After their separation, the AELC would later catalyze the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Many pastors and graduates of Seminex would go on to become 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 would write 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;