In the issue featuring the Concordat of Agreement [TLC, Jan. 19], there is a sidebar about "the other Lutherans," in which it was said about the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, "Its primary tenets were defined in the 1840s by Carl Walther: 'The Lutheran Church was the church, without which there was no salvation ...'" I question how fully the sidebar was researched.

For example, in W.H.T. Dau's English translation from the German of "The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel" (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, no date), C.F.W. Walther said on June 19, 1885:

"It is, therefore, an awful mistake to claim that men can be saved only in the Lutheran Church. No one must be induced to join the Lutheran Church because he thinks that only in that way he can get into the Church of God. There are still Christians in the Reformed Church, among the Methodists, yea, among the papists ..."

In more recent time, the LCMS brought many Anglican priests out of Nigeria to study at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. I remember taking two priests with me during the 1979-80 school year almost every Sunday to the suburban St. Louis County parish where I was a member at the time. The LCMS did at no cost for the Anglican Communion what we were not doing for ourselves.

There would be those in the LCMS that would agree with the radical statement in quotes in the sidebar. Yet, the picture it wove is not the full tapestry of the history and people I know in the LCMS. What purpose did this misrepresentation serve?

Bob Chapman Lynnwood, Wash.