wfn.org | Pennsylvania Lutherans Celebrate 250th Anniversary

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 21, 1998

PENNSYLVANIA LUTHERANS CELEBRATE 250TH ANNIVERSARY
98-30-171-ET/CL

   ALLENTOWN, Pa. (ELCA) -- Partee Boliek traveled from Phoenix, Md., to
Allentown, Pa., on a Saturday morning because he knew his ancestors seven
generations back received Holy Communion from the hand of Henry Melchior
Muhlenberg.
   Two hundred and fifty years ago, in August 1748, Muhlenberg brought
together representatives of 10 Lutheran congregations gathered in
Philadelphia and organized the first Lutheran church body in North America.
Boliek came to celebrate the anniversary of that founding event.
   The festivities, which attracted more than 235 people to Muhlenberg
College here Aug. 7-9, used lectures, music and drama to re-cast Henry
Melchoir Muhlenberg's credo "the church must be planted" as "roots for new
plantings."  Muhlenberg is one of 28 colleges associated with the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .
   The Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States provided the
earliest American roots of what is now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America.  The formation of the Ministerium was controversial because some
pastors and lay leaders decried bureaucracy, but Muhlenberg believed
congregations needed to band together for strength and support.
   Members representing those 10 congregations led the procession at the
anniversary's final worship.  "A twisted cord of many threads will not
easily break," Muhlenberg often said.
   The event began with an address by The Rev. H. George Anderson,
presiding bishop of the ELCA, read by the Rev. Roy G. Almquist, bishop of
the ELCA's Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod.  Anderson was unable to attend
the event.
   "Muhlenberg's arrival in America lies closer to Columbus' arrival here
than to our own day," Anderson said, putting the observance into historical
perspective. "Fortunately," he mused, "no one ever tried to use the label
'Muhlenbergers.' They do sound tough, don't they?"
   Anderson identified "confessional loyalty, an ordered ministry and a
common hymnal" as characteristic of the "Muhlenberg tradition." Noting that
"our task may not be so different from his," Anderson said Muhlenberg
worried about religion's "loss of status" in recent years, the mobility of
people, and members who didn't live up to Christian ideals.
   Anderson said he was "more than a little curious" about the emergence
of the phrase "'the Muhlenberg tradition.' ... It seems to have surfaced
more recently when mergers began to make various traditions more
self-conscious and nervous abut losing their identifies. ... I ask you: is
'the Muhlenberg tradition' really a code-word,  a rallying point for former
United Lutheran Church in America members who take their liturgy straight,
who deplore the current state of Fortress Press, and who miss going to the
church house in New York? One has to be careful of this nostalgia because
time can indeed 'make ancient good uncouth.' "
   The ELCA is the product of a number of mergers bringing together a
variety of traditions.  "We continue to wrestle with diversity from the
past at the same time that we struggle to embrace even more diversity in
our members," Anderson said.  "These diverse strands of tradition can
entangle us; or they can strengthen us," he said.
   According to Anderson the "most insidious challenge" the ELCA faces as
a church is the danger of losing its soul because "surveys show that many
of our members see Christianity merely as a `lifestyle choice,' a way of
satisfying spiritual needs that money can't buy otherwise they would buy
it."
   The Rev. John H.P. Reumann, retired New Testament professor of the
Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia, told the gathering that Muhlenberg
"seldom founded a congregation, but he gathered existing isolated groups
into a supra-church."
   Other speakers at the symposium moderated by the Rev. Robert J.
Marshall, former president of the Lutheran Church in America, included the
Rev. Darrell H. Jodock of Muhlenberg College; Susan W. McArver of Lutheran
Southern Seminary, Columbia, S.C.; and Cynthia A. Jurrison of the Lutheran
School of Theology at Chicago.
   Drama and music each played a role. A play, written by John Trump,
Columbia, S.C., and set in a roadhouse near Philadelphia, portrayed
Muhlenberg and Pastor John Casper Stover debating whether a synod should be
formed. An original hymn, "Word of Wisdom, Word of Wonder," with text by
Herman Stuempfle, former president of the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg
(Pa.) and music by Stephen Williams of Muhlenberg College, was greeted at
the anniversary celebration with a standing ovation.
   The gospel choir of Calvary Lutheran Church, West Philadelphia, Pa.,
led the music at the closing service.   The Rev. Barbara Berry-Bailey,
Trinity Lutheran Church, Germantown, Pa., set the final tone: "Faith is the
assurance that although the church of 1998 or 2098 may not look like the
church of 1748, it is God's church and lives not to glorify Henry or us but
God."

Material for this story was provided by the Rev. Edgar R. Trexler editor of
"The Lutheran" magazine and Carolyn J. Lewis, a free-lance writer for the
magazine.

For information contact:
Ann Hafften, Director 1-773-380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html