"For Midwestern Lutheran synods, the 20th century was especially dramatic and even traumatic. ..In his article, Dr. Braun describes some of the tensions within two predominantly Midwestern Lutheran bodies, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), as these Lutherans struggled to adapt to change without sacrificing eternal truths and treasured traditions. " [Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 79, 3 (Fall), 180-194] Dr. Mark Braun is a former professor of theology at Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is most known for his Tale of Two Synods.
"For Midwestern Lutheran synods, the 20th century was especially dramatic and even traumatic. ..In his article, Dr. Braun describes some of the tensions within two predominantly Midwestern Lutheran bodies, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), as these Lutherans struggled to adapt to change without sacrificing eternal truths and treasured traditions. " [Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 79, 3 (Fall), 180-194] Dr. Mark Braun is a former professor of theology at Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is most known for his Tale of Two Synods.
Welcome to the Lutheran History podcast. Today, we're going to follow a little more streamlined outline for our podcast today, I'm not going to do the intro music or anything just a little easier in my end to get this podcast out here. But welcome to our 45th episode of the Lutheran History podcast where we examine various aspects of Lutheran history. Our guest for today is one of our returning guests. It's been a little while, but we're very eager to welcome back, Dr. Mark Brown. Now, the topic we're discussing today is on an article that he has appeared in several publications and he's presented on is called a black Geneva piety, we'll get into a little bit of what that actually means. But there's some pretty visual symbolism there. And actual history connected with that. This is a topic that hardly a single person who has been a Wells member for 30 years or more, can claim that they haven't noticed the shift. At one time, pretty much any wells pastor you would see in the pulpit was wearing a black preaching robe commonly called the Geneva. And now today, it would be kind of hard to find one, everyone seems to be wearing the white orb. So it's a pretty much opposite switch. It's a black and white contrast, quite literally. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So Dr. Brown, or mark, as you've asked me to call you. Thank you for joining us today on this topic. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So first, just a general question to let our audience know, how did you get started on this particular topic and project? Well, when I was researching for a tale of two students, there was a section of later in the book where I did a survey of a lot of pastors, most of whom have not gone to heaven, who lived during that time period and said, What did you notice? And when did it occur to you that Missouri was changing. And as I expected, I had a broad range of answers, most of which I was expecting that they were going to say, but one individual who would have been a rather old professor, when I was in school said, we saw that they were becoming much more interested in high liturgical issues, which, as we all know, leads toward doctrinal liberalism or indifferent ism. And that prompted a 1993 graduate, Zink first Jeremy Jeremy key, Cato, I've only met him once to write to me and said, I was really surprised to read that. And, of course, what he was implying is that being interested in liturgical issues doesn't make you doctrinally suspected, actually supports a conservative doctrinal view. And instruct me as I read his reply, that we've had a real paradigm shift in how we look at the symbolic meaning of wearing a black gown or Awakener, having vestments or chanting, and that what somebody was hearing, both on campus from his classmates and from the faculty in the 1990s was very different than they heard in the 40s 50s 60s. In fact, I remember a couple of people who left our Senate and went to the old ALC. And, you know, instantly, we also noticed that they were more into his we would call it smells and bells. And they would, you know, they were going to it to a more doctrinally open Senate, and the whole thing had switched now. So that led me into finding some things I already had read in Missouri, Wisconsin publications, but then finding a lot of other things. And then, as I did with a tail to sentence, I got survey responses from a wide variety of people who gave me the whole spread of how the issue still looks today. Yeah, and that, again, strength of the research you've done is seen in this project as well, you were able to look at the written publications that everyone was was openly saying, but then he also did the primary research. What do people really think behind the publications to and that's, that's a wonderful way to do any project like this. So I think you summarized for us briefly what that shift was kind of a almost like a 180 Complete night and day difference, at least visually, visibly, in worship practices, but also attitudes about some of that seems to have shifted quite quite a bit as well with that their paradigm shift. Before we can really understand the shift though I'm I'm big on context, which is, of course, fitting for anyone who's interested in history. So I'd like to know the background and it goes extensive or as brief as you'd like, but what's the context of wells, traditions and history? And I guess I'll pick an arbitrary date, pre tlh. So before 1941, what's the first 80 or 90 years or so a Wells worship quite well actually 1941 feel he has a good sort of marking