Rebuttal to Buegler's 'Enter the Confessionals'

By: Rev. Jack Cascione
(This article is responding to the previous news release titled "Jesus First" Blames Deceased Robert Preus For Synod's Problems")

This rebuttal is offered by Dr. Robert Preus's Director of Public Relations, who served under him from 1978 to 1981.

It is safer to condemn the dead than the living.  Reverend. David Buegler follows the path of safety and names Robert Preus, who appears sufficiently dead after seven years, as the head of a movement that has caused all the division in the Synod.

Buegler offers a strange mix of truth, half-truth, false assumptions, and distortions about Robert Preus and the Confessional Movement.  Having known Buegler since 1987, it should be stated that he believes what he is telling is the truth.  I have never known him to intentionally deceive anyone, a rare quality in a District President.

When I confronted him about participating in procession with ELCA clergy in a worship service, after he was elected as Ohio District President in 1988, he immediately apologized.  To my knowledge he never repeated that activity. He is honest, theologically conservative, a gentleman, and a good preacher.  He is also believes what other District Presidents tell him.

Buegler loves the parish.  He resigned as Ohio District President in 1994 and became associate pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Westlake Ohio. He defends the teachings of Walther's "Church and Ministry."  However, while serving on the Board of Regents at Fort Wayne he was not effective in placing "pro-Walther" professors on the faculty or in positions of leadership.  He was not able to get the job done.

Buegler should be reminded that liberals were called "liberals" because they did not agree with the inerrancy of Scripture.  All Lutheran's are supposed to be "confessional."  Terms such as "conservative," "confessional," "orthodox," "ultra-confessional," or "ultra-conservative" are meaningless redundancies if the pastor agrees with no more or no less than Article II of the LCMS Constitution.

Buegler's category that a "confessional" is "a step beyond conservative" implies that being a "confessional" is wrong, but by careful examination, being a "conservative" at best, is a nebulous term.  Buegler should call sin what it is.  If "confessional" is wrong, it is "a step beyond Lutheran" not a meaningless step beyond "conservative"

Yes, the hyper-euro-Lutherans are high-church, as are the Catholics and most European Lutherans.  Buegler forgets that most clergy who are "high-church" are also quite liberal.  What Buegler means is that he, himself, is rather low-church.  This writer is happy with TLH pages 5 and 15, which have now become high church in the LCMS.  In other words, Buegler's love of low-church is not a virtue and proves absolutely nothing.

Buegler's associating Robert Preus with "high" liturgics is absurd.  Robert Preus never wore a collar in his life (like Buegler does) because he didn't want to look Catholic.  He liked preaching in a black Geneva and could never get his stole straight when was compelled to wear one.

The truth is that Robert Preus would only tolerate the lovers of "smells and bells" if they agreed to the Lutheran Confessions.  He relayed to me his difficulty in walking down a busy street in Chicago with Dr. Arthur Carl Piepkorn while people kept calling Piepkorn "Father."  Preus said the well-known liberal, high-church Piepkorn loved the attention his clerical collar drew.

If anything the hyper-euro-Lutherans hi-jacked the so-called 'confessional movement.'  Buegler is unable to make this distinction.

The hyper-euro's do not support Walther and despise congregational governance and voter supremacy.  They believe that ordination is a sacrament, the pastor is above or at least "equal to" the congregation, and the congregation is an extension of the pastoral office.  Buegler hints that their problems are anti-Walther and anti-Luther, but doesn't go far enough. We only wish that he had the courage to stand up for Walther's position when he really could have done something while on the Board at Fort Wayne.

Buegler claims that Robert Preus was not in favor of evangelism even though Preus, at his death, was the world's foremost authority on Justification and the inerrancy of Scripture.  Robert Preus loved evangelism.  The question is: Does Buegler understand that Martin Luther was the greatest evangelist
in the last 1000 years?

Buegler claims Preus was against "Church Growth principles."  Preus was a clear thinker.  If there is a God, if Buegler is certain of his hope of salvation, I challenge him to name one Church Growth principle that is not in the Bible or the Lutheran Confessions.  Buegler simply raises meaningless pop jargon to the test of LCMS constitutional orthodoxy.  This sounds like a former DP suffering from the occupational hazard of confusing the "plethora of programs" with his faith.

Robert Preus defended voters' assemblies; made sure that the Practical Department taught Fritz's "Pastoral Theology," opposed ordination as a sacrament, and made "Justification" not "Christology" the foremost doctrine of the Seminary.  Robert Preus's name is the only name of any faculty member
from either Seminary on the back of the 1995 edition of C. F. W. Walther's "Pastoral Theology."  His endorsement is right above my own endorsement.

The question is whether Buegler can distinguish between "Lutheran," "Church Growth,' and "Baptist."

Buegler writes for "Jesus First," but neither "Jesus First" nor the COP supported 7-17A, the resolution endorsing Walther's "Church and Ministry" as the official position of the Synod at the 2001 LCMS Convention.  Instead, "Jesus First" supported Dr. Waldo Werning's lies about the Trinity, in
Werning's book, "Health and Healing For the LCMS."  "Jesus First," rejects the doctrine of God.

