A Dream Eclipsed

In the last decades of the twentieth century, American Lutherans embarked on a journey fraught with peril and filled with promise: the formation of a new church intended to unite Lutherans throughout the country in a shared vision of ministry, service, and fellowship. Congregations, leaders, institutions, publications, programs--the whole ministerial infrastructure of three of the country's Lutheran church bodies--were reborn with the ringing in of the New Year in 1988. Yet, the birth of this ne