The Lutheran Pioneer: highlights and oddities

The first number states its purpose

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 1 (1879), 1879, p. 1

The first number of the Pioneer, edited by Prof. R. A. Bischoff, opens with a letter to the reader saying who sends the paper and why. The Synodical Conference had called the Rev. J. Doescher as its first missionary, and F. Berg had taken charge of a small congregation at Little Rock, Arkansas, with a chapel and a school; in July 1878 the Conference resolved to publish a paper, at twenty-five cents a year, to be “a Pioneer of the Lutheran Church, marching with or before the missionaries.”

Not tied to the German language

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 2 (1880), 1880, p. 50

Volume II opens with a letter of congratulation to the paper, signed only “Missionary”, which argues that the Lutheran Church cannot do its work among English-speaking Americans without books, tracts and periodicals. On the same page the editor reports the paper's first year: it was welcomed in 2,400 homes, at twenty-five cents a subscriber.

Bakke ordained for New Orleans

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 2 (1880), 1880, p. 60

On Sunday, 7 November 1880, J. N. Bakke was ordained at St. Louis for the Black congregation at New Orleans, and two days later he married Concordia Guenther, daughter of Prof. Guenther of the Lutheran University at St. Louis. The same column reports that Charles Berg, a teacher in the Little Rock mission school, had accepted a call to the school at New Orleans. Bakke, whose initials the paper usually prints as N. J., served the mission for forty years.

Grace for colored and white alike

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 5 (1883), 1883, p. 1

Opening its fifth volume, the paper restates the gospel it means to print, under Romans 3:23–25, “There is no difference.” It applies the doctrine of sin and grace to every reader without distinction of race.

Rejected because he was white

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 8 (1886), 1886, p. 38

A letter from New Orleans in 1886 says the Colored Mission there is no longer a question of “to be or not to be” but an established fact, its schools overcrowded. Of the new station under Pastor Burgdorf it reports opposition on three counts, and it records the installation of W. Joeckel, a graduate of the teachers' seminary at Addison, in the mission school at Carrollton.

The Alpha Synod and North Carolina

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 14 (1892), 1892, p. 22

Writing from Concord, the pastor of Mt. Zion and St. Paul's in New Orleans, transferred for a time to North Carolina, explains how the new field came to the Synodical Conference. Its Black Lutheran pastors had formed an “Alpha Synod”, which he calls “both premature and unwise”; when its president died the organization died with him, and at the request of P. W. Phifer the Mission Board took the mission in charge the previous September.

1. 1891 · Admission asked · from the German mission paper: “Three colored pastors with five congregations have applied for admission to the Synodical Conference” and asked for aid in North Carolina.

Carrollton closed: “none of that book-religion”

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 16 (1894), 1894, p. 22

The New Orleans report of 1894 announces that the mission at Carrollton has been discontinued, that F. J. Lankenau has been relieved of Mount Zion to keep St. Paul's, and that Mr. Kuss, moved from Carrollton, was installed at Mount Zion on Pentecost. The writer, who calls the shouting worship of neighbouring churches the work of “a foul spirit”, reports what the people of Carrollton had said of the Lutheran service.

A college resolved at Concord

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 22 (1900), 1900, p. 15

From 2 to 5 February 1900 the missionaries in North Carolina met at Grace Church, Concord, elected N. J. Bakke president and took the name Immanuel Conference. On the Monday Mr. Coleman, “a wealthy colored man of Concord”, showed them a site he had promised to give for a college, and the conference resolved to ask the Mission Board to support one; P. Engelbert wrote the report.

The first two Black graduates

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 24 (1902), 1902, p. 43

Doswell, a native of Meherrin, Virginia, came to Greensboro in 1895 at his pastor's request, was instructed there by J. C. Schmidt, and spent six years at the seminary in Springfield. The paper adds that six or seven more students from the Greensboro congregation were then at Springfield.

Twenty-five years, the same aim

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 26 (1904), 1904, p. 1

Opening its volume for 1904, the paper reprints the aim stated in its first number twenty-five years before: Bible doctrine as the Lutheran Church professes it, and news from the field. The 1879 wording had promised that the little paper had “a hard road to travel”.

