LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 86

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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.