for the Bible? What does the actual record show? The record published by the LCMS bureaucracy, financed by the Schwan Foundation, in such books as A Seminary in Crisis-The Inside Story of the Preus Fact Finding Committee makes it appear that LCMS President Jacob Preus and others in the LCMS bureaucracy were the real heroes and champions in this great battle.

Seldom in the history of American denominationalism had the Bible believers in a denomination been able to defeat the liberals, the “Bible doubters,” in a denomination. The “Battle for the Bible” in other denomnations generally ended up with the Bible believing minority leaving the denomination and forming their own seminaries and schools. They lost their seminaries, colleges, and mission boards. The opposite happened during the LCMS’s “Battle for the Bible.” 45 out of 50 liberals on the staff at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis walked off the campus of this seminary, taking some 450 students with them. A majority on the LCMS’s mission department, which supported the liberalism and universalism of the liberals, left with the liberal professors and students. They began a new seminary known as Seminex. The liberal United Church of Christ’s Eden Seminary and the liberal Roman Catholic St. Louis Divinity School, which also promoted liberalism, evolution and universalism, took in the Seminexers.

The 1973 LCMS’s Convention, a highlight of the LCMS’s great “Battle for the Bible”, in resolution 3-09 declared that the theology of those who formed Seminex was false doctrine which was not to be tolerated within the LCMS. Hundreds of liberals at the Convention demonstrated against the Bible believers in the LCMS who opposed theological liberalism, evo­lution, universalism and the destructive criticism of the Bible promoted by liberal Bible higher critics. Kurt Marquart was one of those who took issue with LCMS President Jacob Preus and others in the LCMS bureau­cracy, for not following through on 3-09 of the LCMS’s 1973 Convention. The liberal professors and officials like Charles Mueller, Sr., who sup­ported the theology of the Seminexers but remained in the LCMS, were not disciplined. Only a few district presidents, who broke a by-law when they ordained uncertified Seminex graduates, were removed.

Anyone who has studied what was happening theologically within the LCMS for twenty years prior to the LCMS’s 1973 Convention knows that God’s chief instrument, and the real hero in this battle, was no one in the LCMS’s bureaucracy, no LCMS president, no seminary president, no Professor or anyone else whose salary came from the LCMS. It was no one associated with any secret group working and meeting behind the scenes planning political strategy and forming voting guides.

It was a highly, intellectually gifted and articulate refugee from com­munism. It was no “Johnny-come-lately.” It was a young, highly dedi­cated and Christ centered, spiritually minded student who had just left his teenage years. He was “the brain” behind a few students who protested in the 1950s against theological liberalism, evolution and uni­versalism creeping into the LCMS, particularly at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He was the chief and often sole author of the documents in the “Seminary vs. Otten” case. He was the young man who faced experienced seminary lawyers and mature faculty administrators who tried their best to show the LCMS’s highest court of adjudication, its Board of Appeals, that all seminary professors were orthodox Lutherans and that student Herman Otten, his seminary roommate, had not told the truth about seminary professors he said were liberals. He showed that Otten told the truth.

None of this history is mentioned in any publication by CPH or fi­nanced by the Schwan foundation. Christian News noted in its review of CPH’s “A Seminary In Crisis” that those who have the money often write the history of a denomination.

Marquart’s Legacy, published by Christian News, shortly after Mar­quart died in 2006, lists the hundreds of writings by Kurt Marquart which Christian News has published. Once all the issues of CN are scanned any computer literate person will be able to read them.

Although Marquart accepted a call to Australia in 1961, his influence continued within the LCMS through his writings. After attending the Lutheran World Federation’s Fourth Assembly in 1963 as a reporter for Christian News, Marquart lectured in some 20 U.S. cities from coast to coast. The LCMS paid 20 observers to attend this LWF Assembly. It was about to join the LWF, when Marquart’s reports in Christian News (for­merly Lutheran News) and lectures about the LWF and liberalism creep­ing into the LCMS became the chief factor in turning the tide in the LCMS away from the LWF. At that time no one salaried by the LCMS or any of its schools dared openly to challenge the liberalism in the LCMS and world Lutheranism as boldly, effectively, and intelligently as Kurt Marquart.

Again in 1967 he exposed and challenged liberalism and communism and the new morality in a lecture tour in the U.S.

Dr. Martin Noland, formerly the director of Concordia Historical In­stitute, on December 21 in the office of Christian News interviewed Chris­tian News for a book he is writing on Kurt Marquart. Noland is well qualified. He earned his doctorate at Union Seminary in New York City where he studied for four years. He is a real scholar. This issue includes Noland’s questions, the editor’s answers, and a letter Noland sent to CN after the interview. May God bless Noland’s book on Kurt Marquart. CN will inform its readers when it is published.

A suggested overture in this issue for LCMS congregations on ending a 50 year injustice recommends a move for which Marquart battled for some 50 years, even when most conservatives remained silent or went along with the injustice.

Marquart supporters may want to get their congregations to submit it to the LCMS’s 2010 convention.

After reading Marquart’s closing argument in the more than 1,000 page transcript of the Seminary vs. Otten Case, Noland concluded that Marquart exonerated Otten. Marquart noted that “intellectual snobs” do not read or accept as fact, truth and fact in a publication they despise. Hardly any of the LCMS bureaucrats such as Jack Preus, Ralph Bohlmann and other opposers of Otten actually studied the facts as Noland has. They all wanted the facts buried.

True history and the facts show that Kurt Marquart more than any LCMS bureaucrat was God’s chosen instrument in the LCMS’s “Great Battle for the Bible.”