Ununited Lutherans

A lot of uniting will be required ever to bring the Lutherans of the U. S. into one church, for now they are divided into 17 different denominations. How much unifying is necessary was shown last week when just two of the 17 groups tried to unite--and failed.

One of the two groups was the United Lutheran Church (1,523,022 members), which believes that Lutherans are part of Protestantism as a whole and should not hold aloof from their brethren in the larger faith. The other was the American Lutheran Church (515,935 members), not quite so liberal as the United Lutherans (but not so conservative, for example, as the Missouri Synod, 1,219,935 members, which feels that Lutherans are a closed corporation, should first unite themselves, then mingle with other sects only for the purpose of converting them).

Last fortnight the United Lutherans met in Omaha and the American Lutherans in Detroit for their biennial conventions, attempted to merge. Between the two groups stood chiefly an argument over the Bible. Both believe it to be the Word of God, but American Lutherans believe it more literally. A joint commission on closer union ("pulpit and altar fellowship") had devised a formula which it hoped both could accept: "By virtue of a unique operation of the Holy Spirit, by which He supplied to the holy writers content and fitting word, the separate books of the Bible are related to one another, and, taken together, constitute a complete, errorless, unbreakable whole of which Christ is the centre."

Jammed into the ballroom of Omaha's Hotel Fontenelle, the United Lutherans re-elected their perennial president (he has held the job since the church was organized in 1918): precise, white-goateed Dr. Frederick Hermann Knubel, 70, of Manhattan. Dr. Knubel admitted he could swallow the articles of agreement only by "gulping." The United Lutherans, who think some parts of the Scripture more important than others, had to swallow hard too. But under Dr. Knubel's brisk leadership and spurred by their desire for unity, gulp them the United Lutherans did.

Less hasty were the American Lutherans, meeting in the ultra-plain parish hall of Detroit's Salem's Lutheran Church. Said ruddy, robust Dr. Emmanuel Poppen of Columbus, Ohio, their president: "The church's 1,600 pastors and 2,000 congregations must have an opportunity to be heard." Upshot: the American Lutherans expressed a fervent hope that they and the United Lutherans might both soon be united with the Missouri Synod. They appointed a new commission to continue negotiations.

Somewhat dashed, the United Lutherans took what comfort they could in the fact that they had at least achieved union with the few (6,000) U. S. and Canadian members of the Icelandic Synod.

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