# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S86 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) 86 THE CONVENTION ESSAY it emphasizes what is different about us instead of what is the same. . . . This uneasiness is manifested, I find, particularly among those who have just left their own ethnic heritage behind, convinced that it represents a benighted past, and that they must shed their ethnic identity to become truly a part of American society. I suspect that such people have a feeling of guilt about what has been left behind and a feeling of fear that it has not been left behind completely. Rejection of their own identity has become for them a matter of principle. [P. 14] Particularly helpful to a self-understanding is the six-phase assimilative development of ethnic groups which Greeley outlines. One can readily see each one of these phases in the development of Lutheranism both in America and in our Synod. 1. Cultural Shock: The immigrant group, says Greeley, is frightened, disorganized, and alien in a new environment. It is attacked by the new culture, and the primary problem of the leadership is to keep the people together. They merely survive.— Doesn’t this remind us of the immi- grant groups which later merged to form the Missouri Synod? — 2. Organization and Emerging Self-Consciousness: In the second phase, Greeley points out, organiza- tions are established, and special clergy and lay lead- ers are emerging and consolidating the interests of the group in organizations. The brighter young people are becoming Americanized and begin to seek professional careers while others frantically work their way up the economic ladder. — Doesn’t this sound like our Synod in the 1860s and 1870s? 3. Assimilation of the Elite: The immigrants, through hard work, come to be identified, in Greeley’s view, as middle class citizens. Parents have saved enough money to finance their chil- dren’s college education. Some became pastors and teachers. Many talented individuals grasp the oppor- tunities wherever they see them. They are breaking out of their ethnic limitations and seeking life in the Ameri- can mainstream.— Not a few of them were members of the Missouri Synod. 4, Militancy: In the fourth stage, Greeley says, the immigrants have arrived squarely in the middle class and continue to push upwards, sometimes violently militant. Aspects of the “in group” feelings continue, and the members are warned of the danger of associating too freely with the larger society. During this phase the group pro- duces its own associations and societies. When put to the test, it may even demonstrate super patriotism, in- ferring that it is not inferior but superior to others. Pride in its achievements may make the group difficult to deal with.— These attitudes were evident in the Missouri Synod in the period of the 1930s and even 1940s. As someone recently said, Missouri’s attitude was like the TV commercial: “What others can do, we can do better.” 5. Self-Hatred and Self-Criticism: By the time a group reaches the fifth phase, Greeley Says, a substantial number of its members are a part of the upper middle and professional classes. Its young people in ever larger numbers attend college and be- come successful. The “spinning off” of the elite con- tinues. Often they are embarrassed by what they call narrowness, militancy, rigidity, and provincialism of their own past and by the leaders of their organization. Greeley puts it this way: Self-hatred . . . finally comes out in the fifth phase, and devastating criticism is aimed at almost every aspect of one’s own tradition and almost every institution which strives to keep one’s culture alive. Yet, for most of the self-critics, there is no thought of abandoning the ethnic community or its culture completely. There are intense, emphatic demands for drastic and immediate moderniza- tion — demands which cannot possibly be met... . The self-critics cannot live with their ethnic background, and they cannot live without it. [P. 56] Needless to say, as an ethnic group, the Synod has not been spared this phase. 6. Emerging Adjustment: In the sixth phase, according to Greeley, a new gen- eration emerges, secure in its upper middle class status. Conscious of its ethnic origins, but no longer ashamed of them, the new breed has no desire to run away, critj- cize, or become militantly aggressive. In fact, it does not understand the militant defensiveness of the fourth stage and the self-hatred of the fifth. There is a re- newed interest in the cultural and ethnic background, no longer in criticism, but out of curiosity. —- We see ourselves in this mirror. Struggle for Reinterpretation “The devil invented the name Missouri!” — this ex- clamation has been ascribed to C. F. W. Walther at the 1878 convention when it hoped to form a single Lutheran church in America. The word “Christian” was first used derisively by a jeering, suspicious peo- ple. The name “Lutheran,” too, first used in 1519, was intended to be a stigma. Nor did Luther want the name to be used. In violent terms he objected: “No one should be named after my poor, stinking bag of maggots” (Weimar Ed., VII, 685). “{Christians] do not believe in Luther, but in Christ Himself” (Luther to Hartmuth von Kronberg, 1522, St. Louis Ed., XV, 1899, Col. 1670). In the course of time, however, each of these terms came to be identified and stand for a distinct confessional group. Among Lutherans in America, the name “Mis- souri” has become a testimony to a confession. A church body, like an ethnic group, undergoes certain phases of development, for better or for worse. Changes are inevitable; they have occurred in the past and they will continue to occur in the future. But God has not changed, nor has He changed His Gospel and the Ten Commandments. Unlike churches and synods, God has not amended His covenant, commandments, and love. We are merely fooling ourselves when we ex- pect to remake, alter, modify, or amend the almighty Creator.