David Benke
David Benke is a Lutheran pastor and the former president of the Atlantic District of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, or LCMS. After the 9/11 attacks, Benke participated in an interfaith event with people of other faiths, including Muslims. For doing so, he was found in 2002 to have violated LCMS teachings, and, unwilling to apologize, he was suspended. In 2003, the President of the LCMS reinstated him. Education and career Benke was born on May 5, 1946, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the first child of Raymond and Dorothea Benke. He attended Lutheran schools in Milwaukee and earned an Associate of Arts degree from Concordia College, Milwaukee (now Concordia University Wisconsin) in 1966. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. On August 17, 1968, he married Judith Platt, a teacher who graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Benke earned his Masters of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminary and was ordained a pastor at his boyhood church in Milwaukee on June 15, 1972. His career as an ordained pastor included time as an assistant pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in St. Louis and a religion teacher at Martin Luther High School in