American Lutheranism, Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and the Tennessee SynodBente, F. (Friedrich)
History
American Lutheranism, Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and the Tennessee Synod
Bente, F. (Friedrich)
Lutheran Church -- Tennessee -- History; Lutheran Church -- United States -- History
which in reality, however, were none but pure Lutheran doctrines,
especially those of the power of Baptism and of the presence of the true
body and blood in the Lord's Supper. When the Synod met at Lincolnton,
N. C., in the following year, those members of Synod who were
dissatisfied with the resolutions of the previous year demanded a
thorough investigation of the mooted questions. In answer reference was
made to the majority vote, which decision was to be final. Hostility to
the Augsburg Confession and especially to the doctrines of Baptism and
of the Lord's Supper, as well as the tendency to unite with all
religious bodies, became more and more apparent. And when the plan of
the General Synod met with the determined opposition of the staunch
Lutherans, the other party dissolved the meeting and made the beginning
of the General Synod. Those pastors who remained faithful to the
Lutheran Confessions, six in number, now united and organized the
so-called Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod." (11, 165.)
LUTHERANS IN VIBGINIA.
79. G. Henkel, Stoever, Klug at Spottsylvania.--In 1754 Muhlenberg and
the Pennsylvania Synod sent an appeal to both London and Halle in which
they state: "Many thousands of Lutheran people are scattered through
North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, etc." When the
Indians attacked New Bern, N. C., shortly after it had been founded in
1710 by 650 Palatines and Swiss, twelve Lutheran families escaped from
the massacre and sought refuge in Virginia. Here Governor Spottwood
allotted them homes in Spottsylvania County. Gerhard Henkel is said to
have been their first pastor; but he served them for a short time only.
Their number was increased by a colony of Alsatians and Palatinates.
They had started for Pennsylvania, but, after various hardships on the
voyage, in which many of their companions died, were purchased by
Governor Spottwood, and sent by him to his lands in the same locality,
on the upper Rappahannock, "twelve German miles from the sea." (Jacobs,
184.) In 1728, after a vacancy of sixteen years, Henkel was succeeded by
John Caspar Stoever, Sr., born in Frankenberg, Hesse, who came to
America with his younger relative of the same name, the latter being
active for many years as a missionary in Pennsylvania. Stoever's salary
in Virginia was three thousand pounds of tobacco a year. In 1734 he and
two members of his congregation, Michael Schmidt and Michael Holden,
went to Europe to collect a fund for the endowment of their church.
"Because the congregation," as an old report has it, "ardently desires
that the Evangelical truth should not be extinguished with his death,
but be preserved to them and their descendants, the said preacher, Rev.
Stoever, toward the close of the year 1734, . . . undertook a voyage to
Europe to collect a fund for the continuance of their service, the
building of a church and school, and the endowment of the ministry."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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