The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America

by B. M. Schmucker

HENRY MELCHIOR MUEHLENBERG.

In 1742 H. M. Muehlenberg arrived in Pennsylvania, where he not only ministered to several congregations, but soon became virtual superintendent of all the congregations. He brought the troubled affairs of his own pastorate into order. He gradually guided and was guided to a complete organization of his congregations. He prepared and introduced the well ordered constitutions by which their affairs have been regulated ever since, and which now forms the Order of Government throughout the body of older congregations. His labors and counsels were sought for, in ever-widening districts, until his oversight extended from the middle of New York to Georgia. He gathered the pastors and representatives of the congregations together and formed the United Evangelical Lutheran Ministry, of which union he became Senior; and he prepared the Order of Worship used throughout the churches. Whether authority from the Fathers at Halle and London at the beginning formally charged him with the oversight of the churches, I do not know; but the common consent of all concerned, and their urgent demand of such labor from him, actually made him Senior of the Ministry and Superintendent of the Churches, as well as missionary in chief to the scattered Lutherans in this land. He was called of God to this high office, and the call came through the churches, formally perhaps, certainly really.

And he was admirably fitted for this great work by natural talents and character, by liberal culture with severe formative trials in the attainment of it, and also by the peculiar circumstances and influences which surrounded him before coming to America.

His large mental powers, his force and energy of purpose, his self-forgetfulness and power of endurance, his consuming zeal and devotion of his whole faculties to his work, his tender sympathy and ardent love of souls, together with his admirable judgment and prudence, made him a born ruler of men.

There is one characteristic of the Patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America which is of such importance to his own times and which, after a century has passed, continues to have so great significance, that it claims attention; it is his fidelity to the confessions of the Lutheran Church. The foundations of the organization of that church here were firmly placed upon those confessions in their entirety and in their true meaning. The relation of Muehlenberg to the confessions was in his own lifetime openly questioned by some of his co-laborers in Pennsylvania, like Stoever and Wagner, who affirmed that the Halle Pietists were not sound Lutherans; the same hue and cry was raised in New York by Berkenmeyer and Sommer, who were representatives here of the orthodoxy, which in Germany contended against Pietism; other good men, like Gerock and Bager, who had not been sent from Halle, sympathized with this feeling, and finally, with some encouragement from Gerock, Lucas Raus, in whom personal enmity toward Muehlenberg had been rankling for years, brought direct charges of want of fidelity to the confessions against him before the ministerium and offered to support them with evidence in writing. There have been those in these later years, who having themselves departed from the old confessions of our church, have affirmed that Muehlenberg had allowed himself the same liberty, and that he and his coadjutors had not themselves maintained, nor required of ministers and congregations an absolute, unconditional and complete acceptance of the confessions. The charges of his contemporaries were based on their general impression concerning the Halle school of pietism, and were entirely unsustained by any evidence furnished by Muehlenberg. The falsity of the charges, by whomsoever made, will be shown by the facts that in the ordination of ministers, in the reception of congregations into the union, and in the constitutions which they prepared for congregations, they required acknowledgement of the confessions and adherence to them in the most absolute terms. If we take Kurtz's ordination as a test, the evidence concerning which is full, we find among the questions to which he must furnish a satisfactory written answer, this one: "Ob unsere Evan. Luth. Lehre die allein gerecht-und seligmachende, und wo sie in Gottes Wortgegruendet sey?" Is our Evangelical Lutheran doctrine the only justifying and saving doctrine, and on what proofs of Holy Scripture does it rest? To this his answer is: "Ja und amen ist dieses solches, solches beweise ich, etc." "Yea and amen is it such, and I prove it thus, etc." In the revers which he was required to subscribe before ordination were contained the conditions on which he received and could exercise his office, and among them these two: "III. To teach nothing else, publicly or privately, in my congregation, except what accords with the Word of God and the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and to this end diligently study the same. IV. To introduce no other ceremonies in public worship and the administration of the sacraments than those which have been introduced by the collegio pastorum of the united congregations, and to make use of no other formulary than that which they appoint for me." The declaration of the Tulpehocken Church, when it applied for reception, is given in full in Halle Records, new edition, pp. 139-141, and shows the conditions on which congregations were received, because the paper had been prepared for that purpose and exhibits "the steadfast adherence of the united ministers to the confession and doctrine of the unaltered Augsburg confession, which had here been attacked by false brethren, by fanatical sects, by epicureans and by divers others, in which assaults they had not only themselves continued steadfast, but had held firm the Evangelical Lutheran Church members, and had gathered them and increased their number, be it said to the glory of God, who had stood by them." The doctrinal foundation on which Muhlenberg [tr. note: sic] placed the congregations in their constitutions may be seen in that of the Augustus Church, 1750, hereinafter given. In 1762 it was deemed better to limit the congregational obligation to the Augsburg Confession; I have no doubt that it was done because an acquaintance with the whole symbols could scarcely then be expected of the congregation, while they continued to demand an obligation to the whole symbols of the ministers. As to the doctrinal basis in the constitution of the ministerium, nothing was formally established, there was no written constitution until after the separation of the missions in this country from the patronage and government of the Old World after the independence of the States, in 1781.

