Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

As for sitting on the joint meetings of the synods
concerned, we have, in the first place, not been invited to
take part in these meetings until two years ago, in 1941,
when a resolution of the Missouri Synod included this plan
of asking the sister synods to be represented as well, a plan
that was quickly questioned in the circles of the American
Lutheran Church and would hardly have been carried out
because of the unwillingness of members of the American
Lutheran Church to accept our committee as partners in the
discussion. 229
The non-invitation of the WELS and the ELS demonstrates the theological unity
of the two synods in comparison to the rapidly eroding confessional position of the
LCMS. Further proof of this theological closeness can be found when one compares
H.M. Tjernagel’s 1936 ELS convention essay “Unity, Union, and Unionism” with
Edmund Reim’s 1935 WELS convention essay “Church Fellowship and Its
Implications.” These essays exhibit the striking similarities of each Synod’s approach to
Scripture as well as true church union. The most striking similarity between these two
essays is how both Reim and Tjernagel diagnose a false spirit of unionism – a spirit
which is more concerned about visible unity than it is about the truth. Compare Reim’s
assessment of the Lutheran scene with Tjernagel’s.
Reim: The entire undertaking (the Intersynodical Theses) to
which so much time and thought had been given was
nullified when in 1930 the Ohio and Iowa Synods, which
by that time had united with Buffalo to form the ALC,
established fellowship with the Norwegian Merger, which
on its part had ruthlessly overridden the conscientious
objections of the minority…on the same doctrine of
conversion and election. 230
229 S.C. Ylvisaker, “Lutheran Witness’s Review of Grace for Grace” Lutheran Sentinel 27, no.5 (March 13,
1944), 69-70.
230 Edmund Reim, “Church Fellowship and Its Implications,” Paper presented to the 23rd Convention of the
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, August 7-13, 1935, New Ulm, MN, 41.
120