TLHP 42 "We have joined the Synod of Muehlhaeuser"- Early Laity WELS Perspectives Part I

Image: Regina, Veronica and Frank Kerler
"I prefer America," one German Lutheran immigrant wrote. Letters of German Lutheran immigrants in 19th century America give under-analyzed perspectives of lay members and their views of church establishment and denominational selection.

Transcript

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This episode, we'll be one of the other non standard traditional episodes for this podcast. Although it has become more or less a feature of this podcast, where I will simply present some of the original research I have done myself, I'll just talk my way through it. This is similar to the Winnacunnet a catechism episode. A couple of reasons why I've done this is well, first of all, no one's really complained about it. Me just talking about some work I've done on my own, and the stats for episode views. They aren't necessarily the most popular episodes, but they're kind of in the high average, as far as listens and downloads I get for these. So I'm not totally discouraged about presenting my own research, you can give me feedback at any time through the email that we have out there on our description for each episode, or through our Facebook page. I do not check that very often. I'm not really on Facebook that much anymore, but you can always reach out to me for feedback. So today's episode, we'll be discussing the content of a project I first presented several years ago to the American, or the German American Historical Society, gave at one of their online conferences when we were able to do everything on Zoom. So living in Alaska, that was kind of nice when I could attend conferences via zoom without traveling 1000s of miles and really messing up the rest of my schedule. So I presented that, at that time, a couple years ago. And now, this very month of January 2023. If you are subscribed to the Concordia Historical Institute, you could see the polished published article paper version of this presentation, the presentation with a slightly different audience, I discussed perhaps more of the immigrant aspects, obviously through the lens of the religious perspective. And for our listeners and audience in the Lutheran history area, focusing more on religion, or what am I talking about here? This presentation is titled either I prefer America taking a direct quote from our subject, or we have joined the Senate of mule Heiser. This is an examination of religions role in some groups of families who emigrated from Germany, to the United States, mostly settling in the Greater Milwaukee Area in Wisconsin, but also in the Saginaw area of Michigan. And it's a collection of hundreds of letters, describing all aspects of life. Now that to get too ahead of myself, some of these letters had been analyzed previously, but the historians looking at this was more back in the 1970s. And they were interested in the socio economic aspects, which obviously have a role to play in, in immigration. But what I found interesting was that these letters noted, at least for some of these people, the primary reason for immigrating from Germany, to America was out of concerns for the political instability concerning the revolutions of 1848. But also their concern about the religious situation they didn't like, some of the threats happening to them, or at least the instability of religion in Germany, perhaps unionism, and so on. And they decided to have the free expression of worship here in America, and that angle hadn't up and analyzed yet. So that is what I'm going to be talking about today, my analysis, what I found in both my presentation that I that I presented there, as well as the paper itself, I'll be using the PowerPoint slides from that presentation I made several years ago as my outline. I'm going to be off script a little bit, just sharing my thoughts and reflections. So I found this project to be particularly interesting, for a couple of reasons. And that being first of all, that normally when you think of church histories, what comes first, to your mind, what, what's the content? What's the focus? I usually think of the dates of when the constitution of either a congregation or a synod was ratified. And you think about well, what did the Senate do and that usually comes from either the biographical narratives of Usually the church leaders primarily the pastors or missionaries, and then also the minutes from meetings, especially cinematical meetings. And then maybe a third common source would be newspapers, and I've talked about that and other topics as well. And there you do definitely get some laity perspective. But it's still that the public published thoughts of people, even if they're sending an editorial like letters, they're speaking intentionally to a broader audience. For the most part, the different thing about this collection and this analysis is that these are hundreds of private letters between family members and friends, just discussing life as they see it. They're not trying to discuss church history, or really understand their role in history, or they're not getting deep into the theology of, of the church. They're simply living out their faith and describing it. And not that the other sources aren't honest at all. But this just shows another aspect that's often been under looked. The laity is perspective. So the main question I asked, why did this group of German Lutheran immigrants mostly join the Senate of mule Heiser, which is, of course, today, the Wisconsin Senate, it was called already the Wisconsin Senate. But it's interesting how they call it mule hazers Synod rather than its official name, the German Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Senate or something to that effect. So another reason why I'd like to bring up this topic today is not only is it easier for me as a podcaster, instead of setting up a schedule and dealing with bad internet that's in Alaska with my guests, which is frustrating to me, and to them, I'm sure I get to just do this on my own time on my own schedule. But the more important reason why I would like to present this particular topic is because recently I've just been asked to sit on a committee to help plan and celebrate the Wisconsin Senate's 175th anniversary, which will be observed in the year 2025. So that is something that I think is really relevant to this, considering this is the lay perspective on the very, very early years of the Senate, and why would people join the Senate? So I may repeat myself in some of those points, asking these questions, why would they join the Senate, but I think that's the real focus and the real benefit of this research. So without any further ado, let me just give you a brief overview of the people that we're talking about here. The people are generally described as the Franks or the carolers. These are the two last names. They were joined by marriage, and also by geography, but they were spread out. I won't go through every single family member. There are dozens of them, but there's some main speakers here. You have John caroler, or Johan caroler. Senior who lives in Greenfield Wisconsin or emigrated there. His son John Keller, Jr, who's kind of a wild cannon so to speak. We have his son Edward and his wife Matilda, they also live in Greenfield. Then one of the main speakers we have is also August, and Veronica caroler. But August is a frog or a frank. So he is this couple is the connection between the Franks and the carolers August caroler. And Veronica Frank. They live close to the caroler