My Grandfather's Church Lists To Port...

clipped from online.wsj.com Usually radio hosts have to offend sacred moral sensibilities to be thrown off the air. But when the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod canceled its popular, nationally syndicated radio program "Issues, Etc.," listeners were baffled. The Rev. Gerald Kieschnick, the synod's current president, has pushed church marketing over the Lutherans' historic confession of faith by repeatedly telling the laity, "This is not your grandfather's church." This isn't the first time the Missouri Synod has been divided between confessional Lutherans and those enamored with the latest religious fads. In the 1970s, alert confessional laity thwarted a top-down imposition of chic liberal theology in the church's seminaries. As synod bureaucrats support congregations that hide their Lutheran identity while terminating the strong witness of "Issues, Etc.," members of the denomination are asking if they can have their grandfather's church back.