The Origin of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

Newsletter article for October 2002

© 2002 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

In Germany in the mid-Nineteenth century there arose what could be called a “confessional movement” in the Lutheran Church. These people believed that the Historical Lutheran confessions of faith (collectively known as the Book of Concord) are a true explanation of God’s Word (The Holy Bible). It is sad (but accurate) to say that this movement arose, because the only way it could have arisen is that some time in the three centuries since the days of Martin Luther the faithfulness to God’s Word had receded, even in the very land that Luther began the reformation of the Church.

The problem was that the Reformed (Calvinist) churches had made large inroads into the Church in Germany, and in some instances they won the hearts and minds of the German people. In other instances the Reformed church won the heart and mind of the rulers, and that was all that was necessary. In the German province of Prussia, King Friedrich Wilhelm III decreed a union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia, despite the fact that Prussia was overwhelmingly Lutheran. The resulting church was more Reformed, and less Lutheran, and faithful Lutherans had to struggle to keep their Churches free from the false teachings of Calvin.

In the 1830’s a pastor named Martin Stephan began to attract a following in Saxony. Pastor Stephan was a faithful Lutheran whose sermons were very faithful to Holy Scripture. He was very outspoken against the humanistic ideals of the age which undermined the authority of God’s Word, and he was a very effective leader. In 1838 he organized a group of several hundred faithful Lutherans (including several pastors) who believed that the only way they could openly worship God faithfully was to emigrate to America. They sold all they had and left their homes to set sail for America in five ships, the Amalia, the Copernicus, the Johann Georg, the Republik, and the Olbers. Tragically, the Amalia was lost at sea along with her 57 passengers, but 600 people arrived in Missouri in early 1839 on the remaining four ships.

Not long after they arrived it was discovered that Pastor Stephan had committed adultery with two young women and he was banished from their communities, taken across the Mississippi in a rowboat, and told never to set foot in Missouri again. The community was in quite a bit of turmoil wondering if they had sinned by following Stephan to America, and they wondered if they could be considered a Church now that their “Bishop” had proved unworthy and unfaithful. A young pastor named Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther diligently searched the Bible, the Book of Concord, and the writings of Martin Luther and determined that the misbehavior of their bishop did not invalidate their position in the church, because the church is not determined by people and their actions, but by Christ Himself, and His Word. Where Christ is, and where His Word is preached in truth and purity, there is the church. Rev. C.F.W. Walther soon became their spiritual leader and he became the first president of what would later become the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

The Lutherans in Missouri wanted to ensure the purity of their doctrine so they decided to conduct their worship and teaching in German. There were two reasons for this. First they saw that nearly all of the Lutherans who had settled in America previously had compromised their doctrine and were no longer teaching the pure Word of God, and were no longer faithful to the Book of Concord. The Previous American Lutherans had become “Americanized” rather than remaining “Lutheran” and the Missouri group attributed this to the use of the English language. The English reformation begun by King Henry VIII had followed a more Calvinist theology so the prevailing English expressions of the Christian faith (i.e. hymns and liturgical forms) reflected a theology which did not live up to the strict standards of the orthodox Lutheran teachings. On the other hand, by 1840 the Lutheran Church in Germany had already spent 300 years of teaching the Gospel and defining the terms (in German) and defending the faith against false teaching. Although this did not prevent enforced unionism in Prussia, nor did it prevent humanism from affecting others in Germany, they felt confident that holding to the German language would help keep their group from compromising the faith.

This desire for the purity of doctrine through the use of the German language was believed to be of the utmost importance. The desire was so strong that for nearly the first one hundred years of our Church’s existence German was the official language of worship and theological instruction from the Seminaries on down to the elementary schools. It took World War I (and American distrust of German speaking folk) to get the LCMS to begin to change to English on a large scale, and by the time of World War II the LCMS had mostly become an English speaking church. This reluctance to embrace English wasn’t just stereotypical German hard-headedness, but this was a recognition of the importance of the pure and proper teaching of God’s Word, and faithfulness to God.

In some ways we have come full circle. Fortunately Martin Stephan’s indiscretions were not a pattern of things to come. There have been other Lutheran pastors who have fallen into the sin of adultery, but these are usually dealt with properly, and it is not a pattern in our Church. The Church still must constantly be on guard against false teaching. This is not new. It has been true for each of the 150 years that the LCMS has been in existence, and even longer than that. The church has always had to be on guard against false teaching even since Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. There is never a time nor a reason to be complacent about false teaching. The devil still prowls around like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour. If he can get people to put their faith in themselves or in anything other than Christ then he will do so. The Gospel is of the utmost importance because it shows us Jesus Christ, and when we see Jesus for who He is, then we will believe and be saved. Christ is our life and our salvation, and there is none other. Let us hold fast to the truth, and pray that the church does the same.