branch in Greenfield but they live in Milwaukee. Then you have Henry and Regina Frank and Greenfield and Lewis and Wilhemina caroler. In Greenfield so the character clan stuck mostly together in the Greater Milwaukee area. In Michigan, we have some of the Frank family give Edward bark who married Christiana Frank living in Saginaw, and he of William and Sophia Seifert, living in Saginaw area. Sophia was a frank daughter. So we see there are one Frank or there's one Frank son and two Frank daughters that are some of the main players here. The so the patriarch of the caroler family came to America, Johan caroler. Senior Living in Greenfield, but the patriarch and matriarch of the frunk family stayed in Germany. And this is why we have an abundance of material because the Franks are mostly writing letters to their parents, at least that's where we get a lot of these early letter collections, and they were preserved and then assembled a little over 100 years ago. So the father, the patriarch of the Frank family is a Lutheran pastor Johann Heinrich Frank. He is technically a Gelish. Pastor, there's a church union. He's living in DL DT Ligon, but his orientation is still Lutheran that says identity. He's a Lutheran within the union. It's not depression union is that living in pressure? But some of these other German states mimicked that that unionism. So if you're familiar with it unionism topic of merging, reformed and Lutheran, that's some of the context here. Then there's another non family member who is an important correspondent, Karolina wryneck, who lives in Michigan. And she is a friend of especially Veronica caroler. Frank, and she discusses religion quite frequently. So that's just a brief overview of less than a dozen figures. There are many others. But we'll be hearing from all of these people. Now these letters were assembled. In a book titled German American pioneers in Wisconsin and Michigan, the Frank caroler letters with the dates 1849 through 1864. So if you're looking for the prime founding years of the Wisconsin Senate, you could not get a pretty much better spread than that, the the year that the Senate leaders first met, and then the first 15 years of the sentence development, not quite leading up to the formation of this fanatical conference, but there's enough going on, to give us plenty to work with. There were 45 Total individual letter writers during that year span, it's a collection of over 500 Family Letters. Now, of course, these are all originally in German. But in 1911, Louis Fronk, obviously a descendant of the frunk family, collected these letters, he transcribed them, which is the process of turning that difficult handwriting into the printed form. And then he published it in a book. So you can I think it's on Google Books, or somewhere online, you can find the German version of this, if you wanted to have all for free, the copyright has expired. So I'll just briefly mention here how important it is that Lewis Frank did this for several reasons. First of all, to have such a massive family letter collection in and of itself is rare. I would love it. If any of my ancestors had 500 Family Letters collected in any form. I'm lucky to find a dozen from even my great grandparents, it's pretty rare to have that including some of my ancestors who were a little more public figures, especially in the Lutheran church, there's less of their own words who were leaders of synods than the the slave family just to put that into perspective. So this is a treasure trove just for the volume of information. It's also a treasure. And this is more as a historian, a researcher speaking here, it's a treasure because Lewis Frank did the yeoman's work, so to speak of transcribing all of this work. If you've ever looked at German handwriting from the 19th century, the 18th 1800s, or there abouts, you'll notice that the handwriting style was totally different from what it is today it is almost looks like shorthand. Sometimes the letters are not very clear, they do not correspond to the modern Latin alphabet that the Germans use today. It's real detective work to figure that out. So the fact that he transcribed it made this accessible. And then, even more accessible is that in 1971, a little over 50 years ago, the Milwaukee Historical Society printed a translation of all these letters. So now even though I probably could get the work done, just in the transcribed German form, it would still take a lot longer for me, but now it's accessible to literally any modern American Lutheran who's who's obviously going to speak English. So it's a it's a wonderful resource that I don't think has been cited very often. So I think it's an under minded, untapped resource. So how has this been used in history? I'll just give a little context here. Before we get into the content. Right away, there are some book reviews. German American Studies highlighted that, oh, this is a good example. It shows the contribution of the Germans who built the Midwest well that the Yankees maybe built New England and the East Coast, really, the Midwest would not exist today without the Germans. So this is kind of the still trying to put the Germans on the map as a main contributor to society trying to be accepted by broader American culture. And if you think about the year 1911 That's kind of the high watermark, you might say, or there abouts of, of German Americanism being its own distinct and popular movements in America because by 1914 1817, especially, being a German in America, or most parts of the Western world was not a popular thing, and it never really recovered from the World Wars. Others noted and has insights into economic history that shows family life and private life, which isn't normally published, and overall underlines and highlights the importance of German American citizens. Other brief catalog descriptions noted that it has An excellent insights into contemporary political questions didn't really discuss them, though. Then when the 1971 Translation came out, and noted many valuable insights on women Health, Labor, urban versus rural society issues, politics, the Civil War, agricultural practices and economics, so all hot button issues for historians of general but also issues that were getting a lot more attention with idea of social histories and the issues that were important in the 1970s, and still are focused on today. But as I mentioned earlier, noticeably lacking was the aspect of religion as being a significant aspect of these letters, even though it is very prominent in these letters. So I'll begin with a brief quote here, from the patriarch of the caroler family talking about this decision, yeah, John are Johan caroler, he says, I would prefer the civilized culture to Germany to America, if it were still in its former orderly condition. But as it has turned out recently, and with the threatening prospects for the future of religion and politics, I prefer America. And he wrote this, I believe, to a cousin. And the first year he was here in America in 1849. Now to be a little clearer, and a little fair, there was one person who noticed the religious aspect of this collection, and it'd be none other than John Philip killer of Wisconsin Lutheran seminary, he is not very well known outside of the Wisconsin Synod circles. And that's probably fair, I don't know if he needs to be that well known outside of those circles, but he is, I believe, one of those figures of the famous Wauwatosa theology, which is a whole nother topic, but he is a player in that, but for any wells historian, the somewhat small