Black Geneva Piety

On episode TWENTY-NINE of Let the Bird Fly! the guys welcome back Rev. Dr. Mark Braun. If you’re a regular listener to the show, you will remember Dr. Braun from Episodes 5 and 14, where he discussed The Time Between the Testaments and his book The Tale of Two Synods, respectively. (If you haven’t listened to those episodes yet, what are you waiting for?) This time around Dr. Braun joins the guys to discuss his paper The Black Geneva Piety of the Wisconsin Synod (if you’d like to read the essay, we are grateful to The Lutheran Historical Conference for allowing us to post it on our site, you can find it here). Before getting to a discussion of the question of the “proper” attire for the pastor on Sunday morning, Dr. Braun and the guys take a trip through American Lutheranism in the 20th century. The alphabet soup of American Lutheranism can be a bit dizzying, but for those who enjoy inside baseball talk about Lutheran organizations it’s a bit like catnip. We even manage to spend some time on Seminex! (Wade couldn’t find the exact video he mentioned in the episode, but he did find this newsreel footage from Seminex. And there’s more out there if you’re interested.) But even if you find your head spinning at the beginning of the discussion, we think you’ll find it well worth the effort as we get to discussing recent history of the black Geneva gown, the alb, the surplus, and so much more in American Lutheranism.

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Thanks for listening!

Attributions for Music Used in this Episode:

• “The Last One” by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
• “Horses to Water” by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena
• “Gib laut” by Dirk Becker is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.
• “Whistling Down the Road” by Silent Partner
• “Not Drunk” by The Joy Drops is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International License.