Memoirs are more self-justification than documentary history, so they should be read in that light. Yet they still provide the raw material necessary for documentary history, and these memoirs fit the bill on both counts. David Scaer, longtime professor of systematic theology at Missouri Synod seminaries in Springfield, IL, and Fort Wayne, IN, occupies a chair in systematic theology ironically named after the holder himself. His career has spanned many tumultuous years within the denomination, from its controversial embrace of emerging German theologies in the 1950s when he was a seminarian to the tensions leading to its splintering in the 1970s and the confessional resurgence (and corresponding opposition) of the 1980s and 1990s. In his account of these eras, Scaer “names names”—indeed, many names still living and working within his circles—and he does so at times with a sense of personal retribution, at times with a genuine evenhandedness, and at all times with gusto and insight.
There may be no more defining period in Missouri Synod history than that related to “Seminex”—the political buildup between synod president J. A. O. (“Jack”) Preus II and Concordia Seminary president John Tietjen, the commission investigating the Concordia seminary faculty, the 1973 convention approval of a statement proscribing many of their teachings, the notorious walkout of February 1974, and the fissures those events created and widened until rupturing the denomination. Despite his close involvement in the proceedings (for instance, evaluating the documents of the “Fact-Finding Committee”), Professor Scaer’s memoirs spend less time on that narrative than one might expect from a noted opponent of the controversial views. Nor is there a hint of triumphalism in his discussion of those issues. He does address the new theology coming in the form of German Neo-Orthodoxy and his misgivings about it, as well as some of the fallout occurring in less-covered corners of the denomination, such as the Springfield seminary or the old Atlantic District, of which his father’s congregation and his own second parish in Connecticut were members.
What Scaer does cover at length, however, are episodes far less treated in other monographs or memoirs on recent Missouri Synod history, and these may be the most significant contributions of his book. Two examples stand out. First, he chronicles the history of the Springfield seminary during the years from his call there in 1966 to its move to Fort Wayne in 1976. Springfield proved important for a variety of reasons. Scaer shows how Jack Preus began shaping the style he would bring to the presidency of the synod while he was president at Springfield, including Scaer’s first three years there. It was also at Springfield that mounting resistance to Preus’s platform began, paralleling much that was occurring in St. Louis. Another interesting vignette reflecting the changing times: while at Springfield, Scaer commuted weekly to the University of Illinois in Champaign to teach religion classes, yet increasing political pressures synodically forced him out of the classroom. One final note was the arrival of Robert Preus as president of Springfield in 1974, signaling a new direction that would shape postwalkout parties in the synod to the present day.
The dawn of the Preus presidency in Springfield raises another topic in recent Missouri history that is seldom addressed: Preus’s embattled presidency at Fort Wayne, particularly during the years 1989–1994. The reason few address this period is because so many of the participants remain alive and active in synodical institutions. But Scaer proceeds undaunted. He describes the ongoing tensions within the faculty as the conservative movement began to fracture (assuming there was anything solidifying it other than its common opposition to the faculty majority at Concordia Seminary before the walkout). He gives pride of place to his conflict with Waldo Werning, who brought charges against him for his argument that “all theology is Christology,” ultimately resulting in Scaer’s dismissal as academic dean. This roughly coincided with the successful attempt to remove Robert Preus as seminary president, leading to a host of political maneuvers ranging from the seminary campus to the convention floor, even local courts. It also eventuated in the curious decision (on the part of seminary administrators and district presidents) not to extend calls to thirty-two seminarians purportedly supportive of Preus and his theology in 1992. Scaer shows how these conflicts caused the election of Al Barry as synodical president in 1992 and the turnover in seminary regents at the 1995 convention that paved the way for Dean Wenthe’s seminary presidency. Scaer remains unremitting in his insistence that these events effectively brought on Preus’s death and that the parties responsible for the call day–debacle of 1992 owe fiscal remuneration to the students effected. Accounts like these surely will evoke different responses from others involved, but Scaer’s presentation stands out precisely because the affairs remain “hidden secrets” within the denomination’s recent past.
At times, the memoirs slow to a crawl, but there they still provide something of value. Scaer wastes too much time and detail on the now-defunct “Lutherland” in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, where he still spends summers. For most, these sections might invite a brisk scanning. But the astute reader will realize even this tells an important tale: the swift fall of a northeastern Lutheran presence once socially and ecclesiastically vigorous, but since abandoned to the tide of secularism and Protestant liberalism. The same is true for his experience as the son of a pastor in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and his second call in Connecticut. Taken by themselves, they hardly merit attention, but in the context of the later departure of those congregations for the Seminex-supportive coalition, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), which later merged into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, they reveal what happened to the rich Lutheranism of the New York area that spawned many of the players in the controversies of the 1970s (most notably Tietjen). The departure of the parish in Connecticut is made all the more surprising since Scaer’s predecessor there was none other than the son of Franz Pieper, the architect of twentieth-century conservative theology in the Missouri Synod.
Memoirs are notoriously difficult to review. How do you evaluate someone else’s experience of events? Do you analyze their interpretation of the event? Do you question the facticity of their account? Or do you assess its contribution to larger pictures that need to be painted by the information a particular set of memoirs provides? It is in this last sense that Scaer offers a service to current and future students of the Missouri Synod, indeed of twentieth-century American Lutheranism. He writes, at least in part, the biographies that the Preus brothers were never able to write. He writes a history of the Springfield seminary during the Missouri “civil war” and a history of the Fort Wayne seminary after it. He writes about the decline and fall of Lutheranism in the northeast. Other, more objective, less personally involved, maybe less self-justifying histories will be written about these topics and these periods, but they will have to begin with and include what Scaer has written here.
Richard J. Serina, Jr.
Ringwood, NJ