group of people, and admittedly, He is noted for writing, the first and really only in depth overview history of the Wisconsin Senate that relies heavily on primary sources. There have been other histories of the Wisconsin Senate and I believe there's another one in the works not by me, but by someone else. I will no doubt have a lot of primary sources but around the 75th anniversary of the senator, so he produced a history of the Senate. So JP Kaler also wrote a review of the Frank Kaler letters and it's important to note that while the primary sources for church history, including his own were primarily Senate meetings and reports and church newspapers, he says that in the Frank Kaler letters, he says, quote, one learns the beginnings of our Synod, and its denominational relatives, some things that would otherwise remain unknown. So kind of putting it passively. He's saying, there's some important stuff in here that we would never be able to know without this source material. So he noted that while many contemporary commentators focused the pastor on Franken bottom, he believed that one of the lay people in America in fact one of the women, one of the wives of the one of the Frank sons, Veronica Kaler, to him summarize the focal point of the collection, killer said of Veronica, when studying history, the main thing is not the external development of external conditions, but the development of human beings in their innermost being. And here, one can see in Veronica, that in spite of very primitive cultural conditions, an outstanding subtle, quiet, pious character was formed, all because God's word was the main concern of this group. So that clearly is a major focus for for Kaler that she was able to give such a valuable insight into the the private but sincere religious life of these immigrants, the people who really formed the backbone. They were the whole body of of the Wisconsin Synod. It wasn't the pastors alone, but obviously they were serving hundreds and 1000s of people and without their needs. Without their support, the Senate wouldn't even exist. So just to give another context for our discussion today, is that these families are important because they're also pioneer members and organizers of three of the earliest congregations and the Wisconsin Synod when it was founded in 1850. They're members of Quintus de Grace downtown in Milwaukee, and our first wells churches in Racine and Greenfield. So just their location is valuable. And their correspondence, as noted, describes both private faith and public worship, as well as some of the leading figures of the Senate. We get, what did people really think about Neil Heiser and Some of the other pastors, they ended up rejecting some pastors in some sentence but gravitating toward towards others. I think that's a really important question. This isn't exactly church shopping, so to speak, it was church forming. They were forming their congregations, they were making fundamental decisions about their identity, and their purpose. And all of these important questions they never really had to consider in Germany, just being born into the community that already had churches there for hundreds, if not 1000s of years in some areas. They just kind of congrat and go on autopilot, more or less and have a spiritual system in place for them, but immigrating to the frontier in America, they had to do a lot of serious thinking about identity and purpose. So as much as As JP Kaler said, This is great. These guys have such a great insight to our synod's history. And his massive tome, the history of the Wisconsin Synod, he would include just two paragraphs on the Frank killers. And I would have liked it perhaps, if he would have woven in their perspectives. You know, he's telling the processes and what was going on. He said, Oh, by the way, Veronica Kaler says this about this or Frank, the Frank family says that, but he just kind of isolates them and just summarizes them as their own little blurb. And it gets back to his more traditional church history talking about clergy and doctrine and organization, which, obviously are important things. But to a modern reader, it may be seems kind of odd, the way he just kind of slaps him in there on the side. He does note in this history, those kinds of consider that the carolers were blessed back in their Bavarian homeland with a pious mind and Lutheran convictions that here contributed much to the furtherance of congregational life. So it's giving them the credit, he sees it, as do to them. But it's interesting that they're really the only lay perspectives that he includes in the early history of the Wisconsin Senate. So even though Kaler noted that they're important, he didn't really use them all that much. And after a pretty thorough search, in the last over 100 years, I have found no further mention or analysis of the Frank killers in the Wisconsin Senate historiography I looked through all the Wisconsin Historical Society journals and the few other histories that have been put out there not really integrated at all. So I would like this to be out there in the open, which I've obviously been doing that in articles and not only in articles and presentations, but this this podcast episode. So I believe there's something that's been left undone for this topic, we needed analysis of the pioneers who formed the Wisconsin Synod. Why did they form their congregations? What made lay persons join the Wisconsin Synod? How did lay people affect and form the function of their Senate? What external factors influenced the religious decisions? I'll argue and and show out that the in our presentation today that the Frank Kaler letters show both the role of religion in lay German Lutheran Family groups as well as give us that lay perspective, and are largely other sourced Lutheran Church historiography, all sampling a large collection. This podcast today will focus on the religious aspect, not to the broader American letters context. So these Frank Kaler letters reveal that while the immigrants who are already biased against religion found it easy to maintain their prejudices, those immigrants who wish to maintain their faith encountered many challenges and obstacles. For many of the Frank Taylor's their faith, their religious practices and their worship were major features of their private and public lives. So over all the trials and obstacles led them to become even more engaged in their churches. And you can kind of see an observation in the way they write a transition from kind of a passive concept of the church and Christianity to a more active participatory role. And I'll say, again, as I said before, without the willingness and participation of the immigrant Lutheran families and lay people, like the Franks and the carolers, organizations, such as the Wisconsin Synod would not have come into existence, much less survived. Now, one of the interesting things for any Lutheran historian is of this period is the concept of identity. How did these people identify their faith and it gets a lot deeper than just saying, We're Lutheran? If any, if you're aware of any of the controversies of 19th century Lutheranism on both sides of the Atlantic's of the Atlantic, you're going to see people squabble and quibble over well, what kind of Lutheran Are you or what does it mean to be Lutheran? You're going to qualify to quantify it in some way. Or how are you defining it? So, John Keller is describing now the Lutheran Church in America to one of his his friends in Germany in the year 1855, says the Lutheran Church in America has 32 Senate's over 