ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CH3-054 PROFESSOR LAWRENCE RAST PROFESSOR WILL SCHUMACHER Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 ***** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***** >> PAUL: So culture and language were defining features. I can't say that this surprises me. What kinds of issues did English-speaking confessional Lutherans face that distinguished them from the Missouri Synod? >> DR. WILL SCHUMACHER: Thanks for the question, Paul. Speaking English in 19th century Lutheranism meant that these groups lacked many of the theological resources that were available to Lutherans that worked in other languages such as German. By theological resources I mean dogmatic texts, sermon books, devotional materials, hymnals, liturgies, and so forth. English-speaking Lutherans were faced with the task of either translating works from German or Norwegian or Swedish or producing their own, or, in many cases, borrowing and adapting from other English-speaking churches. So English liturgies in the Lutheran Church were largely borrowed and adapted from Anglican liturgies. That was more common than producing new ones or from scratch and also more common than translating texts from German. So English-speaking Lutherans did lack some of the theological resources that were available to German-speaking or other European Lutherans. For example, the Book of Concord had been available, of course, in German and Latin since the 16th century. But this published in English only in 1851. And that's an interesting story in itself. This is the middle of the 19th century. The publication of The Book of Concord in English in America was a tremendously significant event. Now Lutherans really had their central doctrinal documents available in English for the first time. The translation wasn�t perfect. But it was at least available. This wasn't done by the Missouri Synod, of course. The Missouri Synod functioned in German. This was published by the Henkel Press. The Henkels were an old Lutheran family from colonial times that had been instrumental in starting the North Carolina Synod and then later the Tennessee Synod. They'd been in America for a long time. They'd been assimilated and were by now, although they were German in ancestry, they were by now English-speaking Lutherans. But these were Lutherans that had a great deal of sympathy and common ground with the doctrinal position of the Missouri Synod and were very serious about the Lutheran confessions and undertook this task of translating the Book of Concord. So that finally did appear in 1851. But beyond that, there was always a lack of solid confessional Lutheran material available in English. Using English for Lutherans also meant that even these confessional English-speaking Lutherans were much closer in daily contact with the surrounding culture than their German or Norwegian or Danish or Swedish brothers in the faith. What I mean is they would always run the risk to their theology of being influenced by the theology and ideas of English-speaking churches, Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians or Anglicans or the many varieties of revivalists that were at work in the American West. And that these trends and tendencies and ideas that crept in from other English-speaking churches might actually erode and filter into English-speaking Lutheran churches. So that was a challenge that was faced by English-speaking Lutherans. But there was always the tendency or temptation to absorb and adapt theological ideas from other English-speaking churches that would not necessarily be compatible with a genuinely Lutheran stance. Involvement in English-speaking American culture was also viewed as risky for other reasons. At least, it was viewed as risky from the perspective of the German-speaking Missouri Synod. There were moral or cultural issues on which the Missouri Synod and some others made a clear distinction between themselves and the prevailing American culture. And that distinction was always easier to maintain when the Missouri Synod spoke German and the surrounding culture spoke English. Some aspects in which the Missouri Synod distinguished itself from the surrounding culture were things like insurance, life insurance, fire insurance. These were opposed by the early Missouri Synod, and that was easier to maintain when the synod lived as a German-speaking ethnic enclave. But these were much more of a challenge for English-speaking Lutherans who were in daily contact with this wider American culture. Banking and financial life were viewed as morally and theologically risky and suspect by the Missouri Synod. That wasn't such an issue because not many of the Missouri Synod members were bankers. But for English-speaking Lutherans, as I say, they were swimming in the larger culture and were constantly confronted with such ideas. These cultural boundaries between Lutherans and the prevailing culture were always easier to maintain when they were reinforced by boundaries created by an exclusive use of German or some other non-English language. English-speaking Lutherans had to confront these issues in slightly different ways and always ran the risk of being influenced by the culture as much as they were influencing the culture. ***** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *****