The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
,_Fort_Wayne,_Indiana,_1953-58._Chapel_exterior_-_00420v.jpg){kind=link}
1957 – 1977
Founded: The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod authorized a senior college in 1951 to complete its pre-seminary course, and Concordia Senior College opened in 1957 on a 191-acre campus in north Fort Wayne designed by Eero Saarinen — the synod's terminal pre-seminary college, and the nation's first Protestant pre-theological institution of its kind, enrolling about 450 men a year.
Course and fate: The 1974 walkout at the St. Louis seminary — the school most of its students were bound for — weakened it, and the synod's 1975 Anaheim convention, by Resolution 8-01A, voted it closed by September 1, 1976; a defect in the resolution's wording kept it open one more year. The final commencement was May 21, 1977. The program was merged into Concordia University, Ann Arbor, and the campus passed to Concordia Theological Seminary, which had returned to Fort Wayne the year before. Oscar T. Walle's Lest We Forget! (1978) is the college's own history.
Sources:
- George C. Heider, "In Memoriam, Alma Mater," The Cresset (2019) — the Anaheim vote; the two classes after it; Walle's history.
- Daystar Journal — Resolution 8-01A and the one-year reprieve; the May 21, 1977 commencement.