	Schmucker was a controversial theologian whom Confessional Lutherans viewed as a threat to American Lutheranism. They did not believe he was actually a Lutheran, but rather, a Reformed theologian working to form a union of American Lutheranism with non-Lutheran American Protestants. His plan to discard the Augsburg Confession as a declaration of Lutheran belief in favor of a confession compatible with Reformed theology alienated him from former allies. He published this altered confession anonymously, but it failed to pass even within his own church body.