Lutherans

Lutherans are the followers of a denomination founded by Martin Luther following the promulgation of his Ninety-five Theses in 1517 in Saxony. Among their beliefs is the doctrine of salvation by faith alone: God provides salvation regardless of man’s good works because of his love and mercy. Luther contended that the Bible was the sole authority for faith. In addition, he rejected all of the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church except for baptism and the Eucharist, and even his view of the latter differed from the traditional Roman Catholic interpretation. Other beliefs that contributed to the schism included the denial of the validity of indulgences, purgatory, and papal power.

Lutheranism came to the British colonies mainly from Germany and Scandinavia. The first Lutherans to settle

Permanently in the New World arrived from Holland in 1623. Although colonists established a congregation in New Amsterdam in 1649, Lutherans in the region did not experience freedom of worship until the English took over New York in 1664. In the meantime, Swedish Lutherans established the colony of New Sweden in present-day Delaware.

While Lutherans settled throughout the Middle and Southern colonies, Pennsylvania was the focal point of their settlement. The first churches established by German immigrants were small and poor, often without pastors. Because the German settlers were unfamiliar with the responsibilities of voluntarism (in which congregation members voluntarily provided funds rather than depending on taxes), they often confronted problems with obtaining ordained clergy and supporting individual church buildings.

The lack of clergy sometimes resulted in schoolmasters performing the duties of a minister, ultimately contributing to provincial and continental religious officials expressing concern for the conditions of the parishioners. In the early 1730s several Pennsylvania congregations began requesting regular pastors from the Lutheran court preacher in London. The lack of a response to these queries by 1740 forced German Lutherans to ask the king of Sweden for assistance. These requests were finally heeded when Henry Melchior Muhlenberg accepted the call.

Muhlenberg’s arrival guaranteed the success of the Lutheran denomination in the colonies, as his presence preserved many of the rural congregations in Pennsylvania from succumbing to the overtures of the Moravian leader Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. In 1748 Muhlenberg organized the pastors and congregations of the Middle Colonies into the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania, the first Lutheran synod in America. By the end of the colonial period, almost 250 Lutheran congregations were established in the British colonies, 11 of which were Swedish. Four-fifths of the adherents were German. Many of the Swedish Lutheran congregations eventually were assimilated into the Anglican Church. The German Lutherans became the antecedents of the varied Lutheran synods of modern times.

Further reading: A. G. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).

—Karen Guenther