Life and Work
Tietjen was born in New York City as a son of German immigrants, and he attended Stuyvesant High School, Concordia Collegiate Institute (now Concordia College, Bronxville), and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He also earned master's and doctorate degrees at Union Theological Seminary in New York. After being ordained in the LCMS in 1953, Tietjen rose through the Synod ranks and eventually was chosen as president of its largest seminary, Concordia Seminary, in 1969.
While president of Concordia Seminary, Tietjen and many of the Concordia faculty members faced opposition from a new, more conservative administration of the LCMS. The faculty's use of Historical-Critical Method for biblical interpretation was cast by conservatives as being at odds with the historic theological position of the LCMS. Tietjen was accused of allowing the teaching of false doctrine, and he was suspended from his duties as seminary president in January 1974.
As a result, Tietjen and the majority of the seminary faculty formed a rival seminary which they dubbed Concordia Seminary in Exile, or Seminex. Seminex existed in St. Louis until August 1983, and on the campus of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) until December 1987. Meanwhile, Tietjen and many of his supporters left the LCMS to form the more liberal Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). During the early 1980s, Tietjen and the AELC organized unity talks among several other Lutheran church bodies, eventually leading to the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which today is the largest Lutheran church body in the United States.
John Tietjen married Ernestine Dammitts and had four children, Catherine, Laurence, Mary, and Sarah. He also has seven grandchildren Jessica, Jennifer, Carrie, Rachel, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Chase.
John Tietjen battled lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, blood clots, and finally a brain tumor. He died in the comfort of his own home. During the last few months before his death he was working on a final book titled "The Gospel According to Jesus". The original transcripts were typed, edited by his peers, and published by a private individual to create his new book.
Read more about this topic: John Tietjen
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or work:
“There must be a world revolution which puts an end to all materialistic conditions hindering woman from performing her natural role in life and driving her to carry out man’s duties in order to be equal in rights.”
—Muammar Qaddafi (b. 1938)
“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“A perfect personality ... is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,—the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)