Wilhelm Loehe and the Missouri Synod: forgotten paternity or living legacy?

Currents in Theology and Mission, April, 2006 by John T. Pless

The same year that Wilhelm Loehe began his pastorate in Neuendettelsau, more than 600 emigrants under the leadership of Martin Stephan departed Germany to establish their Lutheran Zion on the Mississippi. It had been twenty years since Claus Harms issued his own ninety-five theses provoking a resurgence of Lutheran confessionalism in the face of the Prussian Union. (1) This confessional revival shaped both Loehe and the Missouri-bound Saxons, and it would provide common ground for their eventual contact and cooperation even as unresolved issues of church and ministry within nineteenth-century Lutheranism (2) would ultimately lead to a parting of their paths.

While C. F. W. Walther would give the Missouri Synod its theological and ecclesial shape, Loehe's influence was essential to the confessional orientation and the missionary character of the Synod in its early years. It is not without reason that Wilhelm Loehe is hailed as "the father from afar," (3) even though leaders of the fledgling synod would come to see him as a prodigal father. Hermann Sasse identifies the rift between Loehe and Walther as "one of the most grievous events in the history of the Lutheran Church in the 19th century." (4)

How did a relationship so full of promise emerge between this Bavarian pastor and his emigrant counterpart? How did Loehe contribute to the founding of the Missouri Synod? What factors contributed to the decline and severance of Loehe's ties with the new American Synod? How did the influence of Loehe continue in the Missouri Synod after 1853? And finally, how does the legacy of Loehe show itself in The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod today? These are the questions that I take up in this essay.

Christian Weber maintains that Loehe's missionary vision stands behind all of his other projects. (5) Inner and outer mission are always in motion. The church gathered around the apostolic Word is always caring for the baptized so that they are maintained in the unity of the faith while at the same time seeking those who do not confess Christ Jesus. Loehe's soul was stirred by the appeal of Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken in his Distress of the German Lutherans in North America. Reading Wyneken's plea while at the home of his former professor, Karl von Raumer, in Erlangen late in 1840 would move Loehe to make contact with Wyneken.

F. C. D. Wyneken, two years Loehe's junior, was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Hannover. His father, like Loehe's, had died at an early age. Wyneken would study theology at Goettingen and Halle. While at Halle he came under the influence of Friedrich August Tholuck (6) and was led away from Rationalism toward an understanding of positive Christianity. (7) Not a confessional Lutheran at the time of his ordination in 1837, Wyneken was sent to Baltimore under the auspices of the unionistic Stade Bible and Mission Society. Arriving in Baltimore early in 1838, Wyneken affiliated with the Pennsylvania Ministerium and was sent as a missionary pastor to Indiana to gather scattered German Protestants into congregations.

Surveying the tremendous spiritual needs among German emigrants on the frontier, Wyneken made an impassioned appeal to the homeland for aid. Painting a bleak picture of churchless Germans in America who "give reign to their animal drives there without any awe for that which is holy, no longer restrained even outwardly by any discipline," (8) Wyneken urged faithful Christians to rise up and assist in rescuing their fellow Germans. Lamenting the lack of orthodox pastors, Wyneken noted how many Germans had been snatched from the Lutheran fold by sectarian preachers. He wrote of villages that in spiritual desperation "hired" self-made clergy without theological training or ordination. Wyneken related several instances where he personally encountered such preachers and the harm that they had inflicted on gullible settlers. Carnal living and spiritual apathy had dulled the souls of many. "No preacher comes to rouse them from their earthly thoughts and pursuits, and for a long time the voice of the sweet Gospel has no longer been heard." (9) Children were growing up without baptism and catechism instruction. Worldly concerns crowded out and stifled the desire for heavenly things, and "many thousands die away into eternity unprepared and unconsoled." (10)

Wyneken challenged his readers:

I myself have had to baptize at one time 12 or more children of greatly
varying ages, often 10 to 12 years old. But who gives instruction to
those who have been baptized? How can the washing of regeneration
continue its action, grow and become powerful when preaching or
instruction is missing? Who will confirm the children? Who will
administer Holy Communion to them afterward? Perhaps their parents of
German extraction are themselves heathen, unbaptized; just
imagine--German heathen! (11)

Noting that thousands of German emigrants reached the shores of the United States each year, Wyneken appealed to both German and Christian sentiments: