Lutheran Historical Society Newsletter Archive

President's Corner

By Michael J. Kurtz
Lutheran Historical Society President

I am writing this column on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 18. Dr. King was a hero in the African-American struggle for equality and justice in this century. Dr. King's faith and activism were deeply rooted in the ethos of the African-American religious experience.

This year Lutherans honor and remember another pioneer in the fight for freedom and justice, the great 19th century Lutheran churchman, Samuel Simon Schmucker. The events honoring Schmucker are described elsewhere in this issue of the Newsletter.

Samuel Simon Schmucker is justly remembered for his labors as a denominational leader during a critical period in American Lutheran history. But he was more. As a civic leader of the first order, he fought for abolition of slavery, temperance and a strong public school system.

Countless other Lutherans, clergy and lay people, have contributed to the cause of church and community. Part of our mission as the Lutheran Historical Society is to discover and honor the accomplishments and contributions of those who have gone before us. We do this so that all of us may be encouraged to make our own contributions to church and community, contributions rooted in the Lutheran experience in America.
Leaders such as Martin Luther King and Samuel Simon Schmucker inspire us and dare us to dream of a better church and society.

LHS Annual Meeting to be Held Wednesday, April 28

This year the annual meeting of the Society is being held on April 28 in conjunction with Gettysburg Seminary's convocation, a major celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Samuel Simon Schmucker, founder of the Society, the Seminary, and Gettysburg College. Under the theme "A Legacy of Leadership" there will be lectures, discussion groups and worship.

Lunch for Society members, together with our annual meeting, will take place at J.D.'s Grille, the former Lee's Restaurant, where West Confederate ends at Buford Avenue. The program will be held in the Seminary Chapel, where Society members will mingle with other participants, many of them alums of the Seminary.

The two main lecturers have been members of our Society. Paul Baglyos is presently on our Board and has lectured in our programs before (see his article in this issue). His doctoral work at the University of Chicago dealt with Lutheranism of the Schmucker era and his present research centers in Schmucker himself. Nancy Koester is a member of the faculty at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. She has lectured and published on themes related to her doctoral thesis (at Luther Seminary) on the topic of benevolence in the thinking of Schmucker, Finney, and Edwards.

Pre-registration for the convocation is not needed, but reservations for the Society's luncheon and meeting are (see reservation form on page 5).

The fall Society meeting will be held at and with Gettysburg College, September 23, 1999. Lecturer will be David Potts, former dean at the college, addressing questions of higher education in Schmucker's day and their relation to our own day. More information will be carried in the summer Newsletter.LHS Annual Meeting to be Held
Wednesday, April 28

Wartime Preaching in the Nineteenth Century

by Paul A. Baglyos
Excerpts from a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Lutheran Historical Society, Gettysburg, April 18, 1998

THE WAR OF 1812
Published examples of Lutheran preaching regarding the War of 1812 reflect the tradition of the American jeremiad. Sacvan Bercovitch* has described the American jeremiad as a stylized rhetoric that identified America with the biblical nation of Israel. The purpose of jeremiad preaching was to warn Americans against the deadly consequences of unrighteousness and to summon them to fresh commitment to the purposes of God.

On a national fast day appointed by Congress and President Madison for August 20, 1812, Pastor Henry Augustus Muhlenberg told his congregation in Reading, Pennsylvania, that America's current wartime troubles were God's just punishment for the sins of the nation. Muhlenberg's rehearsal of America's sins reads like a commonplace of jeremiad preaching: Americans, he said, were guilty of money-grubbing, self-interest, disunity, discontentment, pride, envy, and so forth all the sins that imperiled the well-being of God's specially chosen and richly blessed republic. God would continue to punish the nation, said Muhlenberg, as long as the nation continued in sin and delayed repentance. Accordingly, Muhlenberg summoned his hearers to return to the ways of God so that the favor of God might return to the nation.
Nearly a year later, in August of 1813, Pastor David Frederick Schaeffer expounded the same theme to his congregation in Frederick, Maryland. America, said Schaeffer, had responded to God's abundant favor with an abundance of sin. Money-grubbing, pride, sabbath neglect, sloth, and drunkenness were among the sins that Schaeffer condemned. As the fruit of these sins, he said, Americans were now reaping God's wrath in the form of wartime troubles. Like Muhlenberg, Schaeffer summoned his hearers to repentance and conversion to assuage the wrath of God.

Near the very end of the war, in January, 1815, Peter Schindel, who was at that time a candidate for ordination assigned by the Pennsylvania Ministerium to the parish in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, preached a lengthy jeremiad regarding the war. Schindel's sermon included a detailed comparison between Israel and America that demonstrated America's commonality with the biblical nation. Schindel compared the troubles Israel experienced at the hand of Jabin, the Canaanite king mentioned in the books of Joshua and Judges, to the troubles America experienced at the hand of George III in the decades following American independence.

He estimated, for example, that Britain had impressed "more than twenty thousand" American sailors into its own navy. This and other actions on the part of Britain, said Schindel, represented God's punishment for the sins of the American people. But Schindel also condemned British action as an outrage that merited God's punishment in its own right. While God had sent the outrage upon America as a consequence of its sins, God also affirmed the justice of America's military response against the British crown. America's war with England, Schindel declared, was a just war sanctioned by God, and it behooved every American to support the war to its successful conclusion. Schindel called upon his hearers to recover the spirit of '76 and to act in accordance with the just purposes of a righteous God.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO
While Lutheran preaching regarding the War of 1812 illustrates immersion in the jeremiad tradition, Lutheran pronouncement regarding the War with Mexico illustrates a capacity for criticism toward the national agenda. One outspoken critic of America's action against Mexico was Samuel Simon Schmucker.
Before the start of the war, Schmucker had written: "Offensive wars, and all wars for conquest, for pecuniary claims, or for any other object whatever, except strictly wars of defence [sic] against actual invasion, we ourselves regard as improper and sinful." Schmucker perceived America's action against Mexico to be precisely this kind of improper and sinful war. He saw America acting as an invading aggressor, "spreading misery and death among the citizens of a neighboring republic." He denounced the war as incompatible with the Constitution, with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and especially with Christianity, "which," he said, "teaches us to love all men, as well as our fellow citizens; not even to exclude our enemies from the circle of our affections." Schmucker called upon Christian citizens to press for an end to the war, warning that America's continued engagement in conquest would bring the nation to ruin.

Another opponent of the war was Joseph Augustus Seiss. In a Thanksgiving Day sermon delivered in 1847 to his congregation in Cumberland, Maryland, Pastor Seiss criticized America's military action. Speaking about the moral law of God, Seiss reminded his hearers that "[t]his law prohibits murder." "Consequently," he continued, "all offensive and aggressive wars are sins against [God], and will call down his vengeance upon such nations as shall venture to wage them."

THE CIVIL WAR
Both aspects of Lutheran wartime preaching described above namely, immersion in the American jeremiad and criticism of the national agenda surfaced in Lutheran preaching with regard to the Civil War.

Northern Lutheran preachers condemned Southern secession as unlawful rebellion and all Confederates as traitors to the nation. Overwhelmingly, Northern preachers declared their support for the Union as a divinely sanctioned good. As they praised the federal Union, Northern Lutheran preachers also praised the federal Constitution. They called upon their hearers to render support for the Union and the Constitution by every means possible, including prayer, the payment of taxes, and military service.

Most preachers North and South alike argued that the war was God's punishment of the nation on account if its sins. The greatest national sin denounced by preachers in the North was slavery. Four aspects of the slavery issue received condemnation in Northern Lutheran sermons. First, Lutheran preachers condemned the practice of slavery itself. Early in 1861, Pastor Samuel Aughey told his congregation in Lionville, Pennsylvania, that slavery contradicted the principle of human equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and represented a satanic blight upon the nation. Second, Northern Lutheran preachers denounced federal laws that accommodated slavery and thereby made the entire nation, North as well as South, complicit in its sin. Third, Northern Lutherans denounced Confederate attempts to justify slavery on the basis of scripture. Finally, Northern Lutheran preachers denounced the long silence of their own and other churches over the issue of slavery, and confessed that by attempting to preserve a false peace they had probably contributed to the calamity of war.

True to the tradition of the American jeremiad, Northern Lutheran indictments of national sin yielded urgent calls for repentance and expressions of hope that God's punishment might yet turn to blessing. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, Pastor Reuben Hill assured his congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that "so long as [the] Union subserves the purposes of Providence, it will continue." "But," he asked, "what if the Union has already accomplished its design?" "What if Heaven sees fit to dissolve this Union, and destroy this government?" Hill's answer to this fearful question was an urgent summons to repentance on the part of all Americans. As the war progressed, Lutheran preachers found reasons to believe that God's favor continued to rest upon the Union. "[O]ur cause, being righteous, will triumph and triumph gloriously," said Pastor David Henlein Focht in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, in 1861. "This war will, under God, eventuate in some great and wide-spread good to us as a nation," he proclaimed a year later. "A new and more glorious day will be ushered in, and new and higher principles will cluster around our old and undying constitution."

