How the "American idea" and the Protestant ideal are difficult for Lutherans to reconcile and manage in the tension between remaining faithful to Scripture and proclaiming the gospel.
Excellent analysis with much for discussion. I’m not so sure that our Saxon forefathers were fleeing persecution or the Prussian Union (that was more the Buffalo Synod). They were following a cultic and charismatic leader in Martin Stephan who convinced them to abandon home and congregation to set up a “Zion on the Mississippi.” They were driven more by enchantment and idealism than the pressures of persecution. But that’s a sidebar conversation.
The article demonstrates why confessional Lutheranism is incompatible with any form of “Christian nationalism.” Nationalism has its own “ethnos” (is that the same as ethos?) and confessionally-minded Lutherans are not so quick to raise the Protestant Christian banner, even though many fly the Methodist Sunday School banners in the chancel opposite the American flag. Ponder that in terms of your article.
Lutherans will always be the odd ducks in the American experiment. Neither Protestant nor Catholic (speaking of ethos, Catholics have this nailed!), confessing Lutheran first with American a distant second.
The revisionist fairy tale that Lutheran immigrants fled Saxony because of Prussian Union persecution has long popped up in discussions about the Missouri Saxon history with a Whac-a-Mole persistence.
That it is untrue has been well established in Robert C. Schultz’s “The European Background” in Moving Frontiers: Reading in the History of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Carl S. Meyer, editor, CPH, St. Louis, 1964, p. 84-6), where Schultz translates an editorial written by H.E.F. Guericke (in Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Lutheranische Theologie und Kirche, ed. A.G. Rudelbach and Guericke, Vol. I, 1840, pp. 127-131), Walter O. Forster’s Zion on the Mississippi (CPH, 1953, pp. 77, 105-112, 513, 515), Carl S. Mundinger’s Government in the Missouri Synod (CPH, 1947, pp. 63-67), Carl Eduard Vehse’s Die Stephan’sche Auswanderung nach Amerika (Dresden, 1840, p. 54 [see also Rudolph Fiehler’s 1975 translation, The Stephanite Emigration to America]), August Suelflow’s Servant of the Word (Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 2000, p. 54), Ernst Gerhard Wilhelm Keyl’s August, 1841, “Public Confession of a Stephanite” (trans. Rev. Joel R. Baseley, pp. 13-14), and C.F.W. Walther’s May 4, 1840, letter to his brother, O.H. Walther (translated by Werner Karl Wadewitz, May 11, 1963, Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis).
Here’s an excerpt from C.F.W. Walther’s May 4, 1840, letter to his brother, O.H. Walther:
“Today I dare no more to say: our emigration was too early; the great question is whether we pastors ever should have emigrated, whether we should perhaps suffered all restrictions, if they only did not command us anything openly sinful so that we might have guarded, protected, and preserved that which was yet existent in the German congregations, as faithful shepherds. (In Saxony we were not in statu confessionis, but rather ecclesia pressa, to whom Spener always offered the above advice.) In Prussia it was a different situation. There one invited and committed apostasy from the Lutheran Church as soon as one wanted to function as a public Prussian preacher.”
In his Zion on the Mississippi (pp. 105-112), Walter O. Forster discusses in detail the real reason for the Saxon emigration, noting (pp. 110-111):
“The statement that the organization of a “free” church was beyond the realm of possibility is a matter of pure conjecture, for such an organization was never attempted by the Stephanites. The conservatives never applied for permission to form a “free” church, nor did they indicate to the government that was what they sought… In the first place, this development [“the Prussian State Church, whose Union in 1817 was represented by them as a preview of what was about to occure in Saxony”] and other changes anticipated were “about to” occur for too many years to be impressive as arguments any longer. Secondly, the actual events in Prussia were the best answer to this analogy. For in that kingdom, to which the Saxons pointed in 1838 and from which Grabau and others emigrated in 1839, an independent church was organized with royal sanction in 1841. Responsibility for the fact that a free church was not organized in Saxony until a much later date must be placed upon the emigration of the country’s most vigorous conservative element.”
Forster concludes, “The basic reason for the departure of the Stephanites from Germany was not a principle, it was a person – Stephan.”
The leader of the Saxon immigrants was Martin Stephan, until he was deposed at the end of May 1839. C.F.W. Walther did not become a recognized leader until the Altenburg Debate in April 1841 and then went on to organize and become the first president of Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Staaten in 1847.
Lusatia was a region in Saxony, not Prussia, and thus was not under strict Prussian Union enforcement. The Wends left Germany for three main reasons: (1) rationalism and unionism tendencies in Saxony that threatened their Lutheran faith; (2) the threat of losing their Slavic language and social culture to the German language and culture where they lived; and (3) the economic hardships that were happening to them at that time.
Ironically, when they arrived in Texas, the Wends settled in a community of German Lutheran immigrants, resulting in their Pastor Johann Killian having to hold separate Wendish and German services. Later, the Wends joined with Walther and the Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Staaten.
Lutheran Wends from Niederlausitz along with Germans from Brandenburg emigrated to South Australia. According to one of our family history books, between 1848 and 1860, 2,000 Wends and 30,000 Germans emigrated during that period.
The first waves of Lutheran emigration founded Hahndorf, Lobethal and other settlements renamed after British figures during the Great War. They wrested productive farms from the then meagre soil. Always building a church right away and then a parish school thereafter.
