ABSTRACT
Most recent statistics continue to provide a telling snapshot of day schools operated by congregations of the Lutheran church bodies in America. Purity of doctrine was what Walther and the Lutherans aimed to pursue, and for this reason the Synod's first constitution in 1847 called upon every congregation to support a parochial school. The day schools supported by congregations of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod appear to be passing through one of the most transitional eras in their history. The changes since 1985 are one that is having a discernible effect upon the purpose for which so many of the same Lutheran schools were established in the first place. Perhaps the most painful of the problems is the gender bias that the rapidly growing group of women principals in the Lutheran school has reported. While the decision was soon reversed by the United States Supreme Court, the experience served to hasten the entrance of Lutheran schools into America's cultural mainstream.