900 ministers 3000 congregations, as well as seminaries for educating ministers. I did not fact check that but that sounds about right. If you would look at especially the General Synod minutes at this time, really the only group attending attempting to have a nationwide organization for all these Lutherans. Even if they had senators who were not part of the general Senate, they at least listed the other senators and often gave a roster of ministers. So this sounds about right. John Kaler probably isn't reading the minutes of the general Senate, but I believe he's reading some German, if not German Lutheran newspapers who would list this kind of information. But 32 Different Senate's are they all the same? Clearly not. But we also get a description of religious daily life. And William Seifert, living in Michigan, wrote to a family member, he says our Sunday get togethers with indispensable dancing and target shooting, angered only a few Yankees and German old Lutheran pirates, the participants whoever were well pleased. So you can see his attitude about about religion, he doesn't want to be restricted in activities. And uh, he doesn't have a very Sabbatarian view. Let's put it, put it that way. put it mildly. Some of the the Yankees the more Puritans of them would say do not work, do not do anything on Sunday. And that is why the postal office for that matter is still closed on Sundays. That influence made its way into the federal government. By German Lutheran piety lists were very similar to the Puritans in some ways, even though theologically we are not sabbatarians is Lutheran. So there's definitely some Lutheran Sue took that approach, no dancing, really, period in many ways. We're having idle entertainment on Sunday. Of course, there comes the pastoral concern of well, if you're just having fun on Sunday, and you're not making time for public worship in the Word of God, that there is a real spiritual problem. So obviously, William ciphered is leaning on the Christian freedom side, I don't know if he's so, so much focused on the Christian aspect of freedom, rather than just freedom in general. We'll hear more about William Seifert later on. We also get to see religions role, at least the concept of the role of religion through Pastor Frank's letter to his new daughter in law Veronica, he asks her rather intently. So what confession, Lutheran reformed, are united to the Greenfield and Milwaukee congregations follow. He wants to know their confessional subscription. And he's asking a rather dramatic perspective. He only has three options to Germany really for being a Protestant. Is it distinctly Lutheran and reformed? Or is it one of those United union congregations? Of course in America, there are many, many more options. But He also asks his new daughter in law, where does your pastor Kester? Who, you who buried you, where does he come from? And he mentions that the old Lutheran Synod, which was held in Buffalo, so the buffalo Synod of of Grabau, in 1849, condemned a pastor named cast her in a most Christian and reprehensible way, and called him a rat preacher. So it seems like Pastor Frank is mostly disgusted by by this accusation of how one Lutheran group can describe another fellow Lutheran pastor in this way, but maybe he's a little cautious, like, is there something behind that accusation? If you know your American Lutheran history of this period? Well, you'll know that the buffalo Senate and especially its leader Grabau, had a reputation for really just going after the jugular of people who crossed them, or who disagreed with them publicly, they just went after him. So that's the reputation now that old Lutherans have if they emigrated to specifically preserve their view of Lutheranism. They're put into the old Lutheran camp, and that would be true as well of the Saxon immigrants who came and settled in Missouri. So we'll get into the Missouri Senate. I'm sure many of you are interested to hear their perspectives on that. Generally speaking, in Wisconsin, the Missouri Senate is still associated with old Lutheranism. Even though large components of what formed to the Missouri Senate just two years before this in 1847, were not specifically older Lutheran they didn't emigrate just for religious freedom. They were happened to be German, confessional Lutheran or German Lutheran sort of lead into confessional ism, who merged with with like minded people. So the old Lutheranism of the Saxons and of the buffalo Synod, displays itself in different ways, but to outsiders, they kind of seem like they're the same bunch basically, a strict people who are very quick to condemn others and this will come out in our further analysis here. So pastor Frank also asks his daughter law, where does pastured meal hazer come from? And I think this is one of the first mentions of your hottest meal boisar, who was the father figure, the real founder of not only Grace Lutheran Church, downtown Milwaukee, still kind of the heart of one of the heart places of Lutheranism in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, but of course, the founder, figure of the Wisconsin Senate. So it's interesting to note that the geographic origins of a pastor in Germany could automatically inform most people to what confession that Pastor belonged. Oh, are you from Hanover? That's a Lutheran pastor. They just knew the geography of Germany and said, Well, if you're from Southern Bavaria, well, you you're going to be Catholic, or if you emigrated from there, that's just because the structure is set in place shortly after the refor Meishan. With Well, yes, yes, during the Reformation some way, where the, the leader decided the local religion, and this was compromised through treaties still generally held true, the mid 19th century, the mid 1800s, even though the Holy Roman Empire had been dissolved by about 50 years by now there is still the state connection with religion, which still hasn't really gone away in Germany. So the German audience, or the German participants of these letters still were thinking in those terms, but the German immigrants had to totally realize that religion wasn't determined by geography. So in these letters, we see a lot of different ways to describe Lutherans, I already mentioned the older threads or the Payatas, Lutherans, but other people throw in these terms to describe what do they mean by Lutheran, these, these adjectives? Some what might be called a pious Lutheran and old Lutheran and Evangelical Lutheran, or even an evangelical Protestant, Lutheran, some might say, well, you are definitely Lutheran, or you're not an exclusive Lutheran, or we are Lutherans, bound to the Augsburg confession or the unaltered Augsburg confession, or even you might be an orthodox Lutheran. So these are all the terms that these letters use, again, a 15 year span 500 letters, the word Lutheran pops up a lot. And these are often the terms used. What I never saw, and this was interesting to me was that they never use the term confessional Lutheran to describe themselves. So I wonder when that came about, obviously, if you say we're Augsburg confession, Lutherans, that is implying confession. And I think if you say you're an orthodox Lutheran, it probably means you care about the confessions. But they did not use that term. Nor did they use the term American Lutheran, which would describe the group of people they're not really interacting with at all. Those people have been born in America who largely were bilingual, if not solely speaking in English. By this time, these are mostly Lutherans who either live on