point because we do see, before that time, I think the attitudes of the wells regarding worship, which is not set out clearly and completely, but shows up in places here and there. When the cemetery was built in 1928, or 29, in the front of the chapel, all there was was a bookstand. to reelect her, there was no Altar, there was very low church kind of worship there. And that was something which Wisconsin, I think, was characterized by even though starting in the 18, late 1850s 1860s, that Wisconsin became more congressionally conservative, and connected with Missouri and found that they had document agreement. The Wisconsin Center did not follow the Missouri path. As far as worship style was concerned, there was always more of a, an awareness in Missouri, of the Church year of hymns that went with this, and I'm more of the ceremonies, although I didn't notice that there were too many complaints, at least in public about that period of time. In general, and Wisconsin Senate, there were people who felt that Missouri was a little bit too interested in making sure so to speak, and, and you know, having more drama of things. But then when we were invited, Wisconsin was invited to participate with Missouri, in putting together Thank you 41 hymnal, then there are some statements about it, or John Brenner, the soon to be incident presidents that we don't care about all this liturgical directions and a lot of chanting, we go for very plain worship plainly spoken. And I would say then the service sermon was the center of the service, and the liturgy was sort of an add on. But now in Missouri, beginning already in the 1920s, there was a growing sense that their worship was just sloppy, and poorly prepared. In fact, it's really a humorous part of the paper, just to quote some of the things they said about the awful music and, you know, the people being unprepared. And the pastor's, I mean, it's just, it's a comedy of errors in a way. And so this group called the American Lutheran publicity bureau in Missouri, was a organization that was formed by people concerned about trying to make their church body more attractive to the non Germanic audience. And part of it was in response to World War One. And so really the impetus to try to make worship done in a more attractive way grew out of that group. So they became concerned about better hymns that had more Lutheran content, improving the order of service, going back to the historical roots, improving organ worship, and then getting some impetus from Catholic and Anglican groups that also were trying to improve the worship style. Now Wisconsin, especially in the 30s, and 40s, looked on that with a pretty high level of skepticism and discomfort. Am I still there? Yeah, I'm sorry. I think we had one little internet glitch there. But you're still there. So you said wells looked at those changes with some discomfort was the last we heard here? Yeah, well, Brenner, when he became president even told the members of the committee to be careful what they approved and what they like. And if memory serves me correctly, tlh was not uniformly accepted in the Wisconsin Senate as quickly as they had hoped. But even in their rubrics directions for worship that there had been in the book of hymns which had been used in Wisconsin previously. Now, as it turned out, the American publicity losing publicity bureau by the 1940s, was also moving a part of the Missouri Senate not only to improve their worship, practices, but also to establish fellowship with the ALC at the time, and in the minds of Wisconsin, people and conservatives in Missouri, the two are becoming connected to each other. And so I think that was the start of people, some people seeing liturgical interest as as a negative as a marker for other things that they were concerned about. Because the same people were there promoting that were promoting some serious things that brought up doctrinal concerns as well, basically, right. And so when the the counterforce to the American Lutheran publicity Bureau, was the confessional Lutheran publicity Bureau, which was another organization that organized in the Missouri Senate and independent group, but they were opposed to these changes and their their monthly magazine was a catalogue of everything they didn't Like, or didn't trust about the American Lutheran publicity Bureau side, many kinds of things, including their, their innovations in worship, and including other practices. And Wisconsin found itself more on the confessional Lutheran side. And increasingly, as they got into the 1950s, they saw these changes in worship as Roman just moving too much toward Roman, they thought you got to also become involved in Roman doctrine, as well as some other liturgical forms. Yeah, so kind of that the slippery slope argument is often applied to these areas, and definitely, yes, yeah. So I think one question that you had put out in your paper, and you didn't do, let's put it this way, you didn't try to come to a conclusion yourself by doing by doing research, you simply presented different answers to this question. But were Missouri's liturgical developments? Were they rooted in Lutheranism? Or just going back to the, to our history? Or do they really, truly say we could just connect the dots to Roman Catholicism or something else? Well, even in Missouri different people who were in favor of liturgical movement, still voiced some cautions, there was a pretty fair and balanced review, about 1959. In the Concordia, theological monthly magazine, by someone who said here are some of the real values have tried to bring about more liturgical not innovations, because often they would say, we're going back to the ancient church. And they and those were good, valid points. But there