From Luther to Rome

The good burghers of Bavaria like their beer strong and their religion straight. The Bavarian Lutheran Church is the only staunchly conservative Protestant Church left in West Germany, the only one, for instance, that does not yet permit the ordination of women. Thus traditionalist, some might say male-chauvinist pastors have found it a welcome refuge. But even in Bavaria times are changing. Among other innovations, a bishop can now give special permission to a woman to celebrate the Eucharist. Irritated by this incursion, three Bavarian Lutheran pastors have fled their church in recent months and have begun studies to become Roman Catholic priests.

The first to desert the Lutheran fold was the Rev. Wilhelm Schwenold, 46, bachelor pastor of a parish of 600 souls in Bernsbach, southwest of Nuernberg, who slipped out of town one night last fall and sent a letter of resignation to his bishop on Reformation Day. Next to go was the assistant pastor at Wuerzburg's Deutschhaus church, the Rev. Karl-Heinz Tillmann, 39, married and the father of three. But the final and most embarrassing blow came last month with the resignation of the Rev. Gerhard Betzner, the popular pastor of the church at Neuendettelsau, a stronghold of Bavarian Lutheranism.

Neuendettelsau is small (pop. 6,000), but it boasts the widely respected Augustana Theological University, a Lutheran hospital, and a Lutheran institute. Pastor Betzner, renowned for his homespun sermons, had raised church attendance and tripled the number of communions in his six years there.

Then, in January, he, his wife and four children suddenly left the parish, leaving a letter to be read from the pulpit.

Betzner's letter told his parishioners that he no longer felt at home in the church. He was particularly displeased that a woman "apprentice pastor" was allowed to celebrate the Eucharist in his own parish, but he objected as well to new "lay preachers" who also were being allowed to infringe on the office of the ordained minister. "The church of God exists essentially through the spiritual office," Betzner said. "Without it, there is no grace." As for ordaining women, he contended that such a step is not based on Lutheran doctrine.

Betzner and the others may of course have made their break in vain, especially if Rome eventually heeds a growing number of Catholic theologians who say that women can and should be ordained.

"What guarantee does Betzner have that the Catholics are not going to have women priests soon?" asked a young woman at Augustana. "The only thing left for him then is to convert to Islam."

While some Lutheran traditionalists in Bavaria chose to leave their church, conservatives in the U.S. have consolidated control of the administration and seminaries of the 2.8 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. But it may be at the cost of a serious schism.

Making solemn charges of false teachings, board members of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis last month suspended the school's moderate president, the Rev. John H. Tietjen, and sparked an angry walkout of most of the seminary's students and faculty (TIME, Feb. 4). Last week, using the walkout as grounds for dismissal, the seminary board fired 46 members of the faculty and the executive staff, then promptly appointed seven new professors and 33 part-time faculty members who will be on call to teach the remaining students.

There may not be many; fewer than 100 of the seminary's 650 prestrike students are expected to drift back. Nearly 400 of the rest signed up last week for a "Concordia Seminary in Exile" that began holding classes at St. Louis University (a Jesuit school) and the United Church of Christ's Eden Theological Seminary. Both host schools will certify the rebel seminarians' degrees, as will Chicago's Lutheran School of Theology, the largest seminary of a sister denomination, the more liberal Lutheran Church in America.

The threat of schism within the Missouri Synod has intensified. A large group of dissidents (Evangelical Lutherans in Mission) have now officially cast their lot with the strikers, announcing that they will divert their contributions from church headquarters to a new mission board and the seminary in exile. A conciliation board is still at work trying to mend the tattered situation, but the prospects for restoring unity are bleak.

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