Krauth on Error in the Church

Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth in his 1871 The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, (the CRT I gladly affirm) pages 195-6:

"When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is the truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church's faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate the faith, and position is given to them to teach others to repudiate it, and to make them skillful in combating it."

I would reckon we have stage 2 (error asserting of equal rights) errors in our synod today, which broadly fall under two categories: the LGBTQ+ movement, and feminism.

With regards to the LGBTQ+ movement, we see the Honest Conversation Bible study and Mike Novotny leaving preferred pronouns and attending 'gay' weddings to Christian freedom. 

With regards to feminism, we have WLHS adding female board members, placing Joan Prince in a position of authoritative speaking in a convocation that meets the WELS definition of 'church'. We have female principals with male teachers under their authority, another violation of headship in what the WELS would again refer to as 'church'. And finally the push for consensus governance.

It doesn't take much to turn those stage 2 errors into errors of the third stage. Climbing to parity is the hard part - once error achieves an even playing field, it only takes a modest tilt of the table to become the dominant take.