was also concern about that making the church more open to to ecumenism and to influences from the Catholic Church. And it seemed as though people from different citizens got together for the sake of encouraging each other. And I think this is still goes on today, that there are certain societies where liturgy is their main interest. And so you may have ELCA people today of varying varying stripes, if you will, and some of the reasoning some Wisconsinites to go together. And so we all agree on this interest in worship. But they're, they're out there outside of the boundaries of fellowship, and yet they, they may have more in common with each other on liturgical issues than they have within their own church body. So it was not that it was all the same voice being spoken in Missouri either. In fact, I would say, as I said, with a tale of two senators, it took me a while to figure out that what was really going on was a civil war within Missouri, and then we were drawn into it because we were in a static conference. So what was very, maybe there, just tell me if I'm going to illustrate what was maybe much more nuanced in the Missouri Senate was a little more kind of like a, almost like a single, monolithic approach, though, in Wisconsin was that did you find more uniformity in the Wisconsin Senate or was there still a strong liturgical movement in those earlier decades of the 20th century, there were individuals who wore the white gown and chanted, and, you know, brought into the service, other ancient practices here or there, long before Professor tipo de came, though, you know, the Continental Divide, if you want to call it that, he didn't really like that. That position being being called that, you know, but you know, I mentioned some of them. The part of the article called The One of the many My point was, is that there were many people, I shouldn't say maybe many as little too strong, but there were people in various places, including places that we might not think would be liturgical hubs, who always wore the gown and who chanted, and in spite of, you might think some of their congregations being a little slow to accept it. And Professor Tifa himself had experiences with this growing up. And when he came to the seminary, he made it acceptable to do that. And then there was a flood of people who came after that bit by bit who bought in, I know that Professor Tifa was on pasture, when he was at seminary was one of the slowest ones to move from the black robe to the to the white Elde, surprisingly, and so there always were voices of caution, don't go faster than your members are going. As it turned out, I gave this paper at a conference in Michigan in May of 2006. After that, part of it was done. I sent a copy to Professor TiVo. And he called me one day and talked nonstop for about an hour and gave me everything he thought about it, and didn't let me say too much of anything. And then he said, Well, that's enough. And then he you know, he he was uncomfortable being put in that kind of ascribe to that position. And yet he is I think the great Divide is a way to call it because after Hammond was acceptable, some people came out of seminary too excited to do liturgical changes that their congregations weren't ready for. And I think one of his most effective pieces of writing professor tifus was when he answered the question. That's to Catholic, which, in my generation, anything that you did in the congregation, even beyond worship, if you're one of your members that that's to Catholic, it was good, because that was a hard, a hard challenge to overcome. And he gave a lot of press people give a lot of good answers that objection fake. One of them was, it's not Catholic, it's Christian. It was here, these are some of these practices were here long before the church was divided that way, and, and it was it was a very well organized and persuasive presentation. That's not to say he won everybody over. And so the very last part of my paper includes some comments from pastors who are about my generation or little little bit older, who have never been one over. They don't like it. They feel that it's showing off. And I, there were a couple of people at the conference, I presented who felt that way too. And, and they wanted their voices heard. And fine. I just said, Hey, I'm just reporting what I found. And I think it's, and some things have changed since 2006, where there's more acceptance of a lot of liturgical improvements. And there's better contemporary Christian music than there was. And there seems to be more of a truce between churches and pastors. And I think there's also a little bit of niche marketing. So places. One, if there's five churches in town, one of them has a contemporary worship, the rest say, Well, okay, that's what they want to do. I don't want to go there. I'm going here, which may be the say the most, the most helpful way to look at that. Yeah, why don't any later on in your, you know, not to jump to the end already? Spoiler alert, right. But you said basically, once it was realized that, oh, the color that you wear doesn't determine the doctrine that you have in your heart and mind. Once people realized that, that wasn't the litmus test that was assumed. For for a while. I think that may be brought about some acceptance now in the last several decades for what this truly is. And I think both sides, as you laid out in your article realize this, they just were maybe a little more defensive. They said, this is all technically, audio for this is all appointed Christian freedom. But even to this day, though, you still see people, they say, Well, this is Adi Afra, then they had the word, but right, and then they really tried to sell you or convince you that there is still