The Good New: Religion, church and doctrine were all important at Concordia Teachers College) CTC in the late 1940”s. We were never to forget that we were being trained to serve as “ministers of religion” serving as Commissioned Teachers of the Church. The big thing was Lutheran doctrine (specifically The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod version). We knew that in our oath of office we had to swear faithfulness to Lutheran doctrine as explained in the creeds found in The Book of Concord.
We took an overview course on the Bible and studied selective books of the Bible in courses devoted exclusively to the various individual books. We had a course in Church History and another on The Lutheran Church in America. All courses (not just those in religion) were taught by duly authorized ministers of the church.
Worship was deemed important. Even at the college level daily attendance at morning chapel services was compulsory and attendance checks were taken. Attendance at worship every Sunday was assumed to be the practice of us all.
I am grateful that I really knew the official teachings of the church. I am glad that worship attendance was stressed. I appreciated the efforts of those in the church who came before me.
The bad news: In retrospect I think my religious training at CTC was very inadequate in many respects. The teaching methods were most unfortunate. Especially our courses in Christina doctrine were all taught in very rote fashion. We learned “A Summary of Christian Doctrine” from a book taught by the book’s author Doc Koehler. He was kind and paternalistic. He called male students “sonny” and women students “honey”. He told us when to pick up our pencils and exactly which phrases in the text to underline, some them twice and he came to our desks to make sure we had exactly followed directions. Of course, there was no discussion. He told us exactly what “the word of God” was re each matter and our duty was to know it, believe it and correctly state it at exam time.
In retrospect I find it amazing that while the religious world of the day was facing the rise of “the historical-critical” approach to Biblical interpretation I never once heard that term in any of my courses. The possibility of ecumenism was never broached. Our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church were seen primarily as purveyors of “false doctrine”. Discussion in class was, in my memory, never substantive and the big argument was whether “engagement between a man and a woman” was “tantamount to marriage.”
Especially disturbing to me now (though I admit it did not bother me at the time) was our introduction to the creeds other than The Apostles Creed and The Nicene Creed. We were instructed to read the creeds according to a schedule and to then write a summary of the key teachings expressed in that creed and “hand that in”. It was soon obvious that no one ever read our summaries. To prove this some of my colleagues wrote the appropriate doctrine name in the title and then copied sports reports from the newspaper into the body of their “essay’. This was done more than once and no student was ever “caught”.
Daily chapel worship fell far short of its potential. It was always led by staff (never by students). The “order of worship” and liturgy never varied. I remember absolutely not one single service in which silence was called for; no service in which prayers or prayer requests from those assembled were asked for; no special music, only the wonderful organ music. The tragedy is so that so many opportunities were missed.
In summary: I am grateful that I really learned the teachings of the Church. I am grateful that worship was just a normal, yet essential part of life. I learned well to appreciate the great choral music and hymns of the Lutheran tradition. Even though he taught by rote I knew that Doc Koehler really cared about his students and he had a special interest in me as he had taught my father 20 years earlier. And he knew that the method he used for my father was also the absolutely best for me.
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