Henry L. Lieske Research Collection

The Rev. Henry Louis Lieske, a retired Lutheran pastor of moderate theological views, spent his career in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LC-MS). Born on October 21, 1911, he was the son of Henry Friedrich Wilhelm (1875-1920) and Clara Margaretha Blaesing Lieske (1878-1959) of Henderson, Minnesota. He had three siblings: Theodore Julius (1906-1977), Elizabeth Anna (1914-1995), and Walter Bernhard George (1918-1945). He attended public and parochial schools before enrolling in 1925 at Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, a combination four-year high school and two-year junior college. At Concordia, Lieske followed the preministerial training course of the Missouri Synod. From 1931 to 1935, Lieske attended Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, where he was active in the Student Missionary Society and the Lutheran City Mission of St. Louis.

After graduating from Concordia Seminary, Lieske served in Kendalville, Indiana as secretary and assistant to Dr. Martin F. Kretzmann (1878-1963), Secretary of the LC-MS. In addition to his office duties, Lieske assisted in the local Lutheran parish by preaching and teaching Sunday School. He also worked with the youth organization known as the Walther League and its Camp Limberlost.

From 1938 to 1943, Lieske served as pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Warsaw, Indiana and Calvary Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Indiana, two mission congregations of the Central District of the LC-MS. In addition to his pastorate in Plymouth, Lieske served as pastor to Lutheran students at Culver Military Academy at Culver, Indiana. When a student from the academy, and his parents from Denver, members of the American Lutheran Church, attended services at Calvary, and also wished to commune, Lieske was forced to start reexamining the Missouri Synod theological position on “close” Communion in which he had been schooled.

While serving as the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Elyria, Ohio, from 1943 to 1955, Lieske witnessed the developing conflict within LC-MS. In 1945, a document known as “A Statement,” signed by forty-four moderate Lutheran pastors, prompted Lieske, initially opposed to the document, to study in a new light the New Testament and the writings of the sixteenth-century Lutheran reformers. He began to question the brand of inerrancy of Holy Scripture which he had been taught, “sinful unionism,” creation vs. evolution, and other points of controversy then divided moderates from conservatives within the Missouri Synod.

Lieske’s interest in the area of pastoral care and his contact with a variety of clerical viewpoints during his Ohio pastorate helped him to articulate his position as a moderate church man within the Missouri Church. In the early 1950s, he attended a week-long seminar conducted by Chaplain Granger E. Westberg (1913-1999) in a hospital setting in Chicago on counseling, mental health, psychosomatic illnesses, and related subjects. Subsequently, Lieske enrolled in courses in pastoral counseling at Oberlin College Graduate School of Theology in Oberlin, Ohio and contributed to a workshop program on pastoral counseling sponsored by the Central District of the LC-MS. Lieske developed a deep appreciation for the approach employed by the psychiatrists and counselors in their fields, with its emphasis on total acceptance of the individual “where he or she is at” quite apart from approval of their actions or ideas. It seemed to Lieske that was an approach very akin to that of Jesus Christ. Transferring the approach to the ecclesiastical sphere, he came gradually to adopt theological “slants” that were in some areas at variance with his own immediate tradition, but which were, he believed, directly descendent from the New Testament writers, Luther, and the Reformation reformers. Lieske’s attendance at numerous pastoral conferences in the Cleveland area brought him into contact with the (in Lieske’s words) “conservative” pastors from the Greater Cleveland area, the “moderate” clergy of Lorain County, and clergy of other Protestant denominations meeting in the Elyria Ministerial Association.

Lieske received a call in 1955 to start the St. Timothy Lutheran Church in east Portland, Oregon, at Southeast 145th and Powell. During his pastorate, Lieske served on the Board of Control (later called the Board of Regents) of Concordia College (1958-67), the Board of Social Welfare of the Northwest District of the LC-MS, and on a committee of the Lutheran Welfare Association of Oregon. His efforts, along with those of others, resulted in the inclusion of the LC-MS in the work of the association, which was later named the Lutheran Family Service of Oregon.

