HISTORY.

The Lutherans of the Southern states shared in the general convictions of the southern people as to the permanency of the rupture of the Federal Union, and believing the political separation from the northern bodies to be irrevocable, they considered it best to have a new general ecclesiastical organization. A few delegates in convention at Salisbury, N. C., in 1862, arranged the preliminaries, and a year later delega

tions from the synods of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Southwestern Virginia assembled at Concord, N. C., and formally organized the 'General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Confederate States of America."

The doctrinal basis was declared to be the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice; and the Ecumenical creeds and the Augsburg Confession the exponents of this faith. Already there had grown up a general desire for a more pronounced adherence to the Augsburg Confession, and a clause allowing liberty of construction upon certain articles, although accepted at the time, was later rejected.

At the second annual meeting in 1864 a committee on domestic missions was appointed, but comparatively little else was done. The next year there was no meeting, and in 1866, the war having ended, and a new title being necessary to conform to the changed situation, the name "Evangelical Lutheran General Synod, South," was chosen. Questions of union with other bodies arose, but it was finally decided that the

wisest way to develop their own resources was not to renew organic relations with the General Synod. Negotiations were begun with the Tennessee Synod, and in 1868 a union was effected with the Holston Synod, and in 1872 with the Mississippi Synod. In 1886 the Tennessee Synod joined the body, which then became known as the "United Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South." Fraternal Synod, and also with the General Council, and a relations have constantly existed with the General

union of these three bodies is in process of formation under the title "The United Lutheran Church in America." This represents an ideal to which the different Lutheran bodies are rapidly tending, and the hope is expressed that it will become, in this country, an English speaking church.

DOCTRINE AND POLITY.

The general type of Lutheranism represented by the United Synod is similar to that of the General Council, and its polity accords with that of other Lutheran bodies.

WORK.

The home missionary work is carried on through the executive committees of missions of the various synods and conferences connected with the United Synod and the Board of Missions and Church Extension. The report for 1916 shows 51 agents employed in the assistance of 84 churches, at an expense of $30,811. Foreign work is carried on in Japan through the Board of Foreign Missions. The statistics for

1916 show 12 stations, with 7 American missionaries and 10 native helpers; 4 churches, with 673 members; contributions amounting to $22,698; and property valued at $98,000. There were 500 pupils in mission schools under the care of the synod.

The educational work of the synod in the United States includes 8 colleges and other literary institutions, and 1 theological seminary, with a total of 112 teachers and 1,284 students. The contributions for the support of these institutions during 1916 were about $93,000, and the property value, including endowments of $358,200, is estimated at $1,113,220. There is an orphans' home, with 104 inmates, for which $23,040 was contributed, and which has property valued at $40,000, and an endowment of $15,000. There are 225 young people's societies, with a membership of 6,056.

was 45 and the amount of debt $166,181 as against $49,692 in 1906. There were 164 churches reporting parsonages in 1916 as against 149 in 1906, an increase of 10.1 per cent, and the value of parsonages was $451,250 in 1916 as against $339,550 in 1906, an increase of 32.9 per cent. Sunday schools increased in number 56, or 14.5 per cent, and in scholars 13,658, or 45.5 per cent. Contributions for missions and benevolences advanced from $140,005 to $169,549, or 21.1 per cent.

Certain items not included in the above summary are church expenditures and the languages used in church services.

Church expenditures amounting to $446,283, reported by 467 organizations, cover running expenses, outlay for repairs and improvements, benevolences, and such other items as passed through the church treasury.

Of the 492 organizations, 488, with 55,513 members, reported services conducted in English only, and 4, with 1,143 members, reported services conducted in foreign languages and English. The foreign languages used in connection with English were German and Swedish, the leading one being German, reported by 3 organizations, with 813 members. As compared with the report for 1906, there was a decrease of 1 in the number using foreign languages, with a membership of 590.