the east coast states or had emigrated from the East Coast. You see them mingling in states like Indiana, Ohio, especially Pennsylvania, obviously would be a big place for this, but it seems like fewer and fewer, quote unquote American Lutherans made it all the way out to the Upper Midwest of Wisconsin, it seems like most of the Lutherans here were immigrants. Therefore, the term American Lutheran, likely never was really used to describe them. So analyzing the role of religion, we look at Veronica caroler. Bit more, there's another interesting letter from one of her friends Karolina wryneck, who was superintendent of a children's home and Memmingen. Just real briefly, self advertised here, if you want to look back to our episodes of the German awakening, that will give you the context of why these pious awakened Christians in Germany are now doing kind of what we would call social services today, I guess is a term to describe it, but they're serving social needs as an expression of their genuine faith. So Caroline wryneck is an awakened German Lutheran I would say based on just her job description. Well, this is what she says in her letter to her dear friend for Radhika, Kaler, she first of all credits God with the safety that they had after their long immigration journey, but she also reminders for Annika with all their earthly blessings, all the stuff they were able to take with them from Germany, to America and all the materials they were now acquiring as they were setting up their new homes. All these were earthly blessings on loan from God. But this is what she brings up as the most important fact she says you have no doubt missed the communion of the leaving souls in your isolation. And then she cautions Do not leave the confession of our church for the teachings of our Lutheran Church are like no other. I sincerely wish that you may have the opportunity of hearing good sermons. However plain if Holy Communion is not distributed according to our catechism I have preferred that you would stay away and quote, so that may not be quote unquote, confessional, but that is certainly talking about the confessions of our church, the application of church fellowship, closed church fellowship, the importance of communion, in both senses, the communion of, of I guess there are three ways you usually describe communion, but the communion of the horizontal aspect of with your fellow believers, not just the vertical aspect of being united with God, and the real, but of course, key here is the real presence as well if it's not distributed according to our catechism. So in other words, if they are not teaching that Jesus, His Body and Blood is really present in within under the bread and wine, which, of course is really the key issue between Lutheran and reformed in many of these points of conflict, and we'll see that come up again. But in the Union churches, that was really the issue that came out in those liturgies was, are we going to describe the Real Presence are we going to teach and proclaim the real presence in communion or not? So that's the religious context. In Germany, the distinctive Lutheran teaching on communion is the correct teaching versus the blurring of the lines in the United Church or the false teaching in the Reformed Church. So this is still very important to Karolina wryneck. And she's writing this to her friend that you're totally new landscape, do not forget the true aspects of religion. And don't take shortcuts, basically, is what she's saying. So here we see the importance of doctrine and church fellowship being transferred across the Atlantic, and being propped up by those still in Germany. So what did Veronica think about this? This is interesting. This is kind of rare for us to see letters going both ways talking about the same thing. This is what Veronica said to Kerr Carolina right at her friend, she says, I was at first taken aback by your letter. But I realized that you had spoken the truth, that as a real Christian, I should have known all this myself. But little by little things became better. And I was determined to follow your good advice. That worked pretty well to outside circumstances contributed quite a bit to for i was able to receive Holy Communion from a good old Lutheran pastor in the city. The communion service was very solemn. And I really felt strengthened by it. I will not let anything keeping me from partaking of it often. So I don't know why she was taken aback. Maybe the first time we read it, it was Wow. Karolina thought we were friends. And now you're going super deep and serious. But that maybe she realized, well, this is really important. And a good friend does talk about important things to me. So that's the way I've, I've taken it not so much that she was offended by the content of it, just the the quality of it the seriousness, but Veronica appreciated the direction and then reassured her friend that she was able to still have comedian as a sincere, confessional, Lutheran that that she would use the term. So Veronica also mentioned to her friend about this pastor, she said, we have lately become very well acquainted with this minister. Whenever we drive to the city, we visit him, which is always a very great pleasure for me. He was to come and preach to our congregation every two weeks, which he actually did once. But he spoke too much against the reformed, of which there are several in our congregation. So he caused the displeasure of others and therefore will hardly last in our congregation. The latter is not even in agreement with itself. And so it can take a long time before we get a good minister in our church and quote. So, there's a bit of conflict here. And for anyone who knows even a vague outline of the history of the Wisconsin Synod, this is pretty much the accusation or the critique laid at its feet by modern confessional Lutheran since like look at that the Wisconsin Synod was dealing with rank unionism, they had Lutherans and reformed the same congregation. And it wasn't really confessional till we got sorted out. I will save that whole topic for another podcast I'm hoping to have again with Pastor praying about the second volume of his work with with fellowship, and he does a great job of talking about the Wisconsin Senate's position, they're in development. I'll just point out here, the context as well that that gap killer points out in his history is that realize that when you're driving through a modern city, in America, let's say like some of our listeners, you live in the Milwaukee area, or the Chicago area, you just drive to to or buy a Greenfield and you don't think anything of it. But imagine driving there 175 years ago, and there's literally nothing there, except for forests and fields and swamps and a few isolated settlements suggested a couple dozen buildings, and none of those buildings are older than two him 20 years at the most the infrastructure that the settlement this whole kind of Frontier aspect is something that is impossible for us to fully understand. Even I living in the last frontier of Alaska, I would have to talk to someone who's nearly 100. To get a perspective on what the real front tier days were like, here in Alaska, at least where I live. They had so many issues they had to deal with. And I don't mean to say this was a wise idea to automatically mix Lutheran and reformed together. That's not what I'm advocating. Kaler points out, these are just people who happen to live close to each other. They both spoke German. They wanted to get some kind of organized religion. So they said, well, let's maybe