Dissatisfaction over the WELS decision led about 70 pastors and a similar number of congregations to leave that body in the mid- to late-1950s and, along with former congregations of the ELS and the LCMS, to form the Church of the Lutheran Confession (CLC) in 1961. The CLC maintained that both the WELS and ELS had misapplied the principles of Christian fellowship themselves by not breaking away from the Synodical Conference and the LCMS when doctrinal differences had first been perceived. This issue remains a matter of contention between the CLC and the WELS and ELS.