The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 121

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

121

States’ in the Friend, takes great pains to calculate
just how remiss the American Lutherans have been
in gathering into their communion the millions of
immigrants from Lutheran lands in Europe as well
as their descendants.

“According to the 1928 Statistical Abstract, Lu-
therans increased 1,498,487 from 1916 to 1926,
while Baptists added 1,287,809, Methodists 903,734,
and Presbyterians 369,658 souls during the same
period of time. This represents a splendid achieve-
ment for the Lutherans— until you take pencil and
paper in hand and do some figuring with immigra-
tion of the same time. Dr. Lundquist estimates : —

“In 1920 in the United States there were

foreign-born Say Lutheran Potential

Population Ratio Lutherans

Germans 1,686,108 s/s 562,036

Swedes 625,585 °*/10 536,026

Norwegians 363,863 "ho 327,476

Danes 189,154 ®/ 50 170,238
Finns 149,824 1075

149,824

Total possible foreign-born Lutherans, 1,772,600

“In 1920, in the United States, there were de-
scendants (first generation only) of foreign-born:

Lutheran Potential

Population Ratio Lutherans

Germans 8,164,111 5 2,721,370

Swedes 1,485,062 hie 1,336,554

Norwegians 1,020,788 ®/10 918,S09

Danes 466,946 "hi 420,251

Finns 265,472 */1 241,580
Total possible descendants of foreign-

born Lutherans, 5,638,564

“In addition, Dr. Lundquist considers the 8,344
souls, members of the Norwegian Synod of America,
the 14,759 members of the Slovak Lutheran Church
in America, and the 2,186 members of the Icelandic
Lutheran Church in America. Thus his total esti-
mate of ‘potential Lutherans’ in the United States
comes to 7,436,453.

“However, the 1928 Statistical Abstract lists
only 3,966,003 Lutherans in the United States.
Thus it is quite evident that, while our Church has
enjoyed the best increase during 1916 to 1926, yet
she has not nearly expanded as she might have, had
she retained a greater percentage of Lutheran immi-
grants and their descendants.”

So far a recent issue of the News Bulletin of the
L. P. B. Of course, we realize that not all these
nominal Lutherans coming to our shores would
unite with us, even if we did invite them and do our
utmost to persuade them to join us. But we can-
not deny that the presence of this great number of
people among us who are not strangers to our

Church should be a very strong incentive for us
to do our utmost to bring them in. We cannot
deny that we have neglected many an opportunity
presented to us in the open country and in the
crowded city. God has hitherto so richly blessed
our efforts that these successes in the past should
urge us strongly to increase our endeavors in the
future. We can truthfully say that God has blessed
no other missionary attempts so bountifully as just
our feeble efforts to gather in those who came to our
shores bearing the Lutheran name. While we turn
also to other people and seek to gather them into
the fold, let us not decrease, but rather increase our
efforts to bring into our fold the “potential Lu-
therans” within the bounds of our country.

FB. J.L.

Why a National Lutheran Radio Hour?

If you have not yet done so, you ought to mark
Memorial Day, Friday, May 30, 1930, on your
calendar as a red-letter day in the history of the
Lutheran Church; for on that day the Lutheran
Laymen’s League in national convention assembled
at Chicago, Ill., unanimously and enthusiastically
resolved to sponsor a weekly National Lutheran
Radio Hour oves the Columbia Broadcasting Sys-
tem, beginning this fall.

This convention will linger long in the memory
of those who had the opportunity and privilege to
attend it, for the soul-saving influence of the reso-
lution regarding radio will, if it please God, soon
be. felt from coast to coast and from the Gulf to
the Great Lakes. Moreover, one of the laymen in-
spired the convention with a vision of world-wide
Lutheran radioactivity.

Some one may ask why a national Lutheran
Radio Hour? ‘There is a cluster of reasons, but
I shall only mention one of them.

Twenty years ago four farmer boys discovered
a turtle near a village in Illinois and carved their
initials on its shell and turned it-loose. On June 6
of this year one of them found it on his father’s
farm, just one mile from where-it had been released
in 1910. The markings on it were still legible. The
Church should not move slowly and clumsily like
a turtle. She should not in the twentieth century
use first-century methods if God has placed at her
disposal better, quicker, and more effective means.
A missionary will not spend a year traveling to the
Orient by sailboat if a modern ocean liner can take
him to “India’s coral strands” in one-twelfth of the
time; a pioneer missionary in South America will

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