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. In 1977 the Synod in Convention voted to severely restricted its involvement in the LCUSA, a body the synod was instrumental in founding in 1966, and in effect declaring that the synod would not participate in any further merger discussions. By 1981, the Synod in Convention ended a fellowship arrangement with the American Lutheran Church that had been reached in 1969. However the Missouri Synod emerged from the crisis bitterly divided.