Pennsylvania Ministerium - General Council

General Council

As with many Protestant churches, the General Synod was split on the issue of the American Civil War in the 1860s. Yet this was not the biggest challenge to Lutheran unity in the middle of the 19th century. As the importance of the Lutheran Confessions grew among American Lutherans, Samuel Schmucker—who was once seen confessionally conservative—found himself on the outside of the consensus of other Lutherans. In 1855, Schmucker, along with two other theologians from the Gettysburg seminary, penned the Definite Synodical Platform. This document downplayed the importance of the Confessions—indeed even suggested an edited "American Recension" of the Augsburg Confession—and sought to establish a distinctly American Lutheranism that was more at home with other Protestants in the country.

The Definite Synodical Platform was not enough to cause the Pennsylvania Ministerium to leave the General Synod, but it was a foretaste of things to come. When the Frankean Synod, a Lutheran church body noted for its progressive politics and its utter disregard for the Lutheran Confessions, was admitted to the General Synod, the leadership of the Ministerium had seen enough. At the 1864 gathering of the General Synod, at which the Frankeans were admitted, the delegates from the Ministerium left in protest. Unfortunately, the delegates left before the General Synod passed a resolution affirming and strengthening their commitment to the Augsburg Confession.

It is not clear whether the members of the Ministerium intended for this to be a permanent break, or a temporary protest. Regardless, it became permanent when the officials at the next Gathering of the General Synod refused to admit the delegates from the Ministerium. Thus, the Ministerium found themselves on their own.

In 1864, unhappy with the direction of the General Synod and its seminary at Gettysburg, the Ministerium established a new seminary in Philadelphia, and asked Charles Porterfield Krauth to head the seminary (now known as the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia). This was followed, in 1867, with the Ministerium being joined by thirteen other church bodies in a more conservative and confessional organization known as the General Council.