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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Wolf, Richard Charles |
| Title | The Americanization of the German Lutherans, 1683 to 1829 |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Dissertation -- Yale University |
| Date | 1947; 1971 |
| Extent of Work | iv, 596 pp. |
| Abstract | FINDINGS 1. The economic, political, ecclesiastical, physical and psychological conditions existent in Germany between 1618 and 1776 moved a large number of German Lutherans to emigrate to America between 1683 and 1776, and conditioned the emigrants toward a readiness to acclimatize themselves in America. 2. The long, arduous, costly and dangerous journey to America served both as a guarantee of the permanent settlement of the German Lutherans in America and as a deterrent to any return to Germany. 3. The unorganized condition in which these German Lutherans arrived in America and the absence of a German colony to which they could resort made them dependent upon and subject to the prevalent English culture in which they found themselves. The indenture system, the obligatory oaths of allegiance to the British Crown and the exigencies of frontier life afforded a condition of malleability which facilitated their adjustment to the new culture in which they found themselves. 4. The ecclesiastical disorganization of the German Lutherans, marked by a lack of pastors and congregational organization, prepared the way for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg who by his personal life, organizational policies, ecclesiastical and political attitudes led them to a high degree of accommodation to and participation in the life and culture of the American colonies. 5. The pressures of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods fused the German Lutherans into the body of the new nation as an indigenous part of that nation. 6. The Lutheran ecclesiastical organization developed under the impact of the American environment was both democratic and Lutheran, thus assuring the Lutheran Church a permanent place in the American culture. 7. The development of this democratic Lutheran Church came at the critical juncture when a new wave of German immigration was arriving on American shores. It guaranteed that the Lutheran Church in America would not revert to the position of a "foreign" ecclesiastical body in the surrounding American culture. 8. The "German" Lutheran Church became the "American" Lutheran Church. Planted here before the formation of the American nation it shared the struggles which produced the nation, helped perpetuate the nation's existence and grew and matured with the nation as it grew and matured. |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988. Book, in MadCat. |
| Call Number | MKI BX8041 W6 1947a; shelved with MKI dissertations |
| MKI Terms | Lutherans/ Lutheran church/ Assimilation |