ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CH3-061 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: In American history, the half century from 1900 to 1950 was one of great change in both a positive and negative sense. This must have had an impact on the churches in our country. What were the noteworthy developments in the history of the Missouri Synod during this time? >> DR. WILL SCHUMACHER: Well, Paul, you seem to have a knack for asking the really big questions. You're right, the first half of the 20th century has reshaped the world that we live in to an amazing extent. It's impossible to overestimate the difference between the world of the 19th century in which the Missouri Synod was formed and the world we live in today, and the bridge that brought us to the modern world that we live in today was that first half of the 20th-century. We could spend a whole course just on that 50 years without any difficulty. There's so much going on and so many factors. I think for purposes of answering you in a fairly brief way, I'd like to point to just a few events and trends that were absolutely decisive for the development of the Missouri Synod, and not only for us, but for others as well. First of all, within the Missouri Synod, I'll refer you back to that transition from German to English. That entire transition took place during this period that you�re asking about, this first half of the 20th-century. Imagine, if you will, what it would mean if during the first half of the 21st century the Missouri Synod underwent a transformation from an English-speaking church body to a Spanish-speaking church body. Imagine that by the year 2050 the Missouri Synod were to be an exclusively Spanish-speaking church body with a few congregations here and there that still had English services. That's the kind of huge change that we're talking about in the transformation of the synod in the first half of the 20th-century. It's hard to overestimate how important that was. Connected with that, but operating at a slightly different level, I would say the synod as other churches, too, was impacted by the two world wars, especially by the First World War As I said earlier when talking about that transition from German to English, in World War I, German was the language of the enemy, the language of the Kaiser, the language of the Hun. There was a lot of nationalistic and patriotic propaganda that tended to demonize the Germans and the German language. And there were even legal measures taken to discourage the use of German as much as possible. That clearly had a profound effect on a largely German ethnic church body like the Missouri Synod. But it also had a broader impact in the society in the way people thought of themselves. There was a movement in the early 20th century in America against what they call hyphenated Americans. That is, it became very unpopular to identify yourself as a German-American or an Italian-American or an Irish-American. The pressures of the War dictated that what we should emphasize was simply our Americanness. So I'm not a German-American anymore; I'm an American. I'm not an Italian-American; I'm just an American. And this pressure to identify ourselves unambiguously as Americans first and anything else second certainly had an impact on members of the Missouri Synod because they had thought of themselves as German-Americans up to this point. So there's this kind of informal social pressure that's applied that transforms our identity and creates a new American national identity in the minds of people. That certainly had ramifications for the Missouri Synod as it did for other church bodies. World War II, especially after the United States entered it, certainly emphasized this national identity as well. But by that time, the Missouri Synod had been transformed and no longer was identified as a German church body. So World War I was really more influential for the Missouri Synod then World War II. But both world wars transformed our country in important ways that impinge on the life of the Missouri Synod. Like many other churches during this period, this first half of the 20th century, the Missouri Synod began to develop much of the present day organizational structure and bureaucracy, if you will. People are often surprised to learn that throughout most of the Missouri Synod�s history, the official mailing address of the synod was the home address of the synodical president. Even during the administration of John Behnken, the letterhead of the Missouri Synod had his home address as the mailing address of the synod. Pfotenhauer was the first synodical president that actually did that job full-time. Before him, up until 1911, the presidents of the Missouri Synod had performed their duties as president of the synod in addition to their real job which might have been pastor or professor at a seminary or something like that. Pfotenhauer, though, worked full-time as did all his successors. But there wasn't much in the way of a full-time institutional machinery to support that work. The synod didn't have much centralized structure and full-time offices. The synod had no board of directors until 1917. Many of its other boards and commissions came into existence during this first half of the 20th century. And the auxiliary organizations that helped support its work, the Lutheran Laymen's League and the Lutheran Women's Missionary League came into existence during this time of the early 20th century. A way to sum this up is to say that during the first half of the 20th century, the Missouri Synod came to look like an American denomination and to emphasize the central synodical structures to a greater extent than had previously been the case. In the earliest days of the synod, the congregation was where the action was. The congregation was central to everything that the synod did. Later on toward the end of the 19th century, the districts became very important in the life of the synod and the sort of crucial places where the planning and coordination of the synodical work was done. In the early 20th century, the synod, as a collective body, becomes much more prominent. And by the end of that period, you have for the first time a synodical office and a permanent staff and you're no longer running the work of the synod out of the president of the synod's home. The institution, the organization had a clearly outgrown that kind of operation. So the synod as a denomination emerges in recognizable form during this first half of the 20th century. That sounds like a kind of bureaucratic organizational answer, but that has, I think, changed our church life in important ways. And it remains to be seen what the next phase of our development will be. But that first half of the 20th century certainly gave birth to the synod as a denomination that we know today. ***** 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. *****