This article, written by the Rev. Dr. Korey Maas (a four-time guest on The Gottesdienst Crowd) published by the Acton Institute, is a helpful reflection on the Seminex walkout. For far from being a long-over LCMS historical tempest in a teapot from the distant past, we are still dealing with the fallout: the same fungal liberalism that crops up periodically like mushrooms in humid places. Like unto even the faithful kings of the Old Testament, our tolerance of the high places and the Asherim continue to plague us.

Older folks who bear the scars of divided churches and families often don’t want to talk about it. Younger folks often just consider it to be irrelevant ancient history. But considering that all history is an ongoing chain of cause and effect, and considering what history has taught us - we ignore it at our peril.

Fr. Maas points out that the Seminex episode was both theological and political. The ones who walked out (and their allies who remained and who yet remain in the LCMS) bitterly denounce the “politics” of the matter. But they overlook the cancer that the Seminex theology was, and is. Polity and politics become the operation room and the surgeon’s scalpel for cutting out a tumor. And the tumor doesn’t much like either one. As the Rev. Kenneth Haugk’s book, Antagonists in the Church (which has saved many a church and many a pastor - and I strongly urge pastors to buy it and read it), advises, when faced with unrepentant and toxic parishioners who cause havoc in the parish, we must use every tool at our disposal to remove them. It is our job as protectors of the flock - and that role of protection applies to those with extra-parochial responsibilities in church and synod as well. Politics and polity should serve the Gospel.

I do realize that seminarians and even young pastors are susceptible to being beguiled and bamboozled by these trendy ideas about critical biblical scholarship. And that is why the professors were the real problem. They deserved to be reprimanded and removed.

But the victorious conservatives did misuse politics in the aftermath of their victory. They turned the hero into the villain, and blackballed him: the Rev. Herman Otten. Building on the bitter, vindictive treatment he received at the hands of the liberals whom he exposed, the conservatives used politics against him as well: not as a theological protector of the faith, but as a personal weapon to settle petty scores and to salve bruised egos. They became organizational guardians. It is impossible to look back on Seminex in an objective way, as one who believes in the Bible, and not see the debt we all owe to Pastor Otten. He was the watchman on the wall. And sadly, politics were employed against him not to protect the faithful and the faith, but to protect the liars and their lies.

When the conservatives wrested control back from the duplicitous cancer, they kept the vindictive policies against Otten in place. Year after year, decade after decade, even to his death. They would meet with him like Nicodemus in the middle of the night, seeking political favors, but in the daytime, refused to restore his reputation.

The time is long past to say “Thank you.” People’s personal and provincial gripes against him are nothing compared to his act of whistleblowing when the alarm was sounded. And those who focus exclusively on bylaws are part of the problem. Bylaws were created for man, not men for the bylaws. When there is an emergency, you can run red lights. And there was a dire emergency at CSL. If anyone doubts this, consider where the “exiled” professors, pastors, and seminarians ended up. They became one of the founding and constituent parts of the ELCA. And that trainwreck, that mockery of Christ and Christianity, that parody of Lutheran Christianity, is exactly where biblical criticism leads. That could have been us, and it nearly was.

But before we become too triumphalistic, by not completely cutting out the tumor, we have some of its scions among us:

• Semitex: woke rebellion in our university system,

• Feminex: in which some districts put women in albs and stoles and call them deacons, or try to look the other way when they do things like vest, preach, absolve, and officiate at confirmations,

• Racialex: the vilification of white people for simply being whom God made them,
  Antinominex: with even deniers of justification enjoying virtual recognition as dogmaticians bearing our imprimatur, and

• Liturginex: in which Article 24 is set aside by the ongoing Church Growth Movement, and the worship of God is mocked by those who profane the sacred and induce the goddess Entertainment into our sacred spaces and altars (even if the altar looks like a stage). Yes, it’s “growth” all right, but in the sense of parasitic, malignant tissue that threatens the life of the entire body.

It sometimes seems that our polity is employed to remove people for the wrong reasons, while matters that should put our political machinery to use for the good of the faith are ignored. Maybe some of this is because of our clunky polity and processes, but it is hard to make a case that it isn’t also individuals with misguided priorities settling personal scores instead of objectively protecting their flocks.

Herman Otten was a whistleblower, as was Martin Luther. And we see the same forces at work: politics being employed not to protect the flock but to protect the duplicitous from the one blowing the whistle, operating under the cover of darkness, . And the same complaints that are made against Otten were earlier made against Luther as well: they both used the printing press, they both named names, they both wrote bombastically, and made a lot of powerful enemies. Neither played entirely by the organization’s rules when the Gospel was at stake. And while we all lionize Luther, cheering on and chortling at his caustic rhetorical style (that angered and outraged the ecclesiastical institution), there is still a stubborn, personal bitterness among many conservatives in their assessment of Otten.

I had my share of spats with Pastor Otten. It made me laugh that in one year of Christian News, I appeared in the index way more more often than Luther. I was sometimes targeted by CN, and I had no problem hitting back. While at seminary, for the purposes of a student gathering that may or may not exist, I penned a hymn parody of Thy Strong Word about Pastor Otten and Christian News, called Thy Wrong Word. But in the final analysis, our fraternal sparring with one another was just that. I’m grateful for Herman Otten, even though there are things he said that I disagree with, and even though I was in his crosshairs from time to time. Shortly before he died, he called me on the phone. I was rather surprised, because I never met him, and had never even had a conversation with him before. And I don’t even remember why he called. But we had a great conversation. I thanked him for what he did to blow the whistle during Seminex. I told him that the Synod owes him a debt of gratitude. I’m glad that God gave me the opportunity to tell him that.

Our leaders and our members of Synod really need to acknowledge this fact, pass an official apology to his family and congregation, posthumously certify him for the ministry, and acknowledge our gratitude for his sounding of the alarm at enormous personal cost. We owe him that, and we are morally bound to telling the truth. Frankly, there should be statues erected at Concordia Seminary in honor of him and in honor of J.A.O. Preus. The debauched and antichrist ELCA is testimony to how much we owe Pastor Otten. History has vindicated him. And we also owe him our vigilance in spotting outbreaks of the Seminex virus, and in taking swift action to annihilate it before it metastasizes.

We need to foster an ecclesiastical culture that is unequivocally committed to the inerrant Bible and an unapologetic quia understanding of the Confessions, to a resolute resistance to woke ideologies of every sort, and to protecting those who sound the alarm when danger arises. And if Synod, Inc. won’t express its gratitude for Pastor Otten, we as individual members of Synod can, and should, do so. And here is a podcast that covers Pastor Otten’s life and work (I can’t recommend listening to this enough, an episode of A Word Fitly Spoken with the Rev. Dr. Adam Koontz and the Rev. Willie Grills - there are things in here that you might well find both revelatory and shocking from our own LCMS history - good job, brothers!).

As we confess in Article 21, we “teach that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works.”