Buegler forgets that Walther was opposed to woman suffrage, which means Buegler believes that Walther, the founder of the Synod was a  "confessional," "a step beyond conservative" which nullifies Buegler's entire argument.  Evidently there haven't been any true Lutherans in the Synod till we arrived at the current COP.  Buegler keeps proving that he was way over his head while serving on the Board at Fort Wayne and could never figure out what to do about the slide to sacerdotalism.

We should remind Buegler that it is not only the hyper-euro-Lutherans who are opposed to voter supremacy in the congregation.  "Jesus First" is a vocal advocate of Dr. Norbert Oesch, his Pastoral Leadership Institute, Leadership Training, and the Church Growth Movement.  Oesch promotes
congregational efficiency by promoting a Board of Directors and pastoral CEO's governing congregations.  In PLI congregations, neither men nor women get a real vote.  They are thrown a bone of annual or biannual meetings while the Board runs the congregation.  It is wonderful to posture about woman suffrage while "Jesus First" seeks to disenfranchise LCMS voters' assemblies.

Just four hours before he died Preus, was quite excited about going back to the Fort Wayne faculty.  There were a number of things he wanted to address after the mess Ralph Bohlmann had made of the Synod and the Seminary.

Buegler's long established understanding of "close communion" (before President A. L. Barry) means that we all gave lip service to "close communion" but everyone does what he wants and Buegler knows it.

I was called into the Ohio District President's Office in 1985 because I refused to serve Communion to members of the ALC and LCA.  I will not serve members of the ELCA while I know other congregations do serve them.

Buegler writes: "Clergy in this movement were marked by wearing clerical collars in most public settings."  This writer has yet to see Dr. John Teitjen, Dr. David Benke, Dr. Oswald Hoffmann without their collars.  Are we to assume they are all part of "this movement?"

Watch out Rev. Buegler: you never know why a Lutheran pastor is wearing a collar.  Its not collars, its sacerdotalism that is the problem.  Believe it or not, there are some sacerdotalists who don't wear collars.

Private confession and absolution is an excellent practice but to require this practice, or require the Common Cup, or require absolute obedience to the pastor, or claim that only the pastor can absolve sins, or claim that only the pastor can evangelize, are the real problems.  Why didn't Buegler blow the lid off of all this nonsense while he was on the Board at Fort Wayne?  Instead, he waits seven years after Robert Preus's death to help confuse lay people.

There were many lies told to Robert Preus and about Robert Preus.  Now Buegler blames Robert Preus because Ralph Bohlmann worked to have Preus fired in 1989.  When Robert Preus was fired in 1989, the Synod was told the Board wanted to remove him because he was 65.  They lied.  The Synod argued
this point to the Board of Adjudication.  In 1992 Bohlmann recommended that the Convention replace the Board of Adjudication with Dispute Resolution, the greatest confusion the Synod has every seen.

But now Buegler tells the truth.  They removed Preus because he was the head of a movement.  What movement?  It certainly was not the movement that Buegler writes about.  Buegler never could sort out the players.  Preus was the head of a movement to maintain Article II of the LCMS Constitution.

Buegler still believes the lies that other District Presidents and Ralph Bohlmann told him about Robert Preus.  It was Robert Preus who kept the Seminary Faculty from serving the Lord's Supper in the Seminary Chapel.  It was Robert Preus who questioned the sexual orientation of "chancel prancers"
as he called them.

It would be on Preus's death bed that those entering chapel at Fort Wayne or Saint Louis would dip their hand in baptismal-font water, cross themselves, and genuflect before they sat down in the pew, could graduate or teach at that Seminary.

The battle got nasty when the Board at Fort Wayne and Ralph Bohlmann lied about the reasons Robert Preus was fired.  Buegler still isn't telling that Bohlmann and the Board were angered when Preus removed two faculty members who promoted woman ordination.  When the Synod was sued, the LCMS Board of Directors gave Dr. Alvin Schmidt $40,000.00 and fired Robert Preus.

Instead of blaming Robert Preus, Buegler should put the blame on the most incompetent collection of District Presidents the LCMS had ever seen. Bureaucrats don't make Christians.  The LCMS elected its first full-time District President in Michigan in 1961.  Before that time they had to suffer as full-time parish pastors.

Instead of blaming a man who has been dead for seven years for the Synod's problems, why doesn't Buegler speak about the carnage, destruction, and waste the COP is causing in the LCMS.  In 2000, the LCMS districts took in $127,554,235 and they sent $25,312,219 to the Synod. (2002 Lutheran Annual
page 462).  The Synod is cutting its budget and is no longer funding the colleges or seminaries so the COP can fund its programs, staff, and money-sucking, bloated bureaucracies.

The more the COP spends the more the LCMS shrinks.

Did Buegler ever stand up in a meeting of the COP and say, "You men are breaking the Synod?"  No, it is much safer to blame a dead man.  It is much safer to write in "Jesus First" the house organ for the COP.

September 7, 2002