Lieske’s call to Burnsville, Minnesota, in 1967 coincided with the heightening of the conflict in the LC-MS. According to Lieske, the LC-MS was beginning to narrow down its confessional basis, as spelled out in the Synod’s constitution, and increasingly resorted to “rules and regulations” as a means of enjoining doctrinal consensus. Lieske’s belief in retaining the Synod’s confessional basis was one sign of his identification with the moderate movement in Missouri. At Burnsville Rev. Lieske worked hard to encourage his congregation to study both sides of the growing conflict.

In 1976, Rev. Lieske retired from active parish ministry and moved to Golden Valley, Minnesota. There, he became a member of Christ Memorial Church in Plymouth, an LC-MS congregation that had joined the newly formed Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). Lieske occasionally preached and conducted services, taught Bible classes, conducted pastoral visits, and served on the congregational refugee-resettlement committee. In 1980, Prairie Lutheran Congregation of Eden Prairie asked that Lieske serve as its Interim Pastor. In addition to his occasional pastoral duties, Lieske over many years enjoyed collecting items relating to American postal history. His historical interest and archival bent, along with his affection for the Lutheran tradition, finally led him in the late 1970s to assemble a research collection documenting the moderate movement within the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

Henry Lieske married Marguerite Virginia Ida Jones (1916-1994) on June 7, 1939. They had six children: Jeanne, Jay Henry (1941-2021), Joy Elaine (1943-2017), Janice Marguerite (1947-1983), Jacquelyn, and Judy.

Rev. Lieske died on September 13, 2002 in Edina, Minnesota.

The Roots and Unfolding of the Moderate Viewpoint in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod by Henry Lieske

1847-1945: Sprinkled in with the largely conservative emphases of earlier Missouri are numerous evangelical, moderate, and more open statements and articles by eminent Missouri leaders which (along with emphases of Luther and the Reformation) provided the ideological base for the moderate “slant” within the LC-MS.

1931-45: Editors of The American Lutheran (Paul Lindemann, Adolf F. Meyer) and contributing editors stimulated the review of numerous positions and practices of the LC-MS, while at the same time retaining and promoting the central emphases of the Reformation heritage.

1945: Forty-four moderate-leaning pastors and professors issue a document entitled “A Statement,” denouncing the “narrow legalism” of the Missouri Synod, further detailing its seminal concepts in a booklet of essays, “Speaking the Truth In Love.”

1950-69: The Commission of Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) puts out numerous study documents and position papers which more and more reflect the moderate viewpoint.

1945-69: Martin Scharlemann presents an essay on “The Inerrancy of Scripture” for discussion purposes with fellow faculty members at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, “defending the paradox that the book of God’s truth contains errors.” The 1962 convention of Synod revolved around this and related issues. Scharlemann also stimulated widespread rethinking of other LC-MS positions.

1945-69: On the other hand, the spreading of such emphases aroused widespread and fierce opposition to them among individuals and groups, resulting in considerable ferment within the church body.

1959, 1962, 1973: In 1959, “The Brief Statement,” authored by Franz Pieper in 1932, which embodied several key ultra-conservative emphases, was made binding by synodical resolution as part of the LC-MS confessional basis. This action was rescinded in 1962; however, it was reenacted in 1973.

1955-69: All of the above stimulated widespread response by moderates in letters, circulars, and other publications. Moderate emphases appeared with increasing frequency in the literature and publications of the Synod itself.

1950-70: The Synod gradually ceased to insist that the Scriptures demanded that women could not vote or hold certain offices in congregations.

1965: The Synod approached the other Lutheran church bodies about jointly publishing a common Lutheran hymnal.

The LC-MS approves participation in the new “Lutheran Council of the U.S.A. (LCUSA),” a cooperative agency of the ALC, LCA, and LC-MS.

The LC-MS adopts the “Mission Affirmations” at its triennial convention, which embodies and applies the concepts emphasized by “A Statement” of 1945 and by the moderate movement in Missouri.

For a detailed “Chronology of the Conflict within the LCMS” for the years 1969 to 1987, during which the conflict reached its crisis, see the Appendix to this document.