better together was maybe their naive attitude. And obviously, we see their issues when you say, communion is important. But you both really disagree on communion. So this pastor came in, and it's pastor Dalits, who I'll talk about a little bit more later, he's realizes this is a problem. And he says, Look, there's a real issue here, let's not pretend we're all the same, because we're really not. And this is what some of the more confessional church bodies, especially the Missouri Senate, and others, were recognizing already at this time, we have to stand firmly within our Lutheran identity, because it has real doctrinal and spiritual consequences, not just on paper, but for the spiritual, everyday lives of our members that are congregations. So to their credit, they were attempting to resolve a serious issue, especially concerning communion. On the other hand, perhaps the delivery didn't come off very well. And it's really hard to judge and don't want to do that here. Is that the speaker's fault for just being tactless and tone deaf as he did this? Or were the recipients just not ready to hear the truth. And I suspect sometimes it's a little bit of both. But these people in his Greenfield congregation were put off by the fact that this pastor would speak against Reformed theology or maybe reformed people in general. Again, I don't have a sermon in front of me. So I don't know what he actually said. So this caused some tension. The pastor that Veronica had actually liked, as a fellow Lutheran realized it's causing tension in her immediate community. So this has played out in congregation for congregation a place after place, especially in Wisconsin, in the congregation so eventually joined the Wisconsin Senate. So one of my theories is, yeah, you could point to a lack of confessional rigidness or robustness, if you want to put that away in the Wisconsin Synod. But I think a lot of these congregations joined the Wisconsin Senate because Wisconsin was willing to work with them and say, Okay, we're still in development, we're still establishing ourselves, we have a lot to process and figure out, we're going to treat this issue with some patience, and take our time doing this, rather than showing up and right away, fix all of these issues. What's the priority is really the question. So that's a question for theologians and historians both to to wrestle with how do you measure confessional ism? How do you act on it, even if you want to do this? So we see this tension here, to put it in summary here, Veronica is encouraged to be a very confessional Lutheran, yet in practice, is running into conflict with the doctrine she knows is, is right in the whole congregation. And their leadership is wrestling with this. So this is one of the key insights I would say from these letters very early in the in this congregation's history. This brings into focus the fact that for them, not only are they living in a foreign land, as immigrants, just with the language, and the geography, but this is really a foreign religion. So one of the major aspects of this foreign religious landscape is just the total contrast between the organization the structure of the church and this largely comes to its relationship with the state. Of course, in America, constitutionally there is no state established religion. Ironically, some states are able to have that some of the older colonial states had an officially state connected church. what was meant by that is that the federal government would not publicly support or endorse or prop up a specific religion or denomination. But that was, of course, totally different to Germany. And we understand this, even from our concept of the Reformation church history. To be sure this brought some challenges in the in the transition, not just with understanding but some real practical issues. To be sure there were benefits of the state church system. On one hand with the government behind the church there was Your legitimacy. This was official, it was backed up with the resources and the institutions of the state. There wasn't really any fear of imposter preachers randomly popping up. In Germany, that was kind of an unheard of issue. That also meant, in a similar way, there was standardized training for clergy. Now, there might be issues with the content of that training, when he didn't have to wonder, not only is this guy an imposter, but he says he's a pastor. But what kind of seminary training did he have? In Germany, it would be a lot more standardized, especially with all the tests and exams, the pastors had to take before they would be ordained. Of course, with the state church, you have structure and organization, you kind of know how things work. Now, of course, there's always problems with any kind of bureaucracy and the state church systems certainly had their issues. But a lot of the struggles of the early Lutheran synods were just figuring out how to function how to get organized, and they were kind of making up a lot of the stuff as they went along. Now, the state church also had this accountability within a clearly defined hierarchy. Again, there might be issues with that hierarchy. But there's still a hierarchy. How do things work? Who answers to who, of course, there are large state resources. I'm not sure how the tax system worked exactly in Germany. If your average peasant was very aware of the fact that he or she, I guess, was, was paying into taxes to get church out of it. But these Frank kala caroler letters reveal that people were surprised that they may have to pay Sunday, weekly offerings to help support the congregation the was an affront to them at first, I have to pay to get church. It just was a foreign concept to them. So the state resources behind the church had made a religious services having a pastor, kind of be an entitlement that any citizen would have had, of course, having a state church meant that at least, as far as external appearances were concerned, there was unity. There's one Lutheran Church in the kingdom of Hanover, for example, he didn't have 32, different Senate's were not all of United who weren't in fellowship with each other, that just wouldn't, wouldn't be conceivable. Of course, there are negative sides almost like the opposite side to every coin here, where you have hierarchy and authority, the negatives of a state church meant that that authority would often dictate matters that were matters of conscience, you see this play out with the unionism and communion issues. We also see that theological decisions made by those in the hierarchy, those connected to the state are often more influenced by politics, or even a particular monarchs personal preferences than by real, genuine theology. It's not coming from an understanding of doctrine. It's not coming from under understanding of Scripture, it's sometimes coming just out of the popular philosophy of the day, but really just what makes a good geo political or strategic political choice rather than dealing with the spiritual issues. Now, the pastoral office in the state church systems was open to abuse, just because there's a certain class of people, and some areas called the hoop shun class, it's not exactly middle class. It's not really an economic class, as we think of it. So often today, just more of a status kind of thing. So you had your commoners your peasants, farmers, you didn't really have serfs anymore, but in some areas, it probably didn't look too much different from the Middle Ages. And of course, the nobility was still existed and they had their own role in society. But in between, you