2026 LCMS Synodical President Election Series: An Era of Decline, Litigation & Controversy - The Case for Rev. Matthew Harrison as President of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
The Third in a Series of Articles Covering the Three Men Who Continue to Express an Interest in Serving as Synodical President of Our LCMS Church Body, if Elected, & the Qualifications for the Office
May 22, 2026
Introduction
When Rev. Matthew C. Harrison was elected the 13th President of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) in July 2010, he stepped into a denomination already managing decades of slow membership erosion, an aging educational system, and mounting cultural pressures. Since then, the Synod has lost hundreds of thousands of members, closed or severed ties with multiple universities, settled or engaged in major lawsuits on three continents, confronted the infiltration of white supremacist and alt-right ideologies, navigated accusations of Christian nationalism and antisemitic heritage, and weathered persistent internal controversies over governance, doctrine, and presidential authority. This paper surveys those developments evenhandedly and concludes with an assessment of Harrison’s effectiveness as a unifying leader.
Membership Decline
The membership figures under Harrison tell an unambiguous story of contraction. At the time of his election, the LCMS reported approximately 2.27 million baptized members—already a reduction of roughly 500,000 from the Synod’s 1971 peak of 2.77 million. That decline accelerated during his tenure. By 2014, baptized membership had fallen to approximately 2.097 million, and confirmed membership stood at 1.641 million. Average weekly worship attendance dropped 14 percent in a single year, to approximately 132 worshipers per congregation. By Harrison’s own reckoning in a 2025 presidential address, the Synod had approximately 1.8 million baptized members—a loss of nearly 300,000 on his watch. The number of active congregations fell from roughly 6,150 to approximately 5,700 over the same period.
Synodical researchers have identified structural causes: child baptisms are down 70 percent from their 1950s peak; adult conversions are down 47 percent from their historical high. A 2015 statistical profile found the average LCMS member to be 47 years old, with seniors disproportionately represented and young adults ages 18 to 34 significantly underrepresented. Harrison commissioned studies through the Journal of Lutheran Mission and encouraged circuit-level workshops to address these trends, but no reversal has materialized. The demographic math—an aging membership, low conversion rates, and poor youth retention—has continued to compound.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
A Wave of Closures and Mergers
The Concordia University System (CUS), the LCMS’s network of higher education institutions, suffered its most severe wave of closures in history during the Harrison years. Concordia University Ann Arbor merged with Concordia University Wisconsin in 2013. Concordia College Alabama closed in 2018. Concordia University Portland—a 115-year-old institution and, at its peak, Oregon’s largest private university—announced closure in February 2020, effective April 30. Concordia College New York, founded in 1881, closed in spring 2021; its Bronxville campus was sold to Iona College for $30 million. These closures reflected years of financial fragility, enrollment decline, and governance decisions that critics argued Harrison’s administration either accelerated or failed to prevent.
The Portland closure in particular was entangled in a controversy over the role of LGBTQ student organizations on campus. Court filings and reporting by OPB revealed that in February 2018, Harrison and Concordia University System president Dean Wenthe asked the Portland campus president to resign, and that the LCMS had conditioned a $9.2 million financial rescue in 2019 on the removal of a Queer Straight Alliance and a Gender and Sexuality Resource Center from campus. Portland had earlier reversed a decision to block the QSA—the only such student group in the CUS system. The sequence raised questions about whether religious doctrinal concerns, rather than financial factors alone, drove the closure.
The HotChalk Lawsuit
The most financially consequential litigation arising from the Portland closure came from HotChalk, Inc., an educational technology firm that had managed the university’s online programs and helped grow its enrollment significantly. In April 2020, just days after the closure was announced, HotChalk filed a $302 million lawsuit against Concordia Portland, the LCMS, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, and 22 other defendants, alleging breach of contract, fraud, and fraudulent asset transfers. HotChalk alleged that the LCMS had orchestrated the closure to benefit itself financially while leaving the university’s creditors unpaid, and argued that the Synod’s degree of control over the university meant that liability “ascended” to the parent institution.
The litigation wound through Oregon courts for five years. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled in May 2024 in the LCMS’s favor on a key discovery dispute, blocking HotChalk from accessing internal religious deliberations. The case settled confidentially in September 2025, just days before trial was set to begin. The LCMS Board of Directors issued a brief statement denying HotChalk’s allegations but expressing relief that the matter was resolved. Unconfirmed reports from within LCMS circles placed the settlement payment at between $175 million and $200 million; the official settlement terms were sealed. A separate class-action lawsuit was filed by former Concordia Portland students alleging that the university collected spring 2020 tuition under false pretenses.
Concordia University Texas
In November 2022, the Board of Regents of Concordia University Texas (CTX) voted to amend its bylaws and sever accountability to the Synod, claiming self-governance. After repeated appeals went unheeded, the LCMS filed a federal civil lawsuit in September 2023 seeking either CTX’s return to Synod governance or $111 million in damages. A federal court dismissed the case on procedural grounds in February 2025; the LCMS appealed to the Fifth Circuit in April 2025 with the assistance of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The case remains unresolved as of this writing.