Tom Smyre, licensed to preach in 1866

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 29 (1907), 1907, p. 76

The report on the mission at Conover, N. C., traces it to Black Lutherans of the slave era, among them Tom Smyre, born in 1792 and a slave child on Washington's plantation when Washington died. Owned by a German Lutheran of Catawba County, he read German and English and knew the Book of Concord, and in 1866 two pastors of the Tennessee Synod examined him and licensed him.

1. 1882 · “Uncle Tom” · a notice from the Philadelphia Lutheran that appears to describe the same man: an old Black Lutheran pastor in North Carolina, “94 years of age”, who “says that he was sold from the Mount Vernon estate after the death of General Washington”.

Lankenau leaves New Orleans

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 30 (1908), 1908, p. 87

Quoting Prof. F. Wenger in The Southern Lutheran, the paper reports that F. J. Lankenau, pastor of St. Paul's Mission congregation in New Orleans for seventeen years and a professor at Luther College, had accepted a call from a white congregation in Napoleon, Ohio. He later became editor of the Pioneer and held the post until its last number in 1933.

Berg, from Little Rock to Greensboro

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 33 (1911), 1911, p. 77

When N. J. Bakke became director of the mission, the presidency of Immanuel College passed to F. Berg, installed at the opening of the tenth term on 6 September 1911; his son Albert was appointed assistant to the faculty. The paper recalls where Berg's ministry had begun thirty-three years before.

The founding editor retires

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 2

At the start of 1913 the paper takes leave of Prof. R. A. Bischoff, who had edited it from the first number. The tribute says that month after month for thirty-four years his fingers had touched “the same strings of the Gospel-harp”.

Black Lutherans before the Civil War

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 43

A memoir of the North Carolina pastor David Koonts opens with the Black Lutherans of the slave South. Pastors of white congregations baptized and confirmed the children of slaves, seats were assigned to them in the galleries, and they were admitted to communion after the white members.

Rosa Young asks for help

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 38 (1916), 1916, p. 11

In November 1915 the chairman of the Mission Board received a letter from a teacher in Alabama's Black Belt, unknown to the Board, offering it her school if it would take charge of the school for the children of her community. The next page says she had first consulted Booker T. Washington, who advised her to apply to the Lutheran Church.

1. 1916 · Washington's advice · Washington told her “that of all the Churches working for the uplift of the Colored people the Lutheran Church stood in the front ranks, because of the excellent Christian school-training which it offers to the children.”

Black workers ask for a synod

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 42 (1920), 1920, p. 52

The Luther Conference, meeting at New Orleans from 26 to 30 May 1920, resolved to ask the Synodical Conference to organize the whole Colored Mission field into one body, “or a synod, if you please”, through the Mission Board and after laying the request before the Immanuel and Alabama Luther conferences. It gave this reason among others.

Immanuel's faculty to remain white

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 44 (1922), 1922, p. 80

At Luther College in New Orleans the faculty had asked that John McDavid, a Black pastor from Charlotte, join it, and the Board called him. For Immanuel College at Greensboro the Board's meeting of 21 April 1922 resolved otherwise, while naming self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating congregations as its ultimate aim and calling it “but natural” to train Black workers for the college faculties.

The Pioneer becomes a mission paper only

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 44 (1922), 1922, p. 86

Among the resolutions on the mission adopted by the Synodical Conference on 16–21 August 1922 is one about the paper itself. It was to serve as a missionary monthly only, and the existing Alabama Lutheran was to become a church paper for the Black congregations.

A Klan warning at Plaquemine

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 46 (1924), 1924, p. 77

A survey of the Louisiana stations reports that work at Plaquemine had stopped the previous summer, when building had already begun, and that the contractor had also failed to meet local building regulations. The Board meant to sell the property and build in another location.

The “open door” at Immanuel

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 54 (1932), 1932, p. 155

The Synodical Conference of 10–15 August 1932 ratified the closing of Luther College in New Orleans and made Alabama Luther College a preparatory school for Immanuel, teaching the eighth and ninth grades. For Immanuel it kept the present arrangement and appointed a committee to study the “open-” or “closed-door” policy at its Black institutions.

The first self-supporting congregation

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 98

In 1933 the paper reported that St. Philip's in St. Louis had become the first congregation of the Colored Mission to support itself. Close behind, the paper says, was the Chicago congregation of M. N. Carter, who had written from Rosebud, Alabama, in 1918.

