The Protes’tant Controversy: Long-Lasting Reverberations of the Beitz Paper in the Dakota-Montana District

Abstract

This work explores how the Beitz conference paper—delivered in Schofield, Wisconsin in 1926— ultimately affected the Dakota-Montana District of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod decades later. The first half of the paper gives an overview of the Protes’tant controversy as it affected congregations in Wisconsin, as well as Northwestern College and Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. The second half of the paper looks into how the Protes’tant controversy made its way to the Dakota-Montana District. A congregation and pastor from White, South Dakota departed the Wisconsin Synod in the 1930s, in part because of Protes’tant leanings. It took nearly two decades before the controversy flared up again in Akaska, South Dakota in 1950. Most recently, in 1960, the congregation in Livingston, Montana remained with the synod despite its pastor departing for the Protes’tant Conference. For a time—in the Dakota-Montana District and elsewhere—it seemed that the Protes’tant controversy would surface every ten to fifteen years. In conclusion, the author wonders if the cycle has been broken or simply slowed.