May 1983, although Seminex continued to exist as an educational institution on the LSTC campus in Chicago through the end of 1987. Several professorial chairs at LSTC are still named after Christ Seminary-Seminex. Legacy After their separation, the AELC catalyzed the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Many pastors and graduates of Seminex became prominent bishops and leaders in the ELCA; for example, in 2009, three of eight seminary presidents were Seminex graduates, as were a number of bishops. Decades later, theologian Carl Braaten wrote that the transfer of so many modernist professors to future seminaries of the ELCA permanently altered the DNA of those institutions, resulting in what he perceived as the root cause of the slow progressive slide of the ELCA. Theologian Robert Benne concurred, writing in First Things; Because Seminex and the related departures of the AELC congregations removed many liberals from the LCMS, the controversy left the synod considerably more conservative by the mid-1970s than it had been a decade earlier. This allowed the LCMS to begin the slow and painful process of rebuilding its confessional heritage. In 1977, the synod's convention voted to severely restrict its involvement in LCUSA, a body the synod had been instrumental in founding in 1966, in effect declaring that the synod would not participate in any further merger discussions. In 1981, the synod's convention ended the fellowship agreement with the American Lutheran Church that had been reached in 1969. However the LCMS emerged from the crisis bitterly divided. The 1977 LCMS convention also abruptly withdrew from the joint hymnal project with the LCA and ALC. Thus the Lutheran Book of Worship was published in 1978 without the participation of the very denomination that had initiated its production, angering leaders in the other church bodies. Congregations of the LCMS objected to the use of the 1977 revision of the Book of Common Prayer in the hymnal and the hymnal's use of the Revised Standard Version as well as many other concerns. The hymnal committee of the LCMS attempted to address these concerns as well as remove much of the objectionable content and published a recension of the objected hymnal in 1982, Lutheran Worship. However a high level of mistrust in the LCMS between its congregations and denominational leadership meant that the new hymnal was poorly received. A study commissioned by the LCMS in 1999 found that 36% of congregations