A first step toward Africa

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 29

With the synods' grants cut, the Board reported $26,000 less income, but it also recorded a beginning abroad: at the suggestion of Jonathan Ekong, a native of Africa studying at Immanuel College, it sent English sermon books and other literature to his people in Nigeria, whom the paper calls the Ibeskipo. The Lutheran Ladies' Aid for Colored Missions in St. Louis held money for a missionary's journey.

The final issue

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 130

The Missionary Board's farewell announces that the Pioneer and the German Missionstaube both end with this number, chiefly because of “the economic conditions of the times” and a wish among the synods to merge their periodicals. The editor, F. J. Lankenau, ill for months, had been forced to resign, and mission news was to pass to the Lutheran Witness, the Lutheraner and the papers of the other synods.

The Alabama field, 1879–1933

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 38 (1916), 1916, p. 44

In 1879 the Conference resolved to open a mission at Mobile, and L. Wahl took charge of it in 1880. The field that lasted began in the Black Belt: at Easter 1916 Christ Church at Rosebud, Wilcox County, was organized with 117 baptized members after a Palm Sunday confirmation of seventy, and left in the care of W. H. Lane and Rosa Young. By 1933 the Alabama field counted thirty-three stations.

1. 1879 · Columbus · the Conference resolves “to sent a missionary to New Orleans, Louisiana, to open a mission at Mobile, Alabama, and, if possible, at Sherman, Texas” (the printer's “sent”).
2. 1880 · Mobile · L. Wahl, formerly a missionary in India, rents a hall at Mobile and opens a day school, charging tuition because “the colored people at Mobile do not like free schools”.
3. 1917 · Rosa Young's letter · her own account: sent by Superintendent Bakke to Vredenburgh, she organizes St. Andrew's Sunday-school with 20 pupils and a day-school with 8.
4. 1928 · Twelve years · “We have now been in Alabama twelve years, and this is the first time we have climbed above the two thousand mark”: 2,135 souls.
5. 1933 · Field statistics · thirty-three stations, 2,622 baptized and 1,401 communicant members, 922 day-school pupils; later in the same paragraph the communicants are 1,407.

Colleges for Black students, 1902–1928

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 24 (1902), 1902, p. 36

In 1902 the Board told the Synodical Conference that the time had come for colleges to prepare young Black men for its seminaries. The links follow what came of it: a preparatory college at Concord in 1903, Luther College in New Orleans in 1904, Immanuel College at Greensboro in 1907, Alabama Luther College at Selma in 1925, and the closing and reopening of Luther College.

1. 1903 · Concord · from The Southern Lutheran: a preparatory college for Black boys opens at Concord, N. C., on 2 March 1903, with N. Bakke as president, so that the people may have “preachers of their own race”.
2. 1904 · Luther College · on 6 November the permanent home of Luther College, New Orleans, for boys and girls, is dedicated; its first pupils had been taught in the vestry of St. Paul's.
3. 1907 · Immanuel dedicated · Immanuel College at Greensboro is dedicated in June 1907; C. F. Obermeyer, president of the Board, “spoke of the love that gave us the college, and the great work it is to do for the race.”
4. 1925 · Luther College to close · the Luther Conference expresses “our deepest regret that circumstances made the Mission Board's decision imperative” to close Luther College, and pledges support to Selma.
5. 1925 · Selma · Alabama Luther College is dedicated on 20 September; its “chief aim and purpose shall be to train our young colored Lutherans to teach others the way of salvation”.
6. 1928 · Reopening · the Synodical Conference resolves unanimously “to reopen Luther College at New Orleans as a feeder of the normal school at Selma”.

Paying for the mission, 1879–1928

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 46 (1924), 1924, p. 74

From its first year the paper's receipts went into the mission box, and its pages regularly set out what the work cost and who paid for it. In 1924 the Board reported that the Black members, most of them poorly paid servants and tenants, had given $25,256.72 in 1923, and that their average gift exceeded that of the white members of the Synodical Conference.

