Merging Lutheran Groups Pick Headquarters : Choice of Milwaukee Offers Economic Advantages but Sparks Some Criticism

The commission fashioning a three-way merger of Lutheran churches has picked Milwaukee as the new denomination’s headquarters, a compromise choice promising financial savings over the cities favored earlier, Chicago and Minneapolis.

With the target date for unity less than two years away, the Commission for a New Lutheran Church, meeting in Minneapolis this week, also wrote its constitution and bylaws and chose a new name--Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Selecting a site for the projected 5.3-million-member denomination’s headquarters has been the most difficult problem recently. Initial reaction to the Milwaukee choice was mixed.

“What the new church loses in media access and travel convenience it apparently will gain in economic advantages,” said the Rev. Martin E. Marty, a much-quoted analyst of religion in America and one of the country’s best known Lutherans. Economics are strong considerations for any church body, regardless of size, Marty said.

L.A. Bishop ‘Aghast’

On the other hand, Los Angeles’ Bishop Stanley E. Olson of the Lutheran Church in America said he was “aghast” at the selection of Milwaukee.

“I think it reflects an immigrant mentality rather than something that makes us part of the American scene,” said Olson, who, like Marty, did not attend the commission meeting. “This is the way Lutherans purchased building sites back in the immigrant days--we found cheaper land on the side streets.”

During the Protestant Reformation in Europe, Lutheranism divided along language and regional lines, partly because it favored worship in the vernacular rather than the Latin of the Roman Catholic Church. As Lutherans immigrated to America, they tended to keep their separate ethnic identities, and only in the last 75 years have they engaged in a series of mergers to gain increased visibility as a principal Protestant group in America.

“Where does a major denomination belong for witness?” asked Olson, who said he favored Chicago. “I am not convinced economy should be the dominant factor in considering the headquarters location.”

The joint commission strove to select a “neutral” city not now serving as headquarters for one of the three uniting bodies--the Lutheran Church in America in New York City, the American Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and the Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in St. Louis. The commission tentatively picked Chicago last September.

But Minneapolis church and civic leaders began promoting the Minnesota site, and an independent report to the commission indicated that it would cost annually between $500,000 to $2 million more in Chicago than in Minneapolis. Last month, the commission also heard estimates that the new church body would face a possible shortfall of $5.5 million in connection with start-up costs in 1988.

After two days of debate at the commission meeting in Minneapolis, which concluded Wednesday, a surprise proposal was made from boosters of Milwaukee. A representative contended that annual costs in Milwaukee would be $500,000 to $700,000 less than in Minneapolis.

In addition, the Siebert Foundation, a philanthropic group that has supported Lutheran endeavors in Wisconsin, offered the new denomination a $1-million grant if it located in Milwaukee, said Herb David, communications director for the American Lutheran Church.

“Another factor in the decision may have been the higher minority population in Milwaukee, about 35% compared to 8% in Minneapolis,” David said. Commission members had indicated that they wanted a city with a significant minority population.

The final commission vote on the site favored Milwaukee 59-9.

David said that the most vocal opponent of the choice at the meeting was the Rev. Robert J. Marshall of Columbia, S.C., a former president of the Lutheran Church in America and author of the recommendation of Chicago.

It was noted that in Milwaukee itself, members of the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will be outnumbered, 45,000 to 81,000, by Lutherans of other denominations, principally those of the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (2.6 million nationally) and the even more conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (415,000 nationally).

Bishop Olson said that was an additional strike against the choice of Milwaukee--”to go to a city where you are a minority in the Lutheran family.”

‘An Unwieldy Name’

The Los Angeles church official was also unhappy with the new name. “It’s an unwieldy name that doesn’t flow,” Olson said.

Olson’s counterpart in Southern California, Bishop Nelson Trout of the American Lutheran Church, said from his Woodland Hills office that he was “very much surprised” that the commission voted for Milwaukee but would not comment further without more information about the decision.

In the new denomination, set to start Jan. 1, 1988, the Southern California region will be divided into two synods. One, including Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties, will have 173 congregations and 68,000 baptized members. The other synod will have 119 congregations and 57,000 baptized members in San Diego, Orange, Imperial, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and Hawaii.

Trout said he likes the new name, and Martin Marty, contacted by telephone in South Carolina, likewise approves of it.

By including the adjective “evangelical” in the name, Marty said, it reflects Lutheranism’s European heritage (where many churches use the term in their names) and “may keep the ‘neo-evangelicals’ (conservative Protestants) in this country from preempting the name.”

(Traditionally, “evangelical” has been associated with any mission-oriented Christian church, but in the United States it has come to be synonymous with conservative, “born-again” Protestants.)

Marty, a church history professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said he has been introduced at U.S. conferences of evangelicals erroneously as a “non-evangelical.” But he said he has countered that he is a member of one of the few denominations in the country with “evangelical” in its title--the 110,000-member Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

The association, formed out of congregations that left the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in a bitter doctrinal-political conflict in the 1970s, has very few members in Southern California.

Marty has been mentioned as a favorite for the denomination’s first president, but he said he would not comment on whether he is interested.

He also said he had no strong feelings on the proposed headquarters city.

If serious objections are raised, they may come in the spring at denominational executive meetings and regional district or synod conferences, church officials said. All three uniting denominations are holding their biennial conventions this year in late August, when commission decisions would be up for approval.