had this class of people who might be ennobled to a very low rank of nobility if they did a really good job. But for the most part, they were not ennobled. But this was a class that provided civil servants for the state. A very often you see military officers, judges, lawyers, and pastors and then church leadership coming from the same family groups, generation after generation, even century after century. A good another example we've talked about a lot in this podcast to be when it comes family is two of his godfathers were in the system. One was a colonel of the queen of Denmark's military regiment. I forgot exactly what it was called, but he was a high ranking, ceremonial off A sir. And his other uncle had been, I believe a superintendent, or at least a Consistory counselor for, for the state church in the in a neighboring province. So anyways, it's the same families is pumping out the same kind of people, well, that kind of comes along sometimes with an entitlement attitude, or it's not so much a vocation a calling, but this is just my place in society. If I'm born into this family, I should expect a somewhat prominent position in society that comes with not only authority, but respect above other classes of people. And that's going to cause problems as well. And of course, when your unit have unity, you're unified for the sake of appearances, it often underlies the fact that there's not real unity. That's genuine. It's kind of an external unity. So the sincerity of being united in the faith is something that really comes out in America as well. Now, what's the flip side of now the free church system in America, that's the constitutional system, while you have a free church, you have the benefits of being motivated and engaged with the congregants. They're not simply automatically baptized is a form of citizenship, as sometimes was the case in Germany, some of these smaller German principalities even in the 1840s. And perhaps even later said that 100% of our population was Lutheran? Well, how do you how do you get that? Well, every single citizen of these states were baptized members of the church. And wow, it'd be great. It kind of seems like kind of a utopia, right to have everyone in this country be the same page, you totally united in the faith? Clearly, I don't know if they're really dealing with issues of of hypocrisy, or was their church discipline at all you know, is there's going to be no unrepentant people at all that no longer are within the church, that you can see, there's maybe some issues, then if you see 100% of your population is one religion. Or another, it's a different kind of identifier than than actual faith. So this idea of the German awakening, as I mentioned earlier, has something to say about this. And quietism is related to this. So you do really believe are you just culturally, a Lutheran or a Christian? Well, in America, we're No one's forcing you to be part of a church and there's no real major benefit. To be part of a congregation, they just actually make you work harder by building a church providing land and material. It's an obligation more so than anything at least up front, you have to pay now out of your own pocket to support your congregation and provide a pastor. At first, from a superficial point of view, there's much less to be gained, and to be lost by simply being associated with a congregation. Of course, today, people join churches for all the wrong reasons, even now, probably not as much as they used to. But it's church is a good place for social networking. Maybe find a spouse or using church as a dating pool, or using religion as a political leverage or good for business, all that kind of stuff. Sure, was happening to an even greater degree in the 1840s 1850s. But by and large of being in a free church system, it was a matter of conscience of I really want to be here, especially if you are found in the congregation, you are settling in a new area, and you'd have to consciously make the decision. We need a church here and we don't have one yet, so that the motivation is going to be at a higher degree than then simply passively going through the system that you're born into in Germany. Now, there's also the benefit in the free church system of you have the freedom of how to organize and govern your own church, it isn't dictated by a higher authority for political expediency. And it means there's at least the possibility of having genuine unity not enforced externally, but arising from sincere beliefs mutually held by the congregants. Now, as mentioned already, there are some downsides, especially from the laypersons point of view, negatives, you might say the free church system, all the costs covered in a congregation where out of the pockets, or out of the earnings in the labor of the Pioneer congregation members, and we see that they're busy establishing literally everything. You see a common refrain in these letters in the comments on it from a generation or two later, civilized versus uncivilized. This isn't talking about the quality of the human beings being like more or less human, not at all, but just you have to build Hold everything in your society in these frontier communities, or at least really develop them from where you found them. These people are establishing families, their own homesteads, their farms, their businesses from scratch. They're building their own infrastructure. A lot of the early road systems were perhaps like a Plank Road system. And it was all privately owned. It was a toll system, where certain people would get together and build a road out of wooden planks, could you imagine just the highway being a bunch of boards laid across some gravel for 2030 miles and someone owned that road, and he paid them for the privilege of it. So anyways, all this infrastructure, all this stuff, you're starting from scratch in most of these areas, and on top of it, you have to dedicate your various resources to church. Now, the nether negative of the Free Church system is there's no system in place. For a lot of these immigrant groups to provide pastors, they're almost entirely immigrant pastors, and the state church in Germany isn't going to be actively sending off pastors outside their country, for example, the kingdom of Hanover, says, We're not going to send our kingdoms public servants or pastors outside of our kingdom, they're not going to send them across the border, even in Germany, most likely, I've never heard of that happening, much less than officially send them off across the Atlantic, and who knows if you're going to get them back. Now, of course, there are German mission societies that have been popping up late 1830s, early 1840s, especially so this has been about a decade of development. And this Wisconsin Synod benefits from that. But it's not, not a sure fail system. And it takes awhile to get the seminary established for most of these synods. Not all but most of these centers take little while getting the seminaries, the situation figured out. So there's a general shortage of pastors and teachers and other human resources. And of course, just the frontier issue of just a lack of organization, and a lack of accountability and oversight. And as I mentioned before, because of that, there could be people who are called hyperlinks, as some of the letters attest to in this collection, where they're kind of guns for hire. Yeah, you need a teacher, I'll be your teacher, whether they're qualified or not, whether they do the job well or not. Really unregulated, open to a part of the religious foreign landscape, that