really only one right way to do this. And those voices seem to be kind of at a fever pitch, many decades ago, but now those are, in my subjective opinion. Those are kind of more the extreme ends now of the Saudi Afra. But I would say yeah, it seems like most people are somewhere in the middle on that, but that appropriate flexibility. But let's rewind if I can use that acronym stick term and and go back a little bit. What were some of the reasons though, why not just wells people, but why other Lutheran pastors and laity liked the black robe, which I don't like calling it a Geneva because that kind of is a insulting term saying you're a Calvinists trainers lovingly, and but automatically, it's it goes both ways. But why do people like wearing black? Once the symbolism there? Well, there were several reasons given I think one of them was practical, they would go way back to the days when certain writers when the rise of prayer, and others would be out. And, you know, it's pretty, pretty dirty life out there writing on those dusty pads, and they could stuff that black robe into into a saddle bag and pull it out. And you know, it wouldn't show the dirt is easily. I think there was whether it was entirely correctly placed humility or not. There was a sense that White was just too much showing off. And I think the the first real argument I ever heard in favor of wearing a black robe is that it covers up the person and you know, people aren't spending their time saying, Oh, he's really getting fat isn't a candy ever matches tie to just being covered up now? Oddly enough, now that we've come this way some people have come to the conclusion, hey, White can cover us up just as well as Black does. And some said I like white better because it's a joyful color. It's it's it's you know, black is sin and white is forgiveness and, and oddly enough, I had a black Geneve everybody on the black Geneva coming out of seminary But then my mother also bought me a white Geneva, which is really an unending you know, it's not liturgical, or or classroom. But our pastor had had that one of those now as a kid. And people would say, you look so much cooler, not like trendy, but like not as hot in the day and in church with the white robot. And actually, because of the material, the white robe was much less uncomfortable to wear, because it's really heavy. And and I think there was, you know, there's this long history of in Wisconsin, and we love Missouri, but we don't want to be them. And so it was a way to stand out. You know, at the end of the article, I cite something that Professor Schutze wrote about shibboleths, which is this little incident that comes up in Judges and you know, some of the Ephraimites couldn't pronounce the SH. And they got slaughtered for their trouble. But he defined shibboleths as those things, which really have no meaning in and of themselves. But they take on a meeting based on context. And you would not have thought that the black robe or the collar was as big a deal as people made of it. And it actually when you look at the history, there's less of a deal there than you realize, I appreciate the history I've learned about, about the liturgical garden and the collar. But it came to stand for things. And in the end, I think part of the story is that it's a sad example of being judgmental, about looking at things which are really are indifferent, but ascribing meaning to them that made people suspicious of each other. Yeah, and you get into that in some detail and could want to care to him. And going and more into that about how is how are those expectations of where this they're that, you know, we're black, they're white? How was that? How are those expectations culturally, and even Oh, officially formed in the Senate schools and in the classrooms. Now, by the time I got to the city schools with 1960s, this was, this was quite deeply entrenched. By that time, you know, when I was there, of course, I was in the prep school, but I saw college guys who left move from Missouri, and it seemed as though you know, white gowns, investments and chains and, and their loose, loose review of some doctrines seem to go hand in hand. And that's really I think, why my generation came to see becoming more of a Churchill as an indicator or, or a bellwether, let's say, of becoming more more more liberal. But Professor layman, who was the music guide, water company years, he said that a one year for the first time after he was at Northwestern, for several years, he had a quartet of, of brass company, a mighty fortress on Reformation Day. Now, that would hardly strike us as a provocative liturgical movement today. But he was immediately confronted by the former the former president of Northwestern saying, I don't come to church to be entertained. And I think there was this I remember old pastors, if you, if you would say to one of them, I enjoyed your sermon, they would jump on that and say, You're not supposed to enjoy it, did it do you any good? There was a kind of gruffness about the parts of the service you weren't supposed to be be having fun there. So when people in my age started bringing guitars into church, or wanting to have more contemporary music, this was just against that whole anti anti entertainment were. And then there was I talked about one of the sections how this was being shaped already when I was in college. And there was I mentioned, a classmate of mine, who would not ordinarily be accustomed to talking about these things. But he complained about he called them be ribbon dandies. And, you know, these the prance around and in their, in their chancel outfits and all this, because he was responding to a group of people that said, we should care more about the liturgy. And my roommate