Thursday, May 4, 2023

It is the 4th of May 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Ah yes, “May the 4th be you,” and you, Christian, respond: “And also with you” or “And with your spirit.” Or- “Quiet nerd, I came here for church history, not your star battles stuff.” Ok, fair enough.

American Lutherans, of a certain kind, can be an elusive group. Years ago, a commentator called them “remarkably unremarkable.” Having spent time in the wild with them for a long time, I can tell you that some of them kind of like it like that; a curious kind of Protestant that doesn’t always act and play with others in the same way. And, to understand this, we introduce another “father of American Lutheranism”: Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken.

Sure, The Muehlenbergs on the east coast in the 18th century have their own lineage. And the name C.F.W. Walther dominates the story of those in St Louis, Missouri, and beyond. We recently told the story of Johann Loehe- who never came to America but sponsored Lutheran missions on the American frontier (I also found out a picture of him adorns the study of our own Christopher Gillespie). But Loehe only sent missionaries because he heard a distress call- one coming from Friedrich Wyneken, a perhaps unlikely herald of Confessional Lutheranism on the American frontier.

Wyneken was born in Hannover in 1810- he would attend school at Göttingen in the time of German rationalism and higher criticism. While not thoroughly grounded in Lutheranism, he would see those as aberrant schools and head to Hälle, the one-time center of Lutheran pietism. From Hälle, he would take a call to the new world- although not quite firm in his own particular confessional status, he came to Baltimore in 1838 and found a congregation of Lutherans. But he found their adherence to the American “New Measures” disturbing. These were the ways of Charles Finney, the Methodists, and others who stressed the emotional- some say “manipulation”- of religious audiences. Shocked by this, Wyneken began to wonder if “American Lutheranism” was Lutheranism at all.

Hear one historian on this time:

“For some, warm piety and general Protestant conviction sufficed. For others, particularly a coterie of seminary students, teachers, and ministers, warm experience had proven too subjective and fleeting. They turned to the Lutheran Confessions for ballast.”

Wyneken would be a leading voice for these Lutherans in America- sometimes called “Old Lutherans” or “Confessional Lutherans.” They found unity in a strict subscription to the Book of Concord (which included the Unaltered Augsburg Confession). His writing on the subject of the need for confessional Lutherans would catch the attention of two men- C.F.W. Walther in St. Louis and Johann Loehe back in Germany.

By 1845 Wyneken was in Indiana- including a stint in Fort Wayne where he would help form a school. This seminary would relocate and merge with the Lutheran seminary in St. Louis during the Civil War, relocate to Springfield, Missouri, before heading back to Fort Wayne where it is today Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne and the alma mater of our boy Gillespie. 

In 1850 Wyneken would take a call to St. Louis, where he would serve as the second president of the newly formed Lutheran Church Missouri Synod after Walther.

Wyneken’s genius also lay in his using of some Methodist techniques regarding traveling ministers- riding in circuits and collecting erstwhile Germans and Lutherans without churches of their own. 

Wyneken’s emphasis on “confessional Lutheranism” would create a kind of “take it or leave it” approach to a theological school in a country where a “buffet style” of theology would become the norm. “Lutheran” to Wyneken and others is not primarily a sociological term or a “general flavoring” but rather fellowship based on confessional subscription. While churches with the word “Lutheran” on them today can have a good-natured debate over what it means- Friedrich Wyneken helped establish one of the predominant schools in America today- the “Confessional Lutheran” approach.

Wyneken’s last church would be Trinity Lutheran in Cleveland- he would die on this, the 4th of May in 1876. Born in 1810, he was 65 years old.

The last word for today from the daily lectionary from Genesis 12- also about a man called out to a new country:

12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 4th of May 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who, next to his picture of Loehe, hangs pictures of Thomas Stockham and Juan Valdez- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose only hanging photo in the studio is one of Gillespie- staring at me, imploring me to talk straight into the mic- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.