Changing understanding of the church-state relationship: The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 1914-1969.

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to trace how the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod changed its understanding of the proper relationship between church and state between World War I and 1969. Despite the fact that the Missouri Synod is a major American denomination, it has received scant academic study. It makes an interesting case study because it is an immigrant church that is both conservatively evangelical and strongly confessional. This study of how one issue was treated over a sixty year period in the Missouri Synod leads to similar studies of other American denominations. The Missouri Synod is a conservative denomination founded by German immigrants in 1847. By the mid-1960s, it had become the largest Lutheran synod in America, maintaining the nation's largest network of Protestant elementary schools. Before World War I, the Missouri Synod taught a strict separation of church and state. By the late 1960s, it taught that the relationship between church and state was flexible. The hysterical patriotism during World War I forced the Synod to abandon the use of the German. After the war, the Synod attempted to maintain isolation from American culture by theological and social proscription. However, the social and political commentary of Synodical leaders served instead to blur strict separation of church and state. Lutheran education also contributed to change in the post-war decades. Prior to World War II, the Synod held that state aid to private education violated the separation of church and state. From 1944 to the mid-1960s, the Synod accepted only "child-benefit" aid. By the end of the 1960s, the Synod considered the question of state aid a practical question rather than a doctrinal issue. In the 1960s, the Missouri Synod committed itself to a broad mission to the whole person and the whole society. However, implementation was stymied by the Synod's preoccupation with a theological controversy over the authority of the Bible which divided the Synod along liberal-conservative lines. This study shows how the Missouri Synod changed its position on the proper relationship between church and state for doctrinal and social reasons.