Outside of German Protestantism, Wilhelm Löhe (1808–72) is not well-known. Löhe was a Franconian village pastor, a nineteenth-century churchman inspired by Lutheran confessional renewal, who as a theologian and liturgical scholar had a worldwide significance. He was particularly respected for establishing institutions of mercy, focusing liturgical renewal in eucharistic piety and for missional outreach to German immigrants to North America and Australia. This collection of sixteen essays is the result of the second gathering of the International Loehe Society which met in Neuendettelsau, Germany, in 2008. Contributors include Manfred Seitz, Thomas Schattauer, Christian Weber, Klaus Raschzok, John Pless, Wolfhart Schlichting, Dietrich Blaufuss, Rudolf Keller, Jobst Reller, Lothar Vogel, Hans Schwarz, Jürgen Albert, Theodor Strohm, Craig Nessan and Martin Lohrmann. Naturally the essays focus on those matters most important to Löhe, such as liturgics, congregational renewal, missionary outreach, ameliorating social inequities and nurturing church life in the frontiers of North America and Australia. Essays which especially merit attention include that of Manfred Seitz who notes that since doctrine and life for Löhe are thoroughly intertwined, the Church's faith is to govern the direction and content of the worship service (p. 46). In a similar vein, Thomas Schattauer notes that, suprisingly, Löhe adopted the metaphor of dance in his attempt to reclaim Christian assembly as communion:

In response to the two-fold challenge to address the social needs of both his parishioners and North American German emigrants, Löhe advocated practising Church as communio, grounding the Church's social life in the nurturing liturgical life of the lord's supper (p. 63). Klaus Raschzok comments that Löhe's robust ecclesiology required no hierarchicalisation within the office of the ministry, since that office is grounded neither in an episcopate nor in the call of the congregation but instead in God, who offers it as a service for the sake of reconciliation with God and with one another (p. 108). In his essay, Hans Schwarz claims that Löhe maintained that the Christian commitment to care for peoples' physical well-being arises from a sound spirituality, similar to Luther's contention that love for others results from faith in God. For Löhe, a concrete response to the need for social mercy led to his renewal of a deaconess movement, women called to serve people in need. Similarly, Jürgen Albert compares Löhe's work to that of Johann Wichern who also sought to reclaim social ministry for the nineteenth-century Church. This book is highly recommended for scholars interested in modern German church history, liturgics and social ministry.