WELCOMING a seminary in exile

By Keisha T. Dyson

Central to the ecclesiastical conflict were disputes over the authority of Scripture, biblical interpretation, the distinction of law and gospel, the precise nature of the Lutheran confessional witness, and the ethical and social implications of the Lutheran Christian heritage.

These arguments divided the LCMS and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis particularly when a majority of the faculty members affirmed the use of the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation that investigates the origins, the historical contexts, and the original intentions of the biblical writers in order to clarify the meaning of the biblical texts and their relevance for the contemporary mission of the church. For many church leaders and some of the seminary faculty members, this new method of biblical exegesis was deemed unacceptable.

A tipping point was reached at Concordia Seminary in 1973 when President John H. Tietjen (1928-2004) was suspended for allowing the seminary’s faculty to teach what the convention of the LCMS and the seminary’s Board of Control called “false doctrine.”

When attempts to resolve the theological conflicts were unsuccessful, the majority of Concordia Seminary students and faculty decided to go into exile. This decision resulted in the establishment of Concordia Seminary in Exile, later Christ SeminarySeminex (Seminary-in-Exile), with Tietjen named Seminex’s president.

In these transformative moments, the members of the Seminex community who had forged a new path were supported fiscally by the members of the Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), and, after 1976, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (AELC), a church body of former LCMS congregations that became one of the three church bodies that formed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988.

Seminex offered classes from 1974 until its final commencement in 1983. That same year, nine

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