THE HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL LAWSUIT
In September 2025, the LCMS filed suit in the High Court of Hong Kong against Hong Kong International School Association Limited (HKISAL), the operator of Hong Kong International School (HKIS)—a prestigious international school the LCMS co-founded in 1966. The LCMS, as the registered owner of the Repulse Bay campus, alleged that HKISAL had committed repeated and material breaches of the Operating Agreement governing the school’s operation. Specific allegations included: financial mismanagement and excessive accumulation of reserves (net assets reported at HK$2.8 billion, or approximately US$359 million); continuously escalating school fees that excluded most of Hong Kong’s population; failure to provide required scholarships; appointment of board directors without LCMS approval; and a failure to provide financial and governance information to the Synod.
The LCMS argued that HKIS had “lost its way” and no longer resembled the equitable, accessible school it had founded, and threatened to evict HKISAL from the campus and establish a replacement institution, Hong Kong Pacific School. HKISAL hit back forcefully, accusing the LCMS of seeking to monetize the Repulse Bay campus—potentially worth over US$1 billion as commercial real estate—and alleging that the deterioration of relations began in 2022 when the LCMS dispatched property agents to conduct a valuation of the site. HKIS parents and teachers’ organizations issued statements of “unwavering support” for the school’s leadership; Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee weighed in to say that students’ educational rights must not be affected. HKISAL threatened to countersue for defamation. The litigation drew international press coverage and remains active as of this writing.
WHITE SUPREMACY, ALT-RIGHT INFILTRATION, AND CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
In February 2023, the LCMS received sustained national press coverage after antifascist research group Machaira Action published an article alleging a “rise of a white supremacist faction within the Lutheran faith.” The article identified specific individuals, including Corey Mahler—an LCMS congregant who had been posting about white nationalism and “white genocide” on social media and who identified publicly as a Christian nationalist. The group alleged that these individuals had used online platforms to threaten LCMS leadership, including deaconesses, and to organize opposition to Synod publications.
Harrison responded formally on February 21, 2023, with a statement issued in the name of all five LCMS vice-presidents and all 35 district presidents. The statement said he was “shocked” to learn of alt-right infiltration and categorically rejected what it called “horrible and racist teachings,” listing white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery advocacy, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, advocacy for the death of homosexuals, and genocide. Citing 1 John 3:15 and Matthew 3:2, Harrison called for repentance and declared that where repentance was not heeded, “there must be excommunication.” The statement was widely reported in Religion News Service and The Christian Century and was generally received as a forthright condemnation.
The broader question of Christian nationalism has placed the LCMS under pressure from two directions simultaneously. Far-right critics within and adjacent to the denomination have accused Harrison of being insufficiently committed to what they term “Western Christian culture.” Progressive observers and ELCA leaders, meanwhile, have accused the LCMS of enabling Christian nationalist ideology through its conservative alignments on immigration, sexuality, and political culture. The sharpest episode came in February 2025, when retired General Michael Flynn publicly accused Lutheran immigration agencies of “money laundering” federal grant money. Harrison’s letter of response—in which he distanced the LCMS from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and emphasized the Synod’s “law-abiding and patriotic” character—was praised by conservative supporters but condemned by LCMS critics as validating the far-right narrative and abandoning Lutheran social ministry partners.
ANTISEMITISM: LUTHER’S LEGACY AND THE LCMS
No assessment of the LCMS and antisemitism can avoid confronting the legacy of Martin Luther himself. Luther’s 1543 treatise On the Jews and Their Lies called for the burning of synagogues, confiscation of Jewish property, expulsion of rabbis, and forced labor—rhetoric that Nazi propagandists later invoked. The global Lutheran communion has wrestled with this inheritance for decades.
The LCMS adopted an official resolution on this matter in 1983, formally deploring and disassociating itself from Luther’s hostile statements about the Jewish people, while declining to characterize him as a “rabid anti-Semite” given his earlier, more favorable writings. The resolution committed the denomination to treating Jewish people “with Christian love.” That 1983 position has not been revisited or strengthened during Harrison’s fifteen years in office. The question returned to prominence during the 2023 alt-right controversy when critics noted that white nationalist voices within the denomination had explicitly invoked Luther’s late anti-Jewish writings to justify their ideology. Harrison’s February 2023 statement condemned Nazism and white supremacy explicitly, which implicitly addressed antisemitism, but did not engage Luther’s writings directly. The Synod’s official educational resources acknowledge the problem, but the absence of a stronger or updated confessional statement on Luther and the Jews has drawn ongoing criticism from Jewish groups and ecumenical partners.
