Henry Melchior Mühlenberg: The Patriarch of American Lutheranism

He was born in Einbeck, Germany, in 1711, and studied at Göttingen and at Halle.

Mühlenberg came from Germany in 1742 as a missionary intending to bring the straying German immigrants back into the Lutheran fold. Lutherans in America at that time were found in a few scattered communities, of various national backgrounds, with no central organization, and with a grave danger of factionalism. Several congregations wrote to Halle University, asking for a pastor to take charge. Hermann Francke, a Lutheran leader of the Pietist movement at Halle, chose Mühlenberg and sent him to America.

He arrived in Charleston on 23 September 1742. He was soon accorded widespread recognition by Lutheran churches, German, Swedish, and others, as the senior Lutheran pastor in America. He set the tone for the Lutheran community in what was to be the United States, and almost all Lutheran Churches in America today use liturgies which are developed from the one that he proposed for American use. His plans for local church government, presented to congregations that had been accustomed to a great deal of government control, eased the transition to the "free church" model, and form the basis for plans of local church government in American Lutheran churches today.

One of his sons, John Peter Gabriel Mühlenberg, served as a general under George Washington in the War of Independence. Another, Frederick Augustus Conrad Mühlenberg , became a member of the Continental Congress, and first speaker of the House of Representatives. A great-grandson, William Augustus Mühlenberg , became an eminent Anglican priest.

Mühlenberg and the other German pastors of his time were graduates of the University of Halle. The generation that succeeded them had made their studies in the same institution. But the Pietism of the founders of Halle had now made way for the destructive criticism of Semler. The result was soon manifest in the indifferentism of the American Churches. The Pennsylvania Ministerium eliminated all confessional tests in its constitution of 1792. The New York Ministerium, led by Dr. Frederick Quitman, a decided Rationalist, substituted for the older Lutheran catechisms and hymn-books works that were more conformable to the prevailing theology. The agenda, or service-book adopted by the Pennsylvania Lutherans in 1818, was a departure from the old type of service and the expression of new doctrinal standards.

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