Lutheran preaching in the South during the Civil War also exemplified the American jeremiad. On September 15, 1864, Pastor David McConaughy Gilbert preached a fast-day sermon to his congregation in Savannah , Georgia thirteen days after Sherman's troops occupied Atlanta. He spoke of "the unsparing blows which now for so long have been rained with the pitiless fury of a tempest upon this devoted people by a vindictive and relentless foe." "The Almighty," he said, "seems to have given over our foes to a blindness of heart, and a reckless fanaticism, that they might heavily punish us and at the same time sorely afflict themselves." Convinced that the South could never be utterly subdued and that the futile effort to do so would surely ruin the North, Gilbert could only surmise that God had driven the North into madness for his own purposes. But what were those purposes? Why was God punishing the South so severely? Gilbert answered as all jeremiad preachers must answer, that the punishment was a consequence of sin. He did not mean the sin of slavery, of course, for he held the Confederate cause to be just and right; instead, he referred more ambiguously to the sin of failure to honor God. Yet Gilbert expressed the same hope as every Northern preacher, that sincere repentance on the part of the people would avert God's anger and restore God's favor.
*Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).

Congregational Heritage Day Termed Successful;
More Seminars Planned

On September 19 fifty enthusiastic Lutherans came to Gettysburg Seminary to participate in the Congregational Heritage Day, sponsored by the Lutheran Historical Society. Participants had the option of attending one or more of the five concurrent seminars. The seminars provided a wide spectrum of information relevant to preserving congregational heritage.

Topics covered included archives and records management, celebrating congregational anniversaries, genealogy and church records, oral history techniques and strategies, and preserving congregational artifacts. Experienced seminar leaders worked with participants in understanding and developing effective strategies to preserve their congregations' unique traditions and history.

At lunch, Dr. Darold Beekmann, president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, provided reflections on what congregational life has meant to him in his life and ministry.

Congregational Heritage Day was an outstanding success and will be offered again in the fall of 2000.

John G. Morris Biography Available from Publisher

Members have asked how to obtain a copy of the book titled John Gottlieb Morris: Man of God, Man of Science written by Lutheran Historical Society President Michael J. Kurtz. Dr. Kurtz is also Associate Director of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

The book, which was reviewed in the Summer, 1998 issue of the Newsletter, is 218 pages, paperbound and is illustrated with prints, photographs and has a bibliography and index.

It sells for $20 per copy plus $3.50 shipping and handling (additonal $1.00 sales tax per copy if shipment is delivered in Maryland).

Orders may be sent to Allen C. Hood and Company, Inc., P.O. Box 775, Chambersburg, PA 17201. Phone number: 717 267-0867.

The United Lutheran Church in America, 1918-1962

by Robert H. Fischer, Western Springs, Illinois

E. Theodore Bachmann, with Mercia Brenne Bachmann, edited by Paul Rorem: The United Lutheran Church in America, 1918-1962. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1997. xv and 382 pp.

When Fortress Press asked Theodore Bachmann to write the history of the ULCA, it chose a lively 75-year-old with superb qualifications a professionally trained and prize-winning historian, professor in four Lutheran seminaries (Chicago-Maywood, Luther-St. Paul, Pacific-Berkeley and Sao Leopoldo, Brazil), Chief of Protestant Affairs in the Military Government in postwar Germany, longtime participant in LWF affairs and for a while member of its staff, ULCA Secretary for Theological Education.

Son of a prominent General Council and ULCA churchman, Ted was predisposed from youth to a life of loyalty to Lutheranism. In his career he not only studied the Lutheran church; he lived in it and contributed to it. More than all that: he loved it.

For eight years Ted worked diligently on the ULCA history project, but at his death in 1995 the manuscript was unfinished. That is not surprising. Mercia Brenne Bachmann rightly observes in her preface, "If the author had not known so much about the ULCA, it would not have taken him so long to write its history." We can thank Mercia and Fortress' assigned editor, Paul Rorem, for bringing the volume to completion. My guess is that Mercia could have been labelled co-author as well as co-editor.

The book has a clear and (thanks not least to Paul Rorem's judicious editorial hand) a well-proportioned structure. Since the ULCA was a reunion of three church bodies all claiming descent from the colonial-era "patriarch," Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, Ted depicts at length the historical background of "the Muhlenberg tradition" development, schisms and reconciliation (chapters 2 and 3). Then he comes to the main story.