1. 1879 · The mission box · the editor denies that the paper's receipts are his income: “It is all put into the mission-box”; the German Mission-Dove already has over 13,000 subscribers.
2. 1890 · The Board's count · receipts for 1889 of $7,516.50, against $575 a month for salaries; 576 souls, 268 communicants, 591 day-school pupils, five missionaries and four teachers.
3. 1921 · A deficit · a $10,000 deficit; gifts of white Christians up from $56,410.44 (1916–17) to $85,439.57 (1920–21), of Black Christians from $4,955.61 to $15,282.91.
4. 1928 · Alabama, 1927 · Black Belt congregations, “poor in this world's goods”, give $10,074.74 in 1927, about $1 a month for each communicant member.

How the paper spoke of race, 1879–1931

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 66

Across five decades the Pioneer printed two kinds of statement about the people it served: that the Gospel made no distinction of race, and judgments of their worship, their capacities and their place. The links give both as printed. In 1913 an editorial, “The Gospel Is for All”, likened the prejudice of Christians of its day to that of the Jewish Christians toward the Gentiles, and quoted a former missionary in East Africa.

1. 1879 · To all people · a Christmas conversation with “Old Uncle”: the Saviour does not belong “only to the white people, or only to the rich people, but ‘to ALL people’”.
2. 1882 · Tennessee Synod · the paper prints a Tennessee Synod resolution that Black worship “partakes more of the form of heathenism than Christianity”.
3. 1905 · A retrospect · the mission recalled as “a mission at home, among a race unduly despised, berated, and quite often abused.”
4. 1920 · Bakke · N. J. Bakke after forty-odd years: “The Lutheran Church has been and still is the Negroes' best friend.”
5. 1928 · Race consciousness · the Board: “Since the World War another hindrance has become apparent. We refer to race consciousness”; hearers ask why they must have a white man for their preacher.
6. 1930 · Islam in Africa · Islam is said to spread faster because “it knows no barriers of race or color, whereas Christianity recognizes the superiority of Japheth over Ham.”
7. 1931 · The curse of Canaan · Pastor Rau's conference paper holds that the curse “was fulfilled, as history points out”, and goes on: “we must not forget that these people also should hear of the Savior”.
8. 1931 · One race? · an editorial asks whether the Lutheran faith is “suited only to one race of people or to one language or to one locality?”

Deaths in the mission, 1884–1931

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 43 (1921), 1921, p. 43

The paper reported the deaths of its workers and friends as losses to the mission itself. The longest of these careers was N. J. Bakke's: when he began at New Orleans there were three stations, and the directory printed at his death in May 1921 listed 57.

1. 1884 · Meilaender · C. F. Obermeyer reports that Missionary Meilaender of Little Rock died of typhoid-malarial fever on 19 July: “When he died he was 25 years and 7 months old, and had been married but 3 months.”
2. 1887 · Walther · C. F. W. Walther dies on 7 May in his 76th year: “In him our Colored Mission has lost one of its most devoted and faithful friends.”
3. 1888 · Charles Berg · the New Orleans teacher dies on 9 March aged 28, after “seven years of self-denying and faithful service”.
4. 1918 · E. R. Vix · “Uncle Bob”, teacher of Black children at New Orleans since September 1881, dies on 10 July; a native of New Orleans, “he bore no prejudice against the Colored people.”
5. 1931 · C. F. Drewes · the director of Colored Missions dies “after an illness of only six days in St. Louis, the victim of influenza and pneumonia”; the caption dates his death 3 March 1931.

War and influenza, 1916–1920

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 42 (1920), 1920, p. 67

The Board's report to the Synodical Conference in 1920 named three hindrances of the past four years: the World War, two epidemics of influenza and the migration of Black people to the North. Black members' contributions had still risen from $5,528 five years before to $14,325 in 1919.

1. 1916 · India · German missionaries in India are interned or repatriated, among them the Gossner missionaries in Bihar and Orissa.
2. 1917 · A spy scare · Superintendent Bakke in Alabama “suspected of being a German spy”; shots fired to intimidate him and threats of fire, laid to “some jealous enemies of our work”.
3. 1918 · The Kaiser's church · a booklet answering “the assumption that the Lutheran Church is the Kaiser's church”.
4. 1918 · No convention · the district presidents decide that “it would be best for the Synodical Conference not to convene this year.”
5. 1918 · Rosebud · M. N. Carter writes that “the ‘flu’ temporarily shut the doors of school and church”, while the congregation raised its monthly gift to the Board from $10 to $15.