ADDITIONAL CONTROVERSIES
The Annotated Catechism and Internal Governance
In early 2023, Harrison ordered Concordia Publishing House to suspend distribution of the newly released Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications after online critics—some of whom Harrison later identified as white nationalist provocateurs—accused the annotations of promoting Critical Race Theory and Marxist ideology. The unilateral halt was itself contested: some in the Synod viewed it as a presidential overreach, while others believed it was justified by the theological concerns raised. Harrison later wrote that he found “nothing in the content” of the volume at odds with biblical and confessional Lutheranism, and eventually asked CPH to resume distribution. The episode exposed a recurring tension in Harrison’s presidency: critics on the right accused him of tolerating progressive theological drift; critics in the center accused him of capitulating to extremists; and critics focused on governance accused him of exceeding the authority vested in his office.
COVID-19 and Women’s Ordination
The COVID-19 pandemic generated significant internal friction over compliance with government-mandated worship restrictions. The CTCR cautioned against online Communion, and the 2023 convention passed a resolution affirming that the state lacks authority over the church’s sacramental life—a resolution that acknowledged reasonable Christian disagreement over pandemic responses. On women’s ordination, Harrison has consistently held the confessional line, warning partner churches in Japan, Korea, and Europe that ordaining women would jeopardize fellowship. Formal theological dialogue on the question was held with the Korean Lutheran Church at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, in January 2023.
CONCLUSION: AN ASSESSMENT OF HARRISON’S LEADERSHIP
Any honest assessment of Matthew Harrison’s sixteen years as LCMS president must weigh genuine accomplishments against measurable institutional decline. On the credit side of the ledger, Harrison has been a consistent and unapologetic confessional Lutheran. He has defended the authority of Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions without equivocation; he has led the International Lutheran Council with clarity; he has condemned white supremacy and Nazism forthrightly and in the name of the entire Synod; and he has navigated litigation—most notably the HotChalk case—to conclusion while preserving the Synod’s First Amendment protections over internal religious deliberations. The 2023 convention, under his leadership, reaffirmed closed communion by nearly 89 percent, a remarkable consensus on a contested practice.
The debit side, however, is substantial. The LCMS has lost approximately 470,000 baptized members since 2010—a decline of roughly 20 percent. Four universities have closed or separated from the Synod, with at least one other Concordia University on the proverbial ropes. The HotChalk litigation, however it ultimately settled at great expense to the Synod, exposed years of troubled governance at Concordia Portland in which Harrison’s own involvement—including the conditions placed on financial rescue funding—was documented in court filings. The Concordia Texas rupture produced federal litigation that a court dismissed on procedural grounds, raising questions about the Synod’s legal standing in its own governance disputes. The recently filed Hong Kong International School lawsuit drew international scrutiny over the LCMS’s motivations and management of a globally significant institution.
On the question of unity, the evidence is mixed at best. Harrison has never exceeded 57 percent of the vote in any of his four presidential elections—an index of how persistently divided the Synod has been throughout his tenure. Internal critics from the confessional right have accused him of tolerating theological liberalism and exercising inappropriate presidential authority; critics from the institutional center have accused him of enabling extremist voices; critics from outside the denomination have characterized his leadership as culturally combative and politically aligned with forces hostile to Lutheran social ministry. Harrison has not, by any measure, healed these divisions. If anything, the proliferation of lawsuits, the loss of universities, the alt-right infiltration controversy, and the Hong Kong litigation have deepened them.
A fair final verdict might read as follows: Harrison has been a theologically faithful president in a period when theological faithfulness was genuinely tested, but an institutionally troubled one in a period when institutional leadership was desperately needed. If not re-elected in 2026, he leaves a Synod that is smaller, more litigious, more internally polarized, and more embattled on multiple fronts than the one he inherited. Whether those conditions are primarily the product of his decisions or of forces beyond any president’s control is a question LCMS members and historians will be debating for years.
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SOURCES:
LCMS Reporter. Various issues, 2010–2025. reporter.lcms.org.
Religion News Service. Jenkins, Jack, and Emily McFarlan Miller. “LCMS President Calls for Excommunicating White Nationalists.” February 22, 2023.
South China Morning Post. Multiple reports on HKIS v. LCMS litigation, September–October 2025.
OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting). Multiple reports on HotChalk v. LCMS, 2021–2022.
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “HotChalk v. LCMS” and “LCMS v. Concordia University Texas.” becketfund.org.
Concordia University System Facts. Timeline and case tracking, cusfacts.com.
Harrison, Matthew C.. “President Harrison Denounces Disturbing Ideologies.” LCMS Reporter, February 21, 2023.
Harrison, Matthew C.. “Letter on U.S. Immigration and Lutheran Organizations.” LCMS Reporter, February 6, 2025.
LCMS Board of Directors. “Statement on Concluded Litigation [HotChalk].” LCMS Reporter, September 23, 2025.
LCMS Resources. “Luther and the Jews.” Based on 1983 LCMS Convention Resolution. resources.lcms.org.
Hong Kong International School. Wikipedia. Accessed May 2026.
Justia Oregon Supreme Court. HotChalk v. Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, May 2, 2024.
Grant Magazine. “What Happened to Concordia?” December 2023.
LCMS Journal of Lutheran Mission. Membership Decline Studies, 2017.
2023 LCMS Convention Proceedings. Milwaukee: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 2023.