Excellent analysis with much for discussion. I’m not so sure that our Saxon forefathers were fleeing persecution or the Prussian Union (that was more the Buffalo Synod). They were following a cultic and charismatic leader in Martin Stephan who convinced them to abandon home and congregation to set up a “Zion on the Mississippi.” They were driven more by enchantment and idealism than the pressures of persecution. But that’s a sidebar conversation.
The article demonstrates why confessional Lutheranism is incompatible with any form of “Christian nationalism.” Nationalism has its own “ethnos” (is that the same as ethos?) and confessionally-minded Lutherans are not so quick to raise the Protestant Christian banner, even though many fly the Methodist Sunday School banners in the chancel opposite the American flag. Ponder that in terms of your article.
Lutherans will always be the odd ducks in the American experiment. Neither Protestant nor Catholic (speaking of ethos, Catholics have this nailed!), confessing Lutheran first with American a distant second.
The revisionist fairy tale that Lutheran immigrants fled Saxony because of Prussian Union persecution has long popped up in discussions about the Missouri Saxon history with a Whac-a-Mole persistence.
That it is untrue has been well established in Robert C. Schultz’s “The European Background” in Moving Frontiers: Reading in the History of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Carl S. Meyer, editor, CPH, St. Louis, 1964, p. 84-6), where Schultz translates an editorial written by H.E.F. Guericke (in Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Lutheranische Theologie und Kirche, ed. A.G. Rudelbach and Guericke, Vol. I, 1840, pp. 127-131), Walter O. Forster’s Zion on the Mississippi (CPH, 1953, pp. 77, 105-112, 513, 515), Carl S. Mundinger’s Government in the Missouri Synod (CPH, 1947, pp. 63-67), Carl Eduard Vehse’s Die Stephan’sche Auswanderung nach Amerika (Dresden, 1840, p. 54 [see also Rudolph Fiehler’s 1975 translation, The Stephanite Emigration to America]), August Suelflow’s Servant of the Word (Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 2000, p. 54), Ernst Gerhard Wilhelm Keyl’s August, 1841, “Public Confession of a Stephanite” (trans. Rev. Joel R. Baseley, pp. 13-14), and C.F.W. Walther’s May 4, 1840, letter to his brother, O.H. Walther (translated by Werner Karl Wadewitz, May 11, 1963, Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis).
Here’s an excerpt from C.F.W. Walther’s May 4, 1840, letter to his brother, O.H. Walther:
“Today I dare no more to say: our emigration was too early; the great question is whether we pastors ever should have emigrated, whether we should perhaps suffered all restrictions, if they only did not command us anything openly sinful so that we might have guarded, protected, and preserved that which was yet existent in the German congregations, as faithful shepherds. (In Saxony we were not in statu confessionis, but rather ecclesia pressa, to whom Spener always offered the above advice.) In Prussia it was a different situation. There one invited and committed apostasy from the Lutheran Church as soon as one wanted to function as a public Prussian preacher.”
In his Zion on the Mississippi (pp. 105-112), Walter O. Forster discusses in detail the real reason for the Saxon emigration, noting (pp. 110-111):
“The statement that the organization of a “free” church was beyond the realm of possibility is a matter of pure conjecture, for such an organization was never attempted by the Stephanites. The conservatives never applied for permission to form a “free” church, nor did they indicate to the government that was what they sought… In the first place, this development [“the Prussian State Church, whose Union in 1817 was represented by them as a preview of what was about to occure in Saxony”] and other changes anticipated were “about to” occur for too many years to be impressive as arguments any longer. Secondly, the actual events in Prussia were the best answer to this analogy. For in that kingdom, to which the Saxons pointed in 1838 and from which Grabau and others emigrated in 1839, an independent church was organized with royal sanction in 1841. Responsibility for the fact that a free church was not organized in Saxony until a much later date must be placed upon the emigration of the country’s most vigorous conservative element.”
Forster concludes, “The basic reason for the departure of the Stephanites from Germany was not a principle, it was a person – Stephan.”
The leader of the Saxon immigrants was Martin Stephan, until he was deposed at the end of May 1839. C.F.W. Walther did not become a recognized leader until the Altenburg Debate in April 1841 and then went on to organize and become the first president of Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Staaten in 1847.
Thank you for the corrections and updates, much appreciated.
Lusatia was a region in Saxony, not Prussia, and thus was not under strict Prussian Union enforcement. The Wends left Germany for three main reasons: (1) rationalism and unionism tendencies in Saxony that threatened their Lutheran faith; (2) the threat of losing their Slavic language and social culture to the German language and culture where they lived; and (3) the economic hardships that were happening to them at that time.
Ironically, when they arrived in Texas, the Wends settled in a community of German Lutheran immigrants, resulting in their Pastor Johann Killian having to hold separate Wendish and German services. Later, the Wends joined with Walther and the Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio, und andern Staaten.
Thank you!
Lutheran Wends from Niederlausitz along with Germans from Brandenburg emigrated to South Australia. According to one of our family history books, between 1848 and 1860, 2,000 Wends and 30,000 Germans emigrated during that period.
The first waves of Lutheran emigration founded Hahndorf, Lobethal and other settlements renamed after British figures during the Great War. They wrested productive farms from the then meagre soil. Always building a church right away and then a parish school thereafter.
Thanks, great information.
Excellent article. Thank you!