The number of ministers reported as on the rolls of the synod was 259. Of these, 189 returned schedules as set forth in the table below. As will be seen the average annual salary reported by 153 of those in pastoral work was $932. Of the 24 not in pastoral work, 12 were retired and 10 were engaged in educational and editorial work.

Organizations..

Members..

Church edifices.

Value of church property.

$2,572, 245

Debt on church property.

$166, 181

449 47,747 442 $1,509, 760 $49, 692

Parsonages:

Churches reporting..

164 $451,250

149 $339,550

43 8,909 46 $1,062,485 $116, 489 15

$111,700

10. 1 32.9

Contributions for missions and

MINISTERS: 1916.

From this table it appears that there has been an increase in each item for 1916, as compared with 1906. The number of organizations reported was 492 as against 449, a gain of 9.6 per cent, and the membership advanced from 47,747 to 56,656, or 18.7 per cent. The number of church edifices increased by 46, or 10.4 per cent, and the value of church property advanced from $1,509,760 to $2, 572, 245, or 70.4 per cent. The number of churches reporting debt on church property

United States....

189

155

10

1131

11

10

51

57

48

2

3

800

HISTORY.

As the Swedish colony in Pennsylvania and Delaware owed its origin largely to the interest felt in the westward movement by King Gustavus Adolphus, so also it received from him much of the direction of its doctrinal development. The earliest governor of New Sweden was John Printz, who came over in 1643, with special instructions that divine service should be "zealously conducted according to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession * * that the youth be properly instructed and trained in the fear of the Lord, and Christianity be spread among the Indians." Later religious leaders, as Justus Falckner and John C. Stoever, emphasized the same position, and it was still further impressed upon the Pennsylvania churches by their patriarch, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, in 1742 and later. On this doctrinal basis the original Lutheran foundation in America was so well laid, especially by Muhlenberg, that European rationalism. at the end of the eighteenth century had little effect on the Lutheran congregations.

The Ministerium of Pennsylvania, organized by Muhlenberg in 1748, the broad basis of which was indicated by the name it bore for many years—“The Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of North America" -thus stood for a strong confessionalism, understanding by that term a recognition of the dominant authority of the confessions of the church, and particularly of the Augsburg Confession. Its churches were then chiefly German, and in view of the Unitarian influences which appeared to accompany the anglicizing tendencies manifest in the Ministerium of New York, it was natural that they should be anxious to retain. their own language.

With the extension of settlement westward, missionary pastors in small synods and some of the leading men in the older synods came to realize the advantage of a general body, and a call was issued for a conference, which resulted in 1820 in the organization of

the General Synod. Although the leaders in this unification movement were chiefly members of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, the general tone of its churches was not sympathetic. This was due largely to their great conservatism; to their love of synodical liberty and dislike of centralization of power, a dislike strongly prevalent to-day in the Lutheran churches; to a spirit of inertia and an instinctive resistance to position to the revival movement which swept over the English New England theology; and later to op

the United States in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century and entered into the General Synod, but which seemed to the men of the Ministerium contrary to the whole spirit of the Lutheran Church.

After two years of trial, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania formally withdrew from the General Synod, which, until the entrance of the New York Ministerium in 1837, included only four or five small synods. In 1853 the mother Pennsylvania body again cast in its lot with the General Synod, but the union itself became a cause of growing friction.

The reception into the General Synod of the Melanchthon and Franckean synods in 1859 and 1864, respectively, created much opposition, and when it appeared to the Ministerium of Pennsylvania that its continuance in the General Synod depended upon its acceptance, if not its indorsement, of the Franckean Synod, that Ministerium issued a call to all synods and congregations in the United States and Canada which adhered to the Augsburg Confession to attend a convention at Reading, Pa., in December, 1866. At this convention the General Council was organized, and the "Principles of Faith and Church Polity," which have formed the constitutional law of the Council ever since, were adopted. This constitution is composed of nine articles containing the funda

1 See General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States of America, p. 351.