Preus, Jacob Aall Ottesen, Jr. (“Jake”)

(b. 8 January 1920 in St. Paul, Minnesota; d. 13 August 1994 in Burnsville, Minnesota), church leader who guided the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod through the most difficult crisis of its history.

Preus was the first of two surviving children born to Ideila Haugen Preus, a homemaker, and Jacob (“Jake”) A. O. Preus, a former Minnesota governor and state insurance commissioner. Preus was baptized into the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America, the successor to the Norwegian Synod founded by his great-grandfather. The synod had close ties to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), which was one of the more orthodox Lutheran church bodies in America. His father retired from Minnesota politics in the mid-1920s and moved the family from Minneapolis to Highland Park, Illinois, where he engaged in the insurance business. There they worshiped in a Missouri Synod congregation, before eventually attending an orthodox church body set apart from the Norwegian Lutheran Church.

Preus remained a nominal member of the LCMS until he matriculated at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa, in 1937. There they worshiped in an LCMS congregation, where Preus became a member by confirmation. His father’s alma mater, Luther College, was founded and led by family members, including an uncle, O. J. H. Preus, who was president during Preus’s undergraduate years. Preus studied classics and history, graduating magna cum laude in 1941. There he met his future wife, Delpha Holleque. He attended Luther Seminary in St. Paul with a military deferment from 1941 until graduation in 1945 and came under the influence of another uncle, the theology professor Herman Preus. A staunch conservative reputed to be a “closet Missourian,” the uncle developed in both Jack (as Preus was known throughout his life) and his brother, Robert, a strict orthodox Lutheran perspective.

With this varied background, Preus referred to himself as having no synodical identity. Debating with others helped him establish his own theological perspective. Preus found himself uncomfortable with the Norwegian Lutheran Church as compared with the Missouri Synod of his youth. The Norwegian Lutheran Church embraced two barely reconciled forms of the doctrine of election (the act of being chosen by God for salvation). Herman Preus emphasized God’s electing will, a cause Jack Preus pushed in public debates with the systematic theologian George Aus, who emphasized the role of human reason and will in coming to faith.

Preus’s seminary experience did not make him a “Missourian,” but it shaped his conservative outlook. His dispute with Aus led Preus to write a public letter after graduation accusing the seminary of false teaching. Eventually, he and his brother Robert joined the confessionally more “pure” Little Norwegian Synod. There he remained for more than a decade, raising a family, finishing his graduate work at the University of Minnesota (where he earned his Ph.D. in 1951), and serving the synod as pastor and teacher at Bethany College and Seminary in Mankato, Minnesota. Together the restive brothers pushed to suspend fellowship with the doctrinally “lax” Missouri Synod, even as they sought employment in one or another of the Missouri Synod’s Concordia seminaries. Jack became professor of New Testament studies at Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, developing a reputation as a “politician” and eventually joined the school’s administration, becoming president in 1962. By then he had become known as “the politician brother.”

By 1963 Preus was taking critical note of divisions in the synod over scriptural authority. Moderate theologians increasingly criticized the synod’s “Brief Statement,” which embraced verbal inspiration and inerrancy. In published remarks Preus proposed a solution: complete surrender to Scripture, a willingness to forgive, and shunning of all politicking. Four years later Preus joined the ad hoc United Planning Council, along with a campaign to replace the synod president Oliver Harms with a conservative leader. By the time of the next convention in March 1969, Preus was a candidate for the job, and, in contrast to his earlier statements, he pursued the office with ardent politicking. The council appealed directly to delegates, though this was contrary to established church procedure. Preus won on the third ballot.

Over the next two years (the convention met biennially), Preus purged moderate leaders and began investigating “liberalism” at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. “That godless men take [Scripture away] from us is terrifying,” he observed, “but that theologians and pastors should deprive the church of the Scripture by destructive criticism is even more unspeakable.” A moderate party led by the Concordia president John H. Tietjen challenged the conservatives in the “Battle of New Orleans” at the 1973 convention. Preus, though by now labeled a parvenu and an interloper, was reelected on the first ballot, 606 to 451, maintaining a three-to-two advantage in delegate support.

Following the convention Preus suspended Tietjen in January 1974. The seminary students went on strike, and the Concordia faculty voted to establish a seminary in exile called Seminex. Thus, they left the campus to the conservatives, who rebuilt its program, faculty, and student body. Leaders at the 1975 convention instructed Preus to dismiss district presidents who ordained Seminex graduates, and four were eventually removed. By February 1976 disheartened moderates withdrew, forming the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, with some 100,000 members in 200 congregations. Preus was elected to a third term at Dallas in 1977, by then referring to the recent schism as “sad and unfortunate, certainly—but minimal compared to dire predictions.”

Preus retired in 1981 but remained active on synod committees and as a scholar. A devoted husband and father of eight, Preus spent his retirement years in the company of his children. He developed heart problems in his later years and died laughing at one of his own jokes. Forty-eight family members followed the casket into the Concordia Seminary Chapel singing the beloved Norwegian Lutheran hymn “Behold a Host Arrayed in White,” with its assuring line, “These are the saints who kept God’s Word.” Preus is buried at Concordia Cemetery in St. Louis.

On several occasions, Preus said that he regretted the party spirit and power plays “on both sides,” but he never revised his own doctrinal position. Although the abuse of scriptural authority may have been a real issue for him, hindsight suggested that power politics marred its resolution. Opponents dismissed him as an outsider who never understood the Missouri Synod and criticized his legacy of authoritarian fundamentalism. Supporters saw him as a true “Missourian” who saved a conservative synod from liberals by establishing the peace and unity necessary for the church’s mission. Like his father, Preus was a consummate politician not overawed by clergy in a church that sought a political solution to its problems.

For a study of Preus’s years as synod president, see James E. Adams, Preus of Missouri and the Great Lutheran Civil War (1977). The Lutherans of North America (1980) provides an account of the church conflict. Obituaries are in the Lutheran and the Lutheran Witness (both Oct. 1994), as well as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (15 Aug. 1994) and Christian Century (24 Aug. 1994).

Robert F. Scholz