# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 10 10_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

28

How Our Church Here, and Especially Our Concordia College, Is Remembered with Love in Germany.

In the "Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt," edited by Professor Dr. Kahnis, in number 61 of the 1st of August of this year, there is found a lengthy essay under the heading: "Die lutherische Kirche Nordamerikas und das Concordia-Collegium in St. Louis." This essay bears witness to the love with which people in the old fatherland, in Saxony among other places, remember our Synod and especially its institutions. We believe we are meeting the wishes of our readers if we communicate to them a literal extract from the essay, and we hope that the example of the loving care of others for the welfare of our Church will awaken in us here a still greater and more active care of our own for it. In the essay named it is said, among other things, as follows:

"The first Lutheran settlement in North America was founded by Dutch emigrants in the year 1621 at New York, which at that time, under the name of "New Amsterdam," was Dutch. Public worship was first permitted them by the English, into whose hands the government passed from the Dutch in the year 1664. Their first preacher was called Fabricius. The first Lutheran church in New York was built in the year 1671.

The second Lutheran settlement proceeded from Sweden, whose people settled on the Delaware in the year 1636. But as these congregations received no increase from the homeland, they gradually adopted language and spiritual ministration from the English dwelling around them, until at last they fell entirely to the Episcopal Church.

The third Lutheran settlement was formed by about 3000 Germans, who in the year 1709 had left the Palatinate on account of Roman Catholic oppressions and betaken themselves to England, from whence Queen Anne in the year 1710 had them transported to New York. Their number was greatly increased by repeated arrivals from various regions of Germany.

A fourth Lutheran settlement was founded in the year 1733 by exiled Salzburgers in Georgia (Ebenezer). Their still numerous descendants have spread in South Carolina and the adjoining States.

Of these settlements the third attained to the greatest importance; it has become the stem of the present main body of Lutheran Christians in America. Their congregations indeed had at first, for lack of clergymen, to have the office of preaching performed by schoolmasters and other men; but from the year 1742 they received, in Pastor Dr. Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg, called to Philadelphia, a pupil of Francke, the "Patriarch of the Lutheran Church of America." With unwearied fidelity and rich blessing he presided over the wide field of labor until his death, on the 7th of October, 1787.

Several preachers sent over from Germany went to his aid. The first Synod in the year 1748 numbered 11 ordained Lutheran pastors; in the year 1786 there were 24 of them.

But after half a century the first joyful upswing languished. The North American War of Independence scattered the congregations, destroyed the churches; the peaceless relation to the displaced heathen natives hardened the minds; the greed for land completely choked the striving after the kingdom of God. True, since the beginning of this century one host of Germans after another has been streaming hither, who belonged to the Lutheran Church by name. But with the number of church members the number of preachers did not also grow, least of all of preachers who would also have been witnesses to the faith of their Church.

In order at least to some extent to remedy the misery of disorder, the 5 synods, which had meanwhile arisen independently of one another, united in the year 1820 into a "Lutheran General Synod." Their endeavor was directed to the establishment of a common church government and discipline, a uniform liturgy, a common hymn-book, and the founding of an institution for the training of capable preachers and teachers. In consequence there arose in the year 1825 the theological seminary at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, a similar one at Lexington, Hartwick, Springfield, Columbus. In the year 1844 the union of this General Synod comprised 13 district synods with 726 congregations and 320 preachers. Outside of it, however, there still existed, without mutual connection, 9 synods with 681 congregations and 218 preachers. The total number of communicants of all these synods was at that time stated at 136,000, that of the church members at 800,000. Not counted in this was the uncounted mass of those who, scattered hither and thither, without any congregational connection, without preaching and sacrament, live on thus and perish in heathen forsakenness, or fall into the hands of the sects and Roman priests. And as to the multitude to which the number of nominal adherents of our Church has been increased during the last decade!

Overwhelmed by this spiritual state of misery among the co-believers of North America, Pastor Wynecken at Fort Wayne in the year 1841 raised a cry of distress to Lutheran Germany. He pleaded urgently for preachers for the forsaken brethren after the flesh, and for means for the equipment of such. Not without result did his voice die away. In northern Germany "the Stade Society" took it to heart to afford help of both kinds; but chiefly in the south a number of Bavarian friends under the leadership of Pastor Löhe rose up to give lasting support. He called into life at Nuremberg a "mission institute," in which tried young men were trained, through the most necessary theological and practical instruction in a course of several years, partly as preachers, partly as schoolteachers, and sent out to North America — a help of exceedingly far-reaching influence.

For while the so-called "Lutheran General Synod" had assumed the English character, introducing the English language into the services, harboring in doctrine a united lukewarmness, imitating Methodist procedure in practice, other synods had hitherto preserved the German language and the Lutheran confession more faithfully. Thus the whole Church split into an English-Lutheran and a German-Lutheran; the former represented by the theological seminary at Gettysburg, the latter by the Ohio Synod and the theological seminary at Columbus. But the latter also, instead of advancing to Lutheran decisiveness, now inclined toward an English-Reformed type; for at the annual meeting of 1845 it refused to introduce the administration of the Lord's Supper according to Lutheran order and the obligation of the clergy to all the Lutheran confessional writings. The consequence of this was that the confession-true withdrew from its synodical connection. Full unity of spirit was to meet them from another communion."

"Meanwhile many keels yearly traversed the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean and bore to America's coast the multitude of those who indeed trembled before the swaying deep beneath them, but, arrived on firm ground, without shame devoted their whole life to the striving after that which is beneath. Then there steered up among them a twofold company of such as esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the goods of the homeland, and in the strange land desired nothing but undisturbed to serve, after the faith of the fathers, Him who is above, sitting at the right hand of God — a company branded by the scorn of the world, but sealed with the mark of the Lamb. For he who bade the greater part of them zealously strive falsely was soon made manifest and cast out from among them; to themselves the Lord has declared himself in power, whom they confessed before an unbelieving generation.

In the year 1839 the 800 Saxons under Pastor Stephan landed on the shores of the Mississippi in the State of Missouri and settled in and about St. Louis. In the year 1840 the Prussians, driven out by the Union, arrived under Pastor Grabau in the State of New York, and chose Buffalo for their abode. Some of the latter went over to the church connection of the Saxons, after these had put away their errors, because they had to recognize Grabau's position toward Lutheran doctrine as incorrect.