The heritage of the ULCA/LCA (of which I was once a member) not only includes Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799-1873) but also Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Porterfield_Krauth
Pretty different, isn’t he? And I’m speaking as one who was mentored by pastors who graduated from the OLD Philadelphia Seminary (before it too became radical/liberal), of which Krauth was an early leader. Krauth’s influence eclipsed that of Schmucker in the ULCA/LCA, which after all held to the Augsburg Confession and the doctrine of the Real Presence, and other Lutheran touchstones that Schmucker denied, and ended up with an Orthodox-inflenced liturgy.
The plain fact is that faithful, conservative Lutherans from every church body that formed the ELCA blame the others for the eventual sorry fall of American Lutheranism. ALC people blame the LCA “Eastern establishment”, LCA people blame those “soft Minnesota liberal pietists” of the ALC, and nearly everybody blames Seminex!!!!
With much more justification, many people blame that organizing committee for the ELCA back in the late 1980s, infiltrated by stealth gaysbian activists like Barbara Lundblad, as well as by the quota and “inclusive language” crowds.
Hopefully, those of us who have gone on to become Orthodox or Roman Catholic have moved beyond the blame game. (That’s part of spiritual growth, after all.) We see that nearly ALL American and European Protestantism has experienced the same cultural, theological, and spiritual rot as the ELCA. Therefore, there is something much deeper going on, which the Lutheran “blame game” cannot address.
Fixed it.
Otherwise, perfect! The key issue of UAC vs. Altered is the Real Presence.
You are quite correct in regard to Charles Porterfield Krauth. I have his magnum opus, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, and have read it closely cover to cover. He was a faithful and fine theologian and pastor. However, that is beside the point. When the General Synod (the heritage of Schmucker) and the General Council (the heritage of Krauth) were joined (after the death of both), what communion did error have with truth? In other words, why did confession of truth wed itself to faulty and heretical confession? What always happens when a little leaven is added to the lump? That is why I didn’t mention Krauth or any others. Schmucker’s theology is the leaven, the leaven of false doctrine. It is the same leaven - he was NOT Lutheran! - that has leavened all the mainline protestant groups in the U.S.A.
Catholicism and Orthodoxy suffer cultural rot as well; and they have their own kind of leaven ... and they do have it! As an aside I went to a function (celebrity speaker) at a local Catholic parish a few weeks ago. Hundreds of people silently (and thus approvingly) tolerated the rot he spewed and took in the leaven he delved out. And the priest just smiled like an idiot and let it go on.
There is, perhaps, something even deeper than you realize going on here!
And if you want to talk about the non-denominational and charismatic groups, well, they simply threw out the whole lump and started anew ... but not until adding their own leaven.
The truth is that wherever Christ builds His church, Antichrist always grabs space in the pews, and then in time some pulpits, and then, when he is able, altars as well. It was no different in the Old Testament church, just read the prophets. And if you think it is different in the time of the New Testament, then you are not reading what is right in front of you in the text of it.
Swimming the Tiber or the Bosphorus is no protection.