Who are these people that are contending in the ELS?

The clergyman who was suspended from the ELS is Rolf Preus. Preus comes from a large family of talented persons. Rolf's father was the late Robert Preus. His uncle was the late JAO Preus, President of the Missouri Synod. Rolf's grandfather was JAO Preus a governor of Minnesota in the 1920s.

If this were English history, the Preus family would be knights, bishops, and scholars. They are leaders.

President John Moldstad comes from a less flamboyant and less visible family. The Moldstads could be called yeoman. The yeoman are the working enlisted men who faithfully serve and give all that they have to the cause. The Moldstads serve

I might add that Rolf's father and uncle came to the ELS as very young men. Their time of membership was limited to something like ten or fifteen years. The Preus brothers, Robert and Jack, had more to do with the ELS suspending fellowship with the Missouri Synod than anyone else.

It is an irony that while the Preus brothers led the ELS into suspending relations with Missouri, they later left for Missouri. Missouri was a bigger boat, something like a rowboat and a battleship.

In a very dirty chapter of Missouri Synod history, Rolf's father, Robert Preus, was fired by the dominical hierarchy. Jack was able to stand up to the Seminex element of the Missouri Synod. Jack Preus is reviled by the Seminex, now ELCA people, but many think that Tietjen and the Seminex people were the divisive ones.

At any rate, this is some of the background to the current ELS news.