Missouri Synod Head Faces Strong Challenge

The president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a conservative besieged by ultraconservatives, is facing a stronger challenge to reelection than anyone who has held the post in at least 20 years.

Delegates to the synod’s national convention in Pittsburgh on July 10-17 will vote on whether to return the president, the Rev. Ralph A. Bohlmann, to another three-year term.

But in recent balloting by congregations, Bohlmann got fewer nominations than the Rev. Alvin L. Barry, president of the synod’s Iowa District East and the leading candidate of ultraconservatives.

“Bohlmann has got his work cut out for him,” said the Rev. Jacob A.O. Preus, whom Bohlmann succeeded as president in 1981.

Bohlmann’s right-wing critics contend, among other things, that he has wrongly encouraged ecumenical cooperation, downplayed foreign missions and failed to discipline pastors and educators whose teaching differs from synod beliefs.

According to Bohlmann, the synod has more people serving overseas today than ever before. Bohlmann also defended his ecumenical work.

Observers say that Bohlmann’s role in a bitter controversy involving a former seminary president in Ft. Wayne, Ind., the Rev. Robert Preus, has been a major factor in the recent erosion of his popularity.

Critics contend that Bohlmann has stood by as the board of Concordia Seminary in Ft. Wayne defied an order from the synod’s highest judicial body to reinstate Preus as top seminary official. The judicial body, the Commission on Appeals, said Preus had been unfairly ousted by the board in 1989.

He has also stood by, the critics say, and failed to attempt to oust liberal pastors and teachers.

Jacob Preus, immediate past president of the synod and Robert’s cousin, said in a telephone interview that Bohlmann has maintained discipline in the synod “as well as anybody can.”

The attacks on Bohlmann from the right are ironic, given his role in a theological controversy in the synod in the 1970s. Bohlmann was a hero of ultraconservatives in that dispute because of his strong commitment to biblical inerrancy. He was named president of the synod’s Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1975 after the ouster of the Rev. John Tietjen, who was accused of tolerating false doctrine at the school.

Bohlmann said the pre-election balloting is useful, but hardly an accurate barometer of where the election is headed.