who did that I keep his name out of there. But he was the the quintessential model of somebody who would just say, why do we have to have all this crap in church, you know, and so that did kind of draw sides on the two sides of the student body at that time. And yet, there were those who said, Well, if we're really, if we want to bring God our best, are we doing that by being hostile? I think hostile is not too strong a word, certainly suspicious of liturgical innovations, but just how it plays out. I remember maybe I was two or three years out of school. This is about 1980. I went to assist that laying on of hands for a missionary. And there were four of us that were up there in the front. I was the only guy with the white robe. And one of the men who was a Synoptical A district official said, I would never trust the theology of any man wearing a white robe. And he smiled, but he wasn't kidding. And I knew it. And so there were these kinds of cultural reasons not not to do this. Yeah, that's hardly hardly a veiled comment there. And you give many examples more like that, where it was very, very, very blunt. And I want you, when you get survey respondents who want to say something, and are finally retired, that they've got nothing to lose, they really give you a lot of information. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, you know, I read this a couple this article a couple of times, and most recently to prepare for this. And those those comments still jump out at me, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. As a pastor, I hear all kinds of weird comments, too. So it people have opinions, and they like, like to share them. Right. But yeah, but tiny, you know, but I think that the shocking thing is, which should be recognized, in a way as an opinion, but it's being treated as fact. I think that's, that's the part that really makes it makes it shocking to, to read and see that. Yeah. You know, I going back to, to some earlier things, you know, and we're more comfortable in the 18th century, but I see this a very similar pattern play out in different church bodies, it's almost as if each generation has to do this. And I wonder if there's a frontier thesis in here somewhere, you know, as you're saying the circuit writers, it was more practical. I wouldn't, I don't want to say more evangelical, as if to say one side is less gospel focused than the other. But I think that was a theme that was brought up, right, that the simpler the service, the more receptive guests will be to it, I think was another argument that she said, Of course, I've heard counter arguments to that. The worship guests are there just to do worship the way you do it, and the liturgy is easy to follow along with eventually, right. So yeah, I think there's there's some kind of a frontier thesis there for sure. But there's also the historical trend of the primitive movement, right, the more simple it is, the more apostolic, it is the first century Christians, I think that's an argument that isn't just the last couple of decades, you see guys like Schmucker, and probably Kurtz in the General Synod same, pretty much the same thing, 100 years before, this was playing out in the Wisconsin Senate. So it's interesting to just notice one group doing this, but there's an historical pattern. Now this kind of thing. No, we would almost the culture was telling us we should pride ourselves on not being too fussy. And I remember going to it's a liturgical store in the block area called gas bards, at the time when it was becoming more and more acceptable to wear the album, the vestments, and so I was regularly preaching at a church in town, and I needed a set of vestments. And the pastor and I went, and we went shopping, you know, looking at all these these liturgical things, and who wouldn't it be cool if we could wear this. And it felt a little unbecoming of us to do that, like, like we cared too much about, about how we looked. Yeah, there's some there's something to be said, right for? Why are you doing all these things? Right? The whys of the deep, deeper question. Yeah. And I think another concern that came up is that we had the fear that the more the pastor would be concerned about liturgical editions and preparing them and having them done well, the more he might give second effort to his sermon. And without being unkind, I would say there have been church services that I went through that I felt that way that the service was carried more by the hymns in the choir. And the sermon was shorter. It was less textual, sometimes, it was almost more like an introduction to the reading, rather than really, the expounding the text. And in that sense, I'm probably kind of old school. Even, you know, I've come around back around to it at my age, I don't really care what's going on at church with the choir or all this to a great degree. I want to hear Pastor take apart a text and make that be the center. And one that was the concern that Well, you can't really do both right. Are you gonna be there for two and a half hours? I could sympathize with that concern. Yeah, I can see that too. Yeah. And you know, at this podcast, I try not to get into too many contemporary issues, but it's kind of hard not to write because it's it's a daily visible thing, or weekly, at least right in the life of the worship of the church. But it's good that these these things are considered I think, by anyone, whether it's a pastor or a layperson listening, you know, what, what's the purpose of, of all of this? Right? And I think that was some of the fundamental questions that had been asked in the past. What's the purpose of all this and and continue that need to be asked right by everyone involved, whether you're in whatever way you're participating, for sure. Now, now, another thought popped into my head too, going a little out of order. But I wonder, too, you know, in your tale of two synods, you you kind of late painted these two portraits of these two senators, right. And it's fairly true statement to say as a rule, the Wisconsin Senate was more rural. And Missouri Senate was kind of both rural, but they definitely had the urban setting to do you think that had anything to play into this at all, where the rural communities probably like, you know, the simpler was better, almost as they almost took pride in the simplicity of it all. I suppose, with the exception of Milwaukee, and maybe Minneapolis, I don't think Wisconsin had a strong presence in the cities. Whereas Missouri had many churches in Chicago. They were in Detroit, they had as many churches as we did in Milwaukee. And there was some appearance, at least some appearances of them on the East Coast, too. But I think I think it goes more to the self understanding of each of each Synod, you could find different issues in which the same self understanding come out. I've never known if this was an entirely true story or not. But there was constant pastors who felt that Missouri pastors paraded their their degrees and their advanced learning to the sense that Wisconsin was kind of a bunch of backwoods people. And the story was that Professor Meyer from our seminary gave most of the paper at a mixed pastors conference in Latin. Because and was he proud by doing that? Was he trying to show show them up that? We do have our scholars I don't know. But we used to talk sometimes about how it's not surprising to find the Missouri Synod church in a given town being at one of the major crossroads of the city and imposing building. They were members of Missouri churches that were well to do business, people who have had a bigger effect. And where is the Wisconsin Senate church? Well, you go away down this highway till it's two lanes, and you turn off onto a gravel road and go through a forest and there sits this little church. It is. It is modestly equipped, and almost impossible to find. And there was a poor sort of poor talk sense that Wisconsin people could have. Well, yeah, but you know, it's just about the word then. Yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, it's really hard to argue with that, too. Yeah. It goes down to the question, you know, why is there pride in that? To the point of, are we giving God our best, you know, so I think it's an ongoing question where there is no cookie cutter application for people where they're at. But I think these are all important things that need to be asked. And you know, what gives God the most glory, while at the same time? The proclamation of the gospel rate is the center stage. Yeah. Anything else you want to say? We kind of was a free flowing conversation. I think that that's always more enjoyable to listen to rather than stilted question answer kind of thing. But anything you want to make as a concluding remark, or anything that you want to say yet? Before we wrap up our interview today? I guess I'm wondering, is there anything you want to say about the shift anymore? how that how that took place? Or is there anything that you've noticed now, in the almost 20 years, it's been since this article was published, that you want to add to what you've already written? Well, I think I would say that the people that come out at the end of the paper, who have not been convinced, and All right, I've got I'm wearing a white collar now because that's what we do. But I've never really made myself comfortable with these changes. I remember some of them when they were when I was younger, as a pastor, and they were in the prime of their life. And they just did not believe this would ever catch on in Wisconsin. I can give you a personal story on that. In the Michigan district, there was a fall district wide teachers Conference, which would meet either in my area or the Detroit area or the Saginaw area, and one of the churches would host it, and my church hosted it at the time when the new Missouri Synod hymnal just come out, and we decided we were going to do the entire evening Vespers service with chanting for this audience of teachers. It took some work and I didn't see anybody leave because of that. And afterwards, a veteran pastor said, you know, Mark, you did a great job with this, but that's never going to fly in our Senate. We're never going to tolerate that kind of, of chanting in church. He didn't say it, but what he meant was, it's to Catholic. I think there is a change which I'm not entirely comfortable with that it used to be that we didn't want to be Catholic. And as they said, anytime someone said this to Catholic and killed it, we've become much more comfortable being kind of Catholic, at least, you know, Catholic, Lutheran Catholic or whatever the some of the times the term is used. And now we have more evangelicalism much more. And frankly, it's a shame in a way that we give our church that public name, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, when I consider what evangelicalism have done to that name, in terms of, you know, their political support, and their desire to become bigger and more powerful, and all that, that's a change, which is, is not entirely comfortable for me. But that generation that as they grew older, and saw the church getting more, let's say, white robes, without them, they held on to some of the old arguments that that they had always had, guys had spent a lot of time in the mission field, where they were concerned that they would be have a tiny little church meeting in a rented building, and had to somehow bring their, their presence into the larger community. They were bothered about looking as though they were to Catholic. And when we talk with Spanish speaking people, this is still something they say, Why should we leave the Catholic Church and come to you when we see the same kinds of service going on? And I think there are some legitimate concerns that tend to get kind of pushed aside by saying, well, that we've changed we've we've, we've come out of that. So the paper doesn't really resolve everything. I think it just says where we are now. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the job of the historian right to just give a report, really, without necessarily making conclusions or applications, but I think the job is to present the information so others can take it and, and ask those those necessary questions that where they're at. But you know, I think and somewhere in there in your article, there's one voice that maybe said, there's a there's a narrow Lutheran middle between being too Catholic or too I think sectarian Protestant, was the term which I guess you could swap out for evangelical today, you know, he's Lutheran is we do have not just our own biblical heritage of how we apply and hold on to the truths of Scripture, but we also have our own historical version of heritage to that actually always has been, in some ways, either to Catholic or neither to, to sectarian if you know, where to look for it. So maybe that's that's the only conclusion I'll make today. Is there, keep keep both both streams, intention and find the proper application? For it? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Good. Well, thank you, Mark, Dr. Brown, for your your time today. It's been a pleasure. And we talked a little bit about some of your upcoming projects, who you're working on. Do you care to talk about your history book project? Which? Yeah, I can. I can say a little bit about it. And in about 2014, a friend of mine asked if I would come and talk about what's happened since 1961. And he sends in his pastors conference. And many of the pastors in there are under 40, who were quite optimistic that these initial conversations between wells and ELS and Missouri Synod leaders, were going to rather quickly produce fruit, and we're all going to get back together again. And so my job was to kind of rain on their parade. And I talked about some of the history that's occurred since then. And then what the status quo is on some of the issues that separated us. And it was not anything I had to dig deep for me if you read the quarterly and look, you're following the news, you would know about these things. And so the same friend asked again, if I would come and do this, another, and another conference five, six years later and there after that we talked about do we do does the Senate want to have or does the publishing house want to have a volume two that we would call after the split. And there is more and more information that has been written all by historians out of Missouri out of the ELCA, that an author in Wisconsin could pick through it and put together a narrative that would make sense to people and in the Wisconsin Senate, and then there could be three or four additional, shorter chapters, and I hope, a more optimistic ending, that even if we're not in fellowship with Missouri again, which I don't believe is going to happen so quickly or so easily, that there's a much better relationship outside of fellowship, but in terms of respect and even admiration, that people in the water and the two church bodies have for each other. I mean, the mood, the mood at these gatherings when the LEA Senate leaders open it up to a pastor's from the area, the camaraderie of the getting to know each other and to see the Missouri and Wisconsin pastor up together, even becoming a little two man country band up there playing together, playing different instruments and singing. I thought we haven't seen something like that at least 80 years. And so if we can't be sisters, can we be helpful cousins? And so because I think when people would come to me and say, I enjoyed a tale of two cities, I would say, really, because it's doesn't have a very happy ending. And maybe this book could have a more hopeful ending, if nothing else. Yeah, thank you. There's definitely there's a information gap to be filled. And we're grateful that you're doing it. And yeah, I am very, very eager to see that when whenever it comes out whenever it's ready. So finally, thank you for your time today. Dr. Brown has been a pleasure. Just a brief announcements and housekeeping for us to the podcast. Today. Next month will be the last podcast of season three, if you want to call it that way. I've decided just to take the summers off to maintain a healthier, balanced and schedule and personal news for myself. And for my wife. We just announced we accepted our calls to serve at St. Matthew Lutheran Church and they're a childcare center in Marathon Wisconsin. So we will be leaving the great State of Alaska. We've been saying we say this acceptance with thankful joy. We're thankful for the many years we've had up here at the start of my full time ministry as a pastor to two out of three of my kids were born here and for all of them. This is their first memories of home so it's not easy to to leave or say goodbye. But we're also very joyful for the ministry opportunities, we will have an ST Matthews marathon. So next month as the final conclusion episode for the podcast for season three, we will likely be giving you guys a kind of a special kind of episode rather than an interview. I will give a little narrative history of some of the history of Lutheranism and Alaska and some things may surprise you. So with that, thank you for listening, and stay in touch with the Lutheran History podcast