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Most of the other U.S. Lutheran groups, loosely allied in the NATIONAL LUTHERAN COUNCIL, agree with these points in principle, but with varying degrees of seriousness. Their more flexible attitude has made many mergers possible. The proliferation of Lutheran churches and synods that existed at the turn of the century has been steadily reduced by mergers until today there are only 17 separate church bodies. Three synods joined in 1918 to form Franklin Clark Fry's UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH, the largest and most theologically relaxed group in U.S. Lutheranism. But even the so-called liberal Lutherans split more theological hairs than most U.S. Protestants; the famed trial of three Wisconsin pastors for heresy (TIME, Aug. 8, 1955 et seq.) took place in Fry's United Lutheran Church. Two more mergers are currently working their way through the labyrinthine ways of ecclesiastical amalgamation. In 1961, three groups will unite to form THE AMERICAN LUTHERAN CHURCH (known in Lutheran circles as TALC). Another merger, still in the planning stage, will join Fry's U.L.C.A. with Augustana Lutheran, Suomi Synod and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Open to Insights. Though the rock-bound Missouri Synod stands aloof from all mergers, it has felt the shocks of change. Main reason: the synod's own growth. It started with an expedition of 665 Lutherans, mostly from Saxony, who sailed from Bremerhaven in 1838 to escape the laxity of the European state churches; today it has a baptized membership of more than 2,000,000. The synod's intellectual center—St. Louis' Concordia Seminary—rates as one of the top divinity schools in the world. The synod's salesmanship is traditionally aggressive. Its Lutheran Hour radio program is the best known denominational broadcast on the air, and its TV program. This Is The Life, is the biggest-budget religious telecast in the U.S.
With such growth, ferment is inevitable. Says Historian Pelikan, himself a Missouri Synod Lutheran: "There is a growing restlessness with the literal attitude toward the Bible. This comes from the science-minded laity who are unwilling to ignore the meaning of modern science and cosmology. Then too, the clergy is reading all sorts of things and finding the authors don't have horns. Thus the predictability of the Missouri Synod position has gone down considerably. If Lutheranism is what it claims to be—open to the insights of both the fathers and the brethren—then this is a healthy shift."