Mark Granquist of Luther Seminary in Minnesota has written a cultural and institutional history of Lutherans in America that bids fair to become the standard work on this subject. While he describes the book as a “history of Lutheran people in America” in which institutions are “not the main focus,” there is an extraordinary amount of institutional detail woven into the narrative as the author deftly navigates these complexities (along with the many institutional acronyms, most of which contain the letter L!). The overarching concern of the book is how Lutherans responded to the cultural realities and changes of the American experience, and Granquist is careful to place developments within their broader cultural context.
The volume is divided into twelve chapters with an epilogue. The method of organization is diachronic, beginning with the European backgrounds before moving to the earliest colonial Lutheran presence in the New World and then forward to the present. Each chapter has an “Excursus” appended, which further explores a particular topic or figure. Consistent with his focus on people, Granquist includes quite a number of intriguing personal vignettes, and devotes significant attention to the experience of women and African-Americans.
The earliest Lutheran presence in America stemmed from Danish, Swedish, and Dutch colonial efforts, followed by German immigration into New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina. They were leaving European state-church contexts where university training of ministers was the norm. How would these immigrant Lutherans navigate what Granquist calls the “contextual transition” to a voluntary denominational market where ministers were in desperately short supply, and where English rather than German or Swedish predominated?
Early on the narrative is dominated by individuals, some of them vivid personalities, who sought to build the Lutheran presence in America and minister to far-flung congregations. Key was the arrival from Germany in 1742 of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, who combined the Pietism of Halle with a churchly regard for the Augsburg Confession, and who desired to build the American church on Lutheran principles of ministry and worship. Granquist rightly speaks of Muhlenberg as “the recognized leader of most colonial Lutherans and the architect of their transition to becoming a truly American religious tradition” (72).
Lutherans in the early national period faced numerous challenges. With the need to minister on the frontiers of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the shortage of ministers led to the approval of alternative ministry forms such as non-ordained catechists and licentiates. Rising democratic sentiment led to greater roles for the laity in congregations. Ministry in the English language increased—more quickly in South Carolina and New York, and less quickly in Pennsylvania where the concentration of German speakers was higher. The greatest theological challenge to traditional Lutheran conceptions of ministry, however, was American revivalism, and so-called “American Lutherans,” such as Samuel Schmucker of Gettysburg Seminary, even wanted to amend the Augsburg Confession along lines more congenial to evangelical protestantism.
Countering this “Americanist” impulse was the rising Lutheran confessionalism on the part of those who wanted a more distinctly Lutheran identity. Massive immigration from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century brought more confessionally-minded Lutherans, and later in the century Scandinavian Lutherans of a pietist bent arrived. Many of these immigrants settled in the Midwest. The Lutheran presence in America was becoming more diverse and geographically dispersed, and this diversity was reflected in church structures—especially synods founded along lines of geographical, ethnic, linguistic, and confessional affinity. By 1875 there were upwards of 60 independent Lutheran synods, along with a variety of umbrella organizations.
Moving into the twentieth century, the time was ripe for both consolidation and further enculturation. A number of important mergers occurred between 1892 and 1918, and by the 1920s Lutherans were divided into about ten denominations. The linguistic transition to worship in English was also largely complete by this time. Lutherans were moving into the mainstream of American society, but they by and large remained socially conservative.
Lutherans fully participated in the vast expansion of American religion after 1945. Consolidation continued after the Second World War, and by 1963 most American Lutherans were members of only three major denominations—the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Then, in 1988 the first two of these groups merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Granquist plausibly suggests that this drive to form larger denominations reflected the American cultural preoccupation with big organizations and efficiency, and that this process was completed at just the time that the broader culture was shifting away from this. Furthermore, this process of consolidation was completed at a time when Americans were increasingly conflicted about matters of sexuality and politics. These and other factors made the formation of the ELCA rocky, and the first years of the twenty-first century saw the “largest Lutheran schism since the 1860s” as more conservative Lutherans left the ELCA over issues of sexuality and confession. The author concludes that a “grand narrative” involving “institutional arrangements” is ending (349), and he suggests that Lutherans need to find “creative ways to reappropriate their theological and spiritual traditions” and “refocus and recommit to the service of local congregations as the core of their purpose” (357).
As one who comes from a somewhat different protestant tradition, this reviewer found the volume both accessible and engaging. The author is also scrupulously fair in his characterizations of figures and issues. A minor quibble is that more theological explanation at points would be helpful. For example, it would be useful to know more about P. P. Waldenström's controversial view of the atonement (187) and the impact of the twentieth-century “Luther Renaissance” on American Lutheranism (281). Also, at various points interaction between Lutherans and German Reformed people is mentioned, but there is no mention of the Mercersburg Theology of John Nevin and Philip Schaff, who had extensive (and complicated) interactions with the “American Lutherans” at nearby Gettysburg. None of this, however, detracts substantially from what is an elegantly written and essential volume.