But the charges made by Lucas Raus afforded Muehlenberg occasion to make his position very clear. These charges were referred to the Swedish pastors Provost Wrangel and Borell, to whom the written evidence was to be submitted, all of which they sent to Muehlenberg so as to enable him to make his answer. That answer shows that under what he deemed unjust assault and provocation, he was capable of vigorous indignation. The charge seems to have been sustained by nothing else than the statement that Halle Pietists were not orthodox Lutherans; and secondly, that Muehlenberg alleged that the Lutheran Church had some imperfections. Beside this charge of heterodoxy was another of life and conduct unworthy a Christian, which, from the proof, seems to have consisted in not estimating the complainer sufficiently highly and not treating him as he thought he deserved. But the wounded vanity of Raus had at least the good results that it caused to be written the statement in which Muehlenberg, with indignation repels the outrageous charge. From this statement, preserved with the other papers in the case in the Archives at Halle, and copied for the new edition of the Halle Reports, I quote this passage: "Ich biethe dem Satan und seinen dienstbaren Luegen-Geistern Trutz um etwas auf mich zu beweisen, das wider der Lehre der Apostel und Propheten und unserer Symbolischen Buecher streiten sollte. Ich habe oft und vielmals gesagt und geschrieben das ich an unsere Evangelische Lehre, nach dem Grunde der Apostel und Propheten und unserer Symbolischen Buecher, keinen Irrthum, Fehler oder Mangel faende." "I defy Satan, and all the lying spirits who serve him, to prove against me anything in conflict with the doctrine of the Apostles and Prophets and of our Symbolical Books. I have often and again said and written that I have found in our Evangelical doctrine, founded on the Apostles and Prophets, and set forth in our Symbolical Books, neither error, fault or anything wanting." If these words are not clear enough and strong enough to answer any charge of confessional disloyalty, it would be difficult to say how it could be done.

I must avoid any entrance into the personal life of Muehlenberg, but there were influences exerted on him by his surroundings which trained and fitted him for his great life-work as the organizer of the Lutheran Church in America, to which I must allude.

Until his twenty-second year he lived at Eimbeck, formerly a free city, but then in the Grubenhagen Principality of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lueneburg. The church at Eimbeck had been reformed and set in order by Nicholas Amsdorf, but long before Muehlenberg's time, it had come under the jurisdiction of the Lueneburg KO. The edition issued by Frederick Duke of Br. Luen., in 1643, being in force during Muehlenberg's youth. Afterward at Goettingen, though the city had its own Ordnung, originally prefaced and sent by Luther, its worship was substantially that of the Calenberg Principality of Br.-Luen. So that until his twenty-eighth year he lived where the Government and Worship of the church were ordered under the directions of the two branches of the great family of KOO of Brunswick-Lueneburg. In the preparation of these books such men as Luther, Melancthen, Bugenhagen, Amsdorf, Corvinus, Chemnitz, Andreae and John Arndt took part. They are of the noblest and purest type of Lutheran Ordnungen, and we can well discern the effect of attendance on services of worship so ordered upon Muehlenberg when he came to prepare the Liturgy for the churches here.

When he came to Halle he entered within the domain of the Margravate of Brandenburg. Within the territory of this Margravate were found the most extraordinary arrangements in church affairs which existed in any part of the Lutheran Church in Germany. In the Duchies of Cleve, Julich and Berg, the Presbyterians or Reformed from the Netherlands, welcomed as refugees, had secured a full, self-governing, Presbyterial system in the congregation, classis and synod. Under its influence the Lutheran Church had largely adopted the same system. The Lutheran KO in force in Muehlenberg's time says: "Each Congregation shall have its own Elders and Vorsteher, who with the Pastors of the place constitute a Presbytery or Consistory. There were to be four or six Elders, one half elected each year by the Presbytery. Those going out of office could nominate their successors."

The duties of the elders were: with the pastors, to have oversight of the spiritual concerns of ministers and congregations, to visit from house to house, to attend the Synod, to report transgressors to the pastor, to admonish them, to exclude the recusant from spiritual privileges, in short, to exercise discipline in connection with the pastor. Their whole spiritual office was ordered after the manner of Calvin at Geneva, and of the Refugee Presbyterian Congregations.

In each congregation were deacons in charge of the alms, appointed by the government, or, like the elders, by the Presbytery or Consistory. The whole care of gathering, keeping and distributing all alms was given to them.

The Classis, which met once or twice a year, was composed of all the ministers of the district, with one elder from each congregation, with schoolmasters and kuesters as found good. Above the Classis was the Synod, which met annually, composed of pastors and elders. A general Synod of representatives, four pastors and two elders, from the Synod of each province united the whole. We cannot but think that Muehlenberg's familiarity with these arrangements in Mark Brandenburg was a part of the training which influenced him in the organization of the church here. And in Halle itself, Spener had earnestly advocated the advantages of such arrangements. He fervently desired and commended the above peculiar provisions, so unfamiliar to the Lutheran Church generally in Germany.