the immigrant letters reveal is just the shock of the different religions that are present. Not only are they allowed to exist, but they flourish, they thrive. They're everywhere. In Germany, Catholics that their territory territory, the Lutheran said their territory. And generally people stayed in their lane stayed in their box that was just legally how it was supposed to work. And there might be some minor exceptions here. And there are some maybe some grandfather clauses when territories got merged but large, by and large, it was that system. So John Keller senior is writing back to France and Germany, describing kind of the benefits of living in America, but it also comes with a cost from his perspective is kind of shocked, maybe even dismayed by the Catholic activity in his own neighborhood. He wrote, quote, The Jesuits reach out more and more, and shall soon have again, one as much land as they lost in Germany. monasteries are being erected. A missionary from Rome, traveled in America had lectures all over. He stayed with the bishop in Milwaukee for some time, traveled in the surrounding areas and set up crosses all over. The neighboring Catholics went to the city on a procession carrying cross and banners and also invited the priest to preach for them which he did. That is how it is here in a free country. As I mentioned also, part of the issues the diff differences that people came to terms with was the cost of paying for church I read a quote from one of the Frank children riding back to his parents from the city of New York in 1852. He describes his Sunday this way, he says, quote, on Sundays, I sometimes go to a church and hear a pastor Tolki in the walkers, street Evangelical Lutheran Church, they're one does not pay as another church is one to two shillings. I do not like to pay out money for going to church. You'd be surprised at the splendor of the churches, beautiful carpeting, church music, and for parts singing, and all the comforts for the listeners. I can assure you, dear father, that since I've been dependent upon myself, I've become much firmer in my principles. So there he's being self aware. He's maturing, supposedly he's he's taking more ownership for his his life and he's a young man too. So that's all part of this, but the immigration process is also part of the story. I think it's just ironic that he's saying I don't like paying a small price for church. And maybe this does seem a little tacky, even to us today to kind of charge admission for worship. And maybe that's the way they actually did it in some places, or at least that's the way it came across to people. But isn't it ironic how he's talking about while they have all the comforts, one could ever want for a listener participant in worship? And does he ever think that where does this come from? How are they able to have beautiful carpeting and the splendor of the building and, and just a wonderful worship environment? Does he think it's for free? Or does he just not get it yet? We'll see a transition that people start to get it well, yeah, this is just the way it is. So there's definitely the theology of the church and the congregation is something that just is forced into being developed and understood not just by the theologians, but by lay people as make this transition. At this point, we'll take a break in this presentation. Hopefully, it didn't go over time for you. But I really enjoyed getting just an introduction to some of the gleanings we can get from this wonderful treasure trove of primary source material, and the history of really all of a German immigrant Lutheranism in the 19th century, but specifically here, mostly in the context of the Wisconsin Synod, but we'll get more into some of the major players and names you may recognize from church history. And our next episode, part two of this project. So I'll just close today with a few little announcements. I'm not sure everything that I've announced in the past, but I thought I'll just give an update for everyone. I'm grateful to to announce or maybe re announced that I had won two awards for previous articles that I've written through the Concordia Historical Institute. They had an award ceremony this past November, I was unfortunately unable to make it. But two of the articles which you've heard discussed here, won awards, one of them was on the newspaper war absolutaire, Shere Khan Zeitung versus the Lutheran observer, that one went to one commit commendation award. And the other one was on the history of the Senate of the West, one of my earlier works and Dr. Tim grin Meyer talked to me about that previous episodes, you can look at those, if you're interested. I just got back about a week or two ago from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. So that's been keeping me busy, of course, able to stop in at Concordia Historical Institute, the monograph work on the early part of when it comes to life and ministry, where it's, it's still in the discussion process, kind of the planning prep process for getting that book published. But I'm told, we could hopefully for optimistic look at maybe seeing that come out as published in either late 2023, the end of this year, or early 2024. So there's a long as many year process they put into that, and just now getting it out there and published. But I'm just grateful to have the opportunity to get that work out there to really any kind of a public audience in printed form. As far as my studies go, I've officially been rolled up into the Ph. D. program, I had to qualify for that go under review. So I was technically in the SDM program. But now I am officially a doctorate student, only halfway done with the coursework, and then I have to take comprehensive exams, I have to pass another language exam. I already passed the German exam, but it looks like I'll probably have to study and then pass Latin and then there's a whole dissertation process. So it's a multi step process, but making progress sure and steady enjoying learning from some real quality, not only professors but historians of Lutheran history. The two classes I had this past semester that we wrapped up this month, were awesome. We had Dr. Robert Kolb, the doctrine or Lutheran stack Luthers doctrine of justification of kind of a systematic, but also historical approach, a good blend of that. And Dr. Eric Herman, taught the interpretations of the Reformation, looking at everything from how to psychoanalysis tried to view Luther to a Marxist interpretation to social history and Catholic and other interpretations of Luther, the past century and a half or so it's been been very interesting. I've toyed with turning that into a separate episode. I don't know if that will be a little dry, though, to go through, you know, seven or eight schools of interpretation. But let me know if you really want to hear something like that. Or maybe just pick one of those schools of thought you want to hear me kind of summarize that. I'd be interested in doing that if there's enough interest to hear that, that is all I have for today. Please seek to support the show in any way you can even just a modest sharing of an episode. If you're on Spotify or any other listening app, just give a give a nice review if you think this is worth letting other people hear about and you can show your support in other ways, including our patreon account, which is open and active. So once again, thank you for tuning into the Lutheran History podcast. We'll look forward to hearing more about the history of the Frank Kaler letters in the early labor perspectives of the Wisconsin