Monday, June 19, 2017

1959 - E. Schaller to District President Lenz

This letter is in reply to the WELS Minnesota District President Lenz' general letter to his district's membership. In that letter, President Lenz wrote:

"Should anyone not agree with the resolutions of Synod and, as a result, feel compelled to sever his bonds of fellowship, we especially plead that he first make his position clear to the District President and consult with him."

E. Schaller replied, "... It is far from my desire or purpose to leave the fellowship of the Synod. The Synod, on the other hand, has withdrawn from me by open and determined adherence that which I recognize as a false principle of termination of church fellowship and by persisting in the exercise of fellowship relations with a church body that continues despite admonition to cause divisions and offenses in the Church."

"When the original report of Floor Committee No. 23 was set aside by as coarse, as brutal a parliamentary maneuver as I have ever witnessed on a convention floor, when all debate on the true issue was thus effectively cut off, when the Floor committee was somehow induced to defer to the opinions, and, I might add, to the prejudices of the Standing Committee on Church Union, thus violating without warning the undertaking which the Floor Committee had given to the signers of the memorial under consideration, I heard and saw no sign to indicate that my District President spoke in my defense or protested the violence done to the earnest pursuit of the Truth."

E. Schaller to District President Lenz, September 7, 1959