# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

"American" Lutheranism.        25

—rity against the testimony of the word of God? It is an abuse of the
name of Mühlenberg and his co-workers, that they should in any way
serve as a support for false doctrine; and only those honor his
memory who cite his testimony, laid down in faith for the truth
grounded in and proven from God's word, wherever this may be
necessary and useful.

Furthermore, we permit ourselves the question whether Mühlenberg and
his companions were native-born Americans, and not rather honest
Germans, born on German soil, educated at German universities, and
emigrated to America? Since this latter is indeed the case, their
peculiar theology is exactly as much, and as little, "American" as
that of the "symbolists." Just as the American people has its origin
in Europe, so too does learning, and especially theology and the
shaping of church life in this land, have its roots in the mother
soil of Europe. But this very thing is, by the confession of all
intelligent Americans, the honor and greatness of this nation. For
what kind of distinction would it be if present-day Americans were
descended not from Europeans but from Chinese, Malays, or Negroes?
They would then belong to the most wretched peoples of the earth. But
that Europeans, and especially Europeans of the Germanic stock, chose
this land as their dwelling place, and transplanted hither the entire
culture and faith of their peoples — that is precisely what makes the
American nation so great, that makes it heir to all the treasures
which the restlessly continued labor of the European spirit, through
many millennia, has brought to light. How utterly unworthy it is,
then, when someone designates some theological tendency as "the
American" one, in the sense as though other tendencies — and
especially the one and only tendency that is warranted by God's word,
namely the theology of the Lutheran confession — were not equally
"American," could not equally claim a native right on this free soil.
How they must lack grounds for their cause, grounds from God's word,
who take refuge in such absurdities, which are equally foreign to
Lutheranism in general and to American Lutheranism in particular. For
just as God, in the whole governance of the world, has in view only
the kingdom of his Son, so too, in the whole peculiar guidance of
this nation, he has in view only his word, only the spreading and
preservation of the pure truth of Jesus Christ. Heaven and earth must
serve the gospel, and therefore the entire history of this land,
therefore all the glorious gifts which God has poured down upon this
people, have no other goal than that a place be prepared here for the
preaching of Christ, for the unadulterated truth of the Reformation.
That, in the light of the divine word, is the task of the American
nation, and every true American Lutheran must recognize it and help,
for his part, with all his strength, to bring it to realization.

Yet if by "American Lutheranism" one means the development of the
Lutheran theology transplanted into this land from Europe, and
especially from Germany,