Throughout its 44-year life the ULCA had only two presidents both remarkably gifted leaders but exercising different styles of leadership. The history thus divides naturally into two roughly equal parts: The F. H. Knubel Presidency, 1918-1944 (chaps 4-8), and the F. C. Fry Presidency, 1945-1962 (chaps. 9-12, plus "Retrospectives" an encyclopedic overview of the ULCA in 1962). These chapters consist almost entirely of summaries of the church's conventions or of the work of its boards and commissions, with frequent reference to the initiatives of the two presidents. With his well-known flair for the concrete and colorful, Ted also enlivens the ULCA story with human interest chapters.

For Ted's workmanlike job with all its commendable features I am lastingly grateful. If I now note some limitations of the work, it is not to complain. It is simply to observe that many tasks still remain for historians.

Chapter 2 on the early Muhlenberg tradition is diffuse; Tappert and George Anderson have told the story more clearly. Chapter 3 on the reunion of the separated bodies is better but weak on the General Synod.
An important question confronts Ted's main chronicles of the ULCA. Is the history of a church the same as the delineation of its corporate structure and the resume of its corporate operations? For example, is theology in the ULCA simply the thought and expression of the Executive Board and its various special commissions?

Early on, the ULCA worked free from biblical literalism, not by guidance from officialdom but the other way around: by the work of scholars like Herbert Alleman, Henry Offermann, Raymond Stamm and Elmer Flack (supported by Charles Jacobs and A. R. Wentz). Unmentioned in the book is President Knubel's opposition to the publication of the Alleman-Flack Old Testament Commentary, to avoid offending other Lutheran bodies.

How did later theologians such as Sittler, Kantonen, Heinecken, Tappert, Forell, Lazareth and Reumann become leaders? Not simply as thoroughbreds who ran around their farms until the national church called them forth to run a race. Similarly with preaching in the ULCA: what roles did Oscar Blackwelder and Paul Scherer play in American homiletics? Similarly with social thought: the role of a Bertha Paulssen? And so on. In short, living currents in all areas of the church's life need to be noted and evaluated, even apart from notice and use of them in official reports.

Personal names abound in Ted's book (see the Index of Persons). But almost all are simply attached to official posts or commission assignments very few are shown to have any other special significance. Incidently, I do complain vociferously at the inexcusable omission of a subject index. To use a comprehensive reference work like this, how am I quickly to look up any particular topic: polity, sacrament of the altar, statistical growth and mobility, etc.?

Ted's book, furthermore does not enable me to assess clearly the role and significance of the ULCA in evolving American Lutheranism, in American Protestantism, in religion-at-large in America. He takes up these subjects only where "inter-Lutheran" or "ecumenical" projects are up for decision in the ULCA. But the ULCA can be properly understood and assessed only in juxtaposition with its compeers, seen in their own right. Lutherans in 1918 were viewed from outside largely as an odd (though sizable and growing) Protestant sect, and viewed from the inside as a church just emerging (unevenly) from a self-preoccupied, defensive mentality. In 1962 they stood forth as a vigorous family claiming a place among America's mainline dominations, and sharing self-consciously in the responsibilities of leadership among the churches. A history of the ULCA ought to show how that change took place and make clear what was the specific character and role of the ULCA within that family of Lutherans.

LHS,G Shortens Its Name to "LHS"

You probably noticed that the title on the Newsletter masthead is different! That reflects a decision made on September 26 by the Society's board of directors to change the name on the organization by dropping "Gettysburg" from the title. This was not a decision made in haste. We debated the necessity of this action for over a year.

The Society's mission statement clearly states that the purpose of the Society is to "stir interest in the rich Lutheran traditions which are the foundation of the church in the Middle Atlantic and adjoining areas." While we honor and respect the Gettysburg tradition in American Lutheran history and the roles played by the Seminary and College, those who reorganized the Society in 1989 never intended the Society to be viewed as geographically limited to Gettysburg or Lutheran institutions there.

Unfortunately, as we have sought to expand the membership over time, we have encountered many people who assumed from the Society's name that our emphasis was exclusively focused on Gettysburg. This was not what was intended when we renewed the Society almost 10 years ago.

The board explored a number of options and finally determined that "The Lutheran Historical Society" was the best alternative. No geographical delimiter actually fits the territory we serve, and a number of them would have caused confusion with other Lutheran history societies. We also did not want to link our name with any existing church structure because bureaucratic structures inevitably change over time.

The board felt that the new name would eliminate any misconceptions over being geographically limited to Gettysburg, and it avoided conflicts with other historical societies. When all is said and done, our mission to serve the synods and congregations in our service area remains as firm and positive as ever.

The board hopes that this move will receive the understanding and support from the membership that has been the foundation for all the Society has achieved over the past decade.

Contact Lutheran Historical Society
You can reach LHS by mail at:
61 Seminary Ridge
Gettysburg, PA 17325

or by Email