{"id":23304,"date":"2016-02-23T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=23304"},"modified":"2016-02-22T21:35:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T02:35:38","slug":"lutheranism-ethnicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2016\/02\/lutheranism-ethnicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Lutheranism & ethnicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Lutheran churches in America have an ethnic origin\u2013they were usually started by communities of German, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian immigrants\u2013and that has definitely shaped the culture of local congregations, sometimes putting off new people who want to join. \u00a0I remember marveling at the Germanness of our congregation in Wisconsin, with its Men\u2019s Club singing \u201cSie Leben Hoh\u201d on birthdays and drinking beer and\u00a0eating cannibal sandwiches while playing Sheepshead, after an extremely brief devotion from Herr Pastor. \u00a0This didn\u2019t bother me\u2013I got a kick out of it and actually liked it\u2013though I was highly conscious that\u00a0I was an outsider.<\/p>\n

The distinguished sociologist of religion Peter Berger, an ELCA Lutheran, writes about this phenomenon, though he concludes that today the ethnic identity stuff is largely absent from American Lutheranism. \u00a0It is still a factor, he says, in American Orthodoxy. \u00a0Also, I would add, in the various ethnic Catholic parishes and in black churches. \u00a0I would further add that cultural identity is a factor in distinctly\u00a0\u201cAmerican\u201d churches too, with the upper class WASP Episcopalians and obviously southern Southern Baptists. \u00a0There is also the distinct culture of middle class white suburbanites in the megachurches of the land.<\/p>\n

\n

Is this a problem, or not? \u00a0Or are churches preserving\u00a0something precious, something distinctly \u201ccultural\u201d in our current society that is actually \u201canti-cultural\u201d? \u00a0Do you agree with Berger that ethnic identity is mostly gone from Lutheran congregations, or can you still see it, and, if so, where? \u00a0Where it persists, are there ways congregations can help newcomers navigate these cultural shoals?<\/p>\n

What Peter Berger says, after the jump. \u00a0His article\u00a0will also serve as a map for people trying to figure out the Lutheran landscape.From Peter Berger,After Ethnicity \u2013 The American Interest<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

My preferred cognitive style is free association\u2014that\u2019s how I remember so many jokes. One joke leads to another. I don\u2019t really want to know whether this is due to some faulty electrical wiring in my brain. But this is the first time this has happened in writing for my blog: the last post dealt with ethnicity and Eastern Christian Orthodoxy in America; then I thought of American Lutheranism, which has had a very different history with ethnicity (mainly German and Scandinavian). I think the differences are interesting. [I am Lutheran myself, of a rather heterodox sort. But I don\u2019t see why this should preclude my writing about this curious denomination in America.]<\/p>\n

The first Lutheran church in America was founded in 1646 in Christina, a Swedish colony which we now know as Wilmington, Delaware. It was captured by the Dutch in 1655, as they pushed out from New Amsterdam (aka New York). The Dutch soon faded out of the Lutheran picture on the East Coast. Lutherans came in large numbers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The biggest group of Lutheran immigrants was German, with Scandinavians next in numbers. They came into a Protestant country where they did not have to face the deep religious prejudices which Catholics had to face, and they felt comfortable in America from early on.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lutheran churches in America have an ethnic origin\u2013they were usually started by communities of German, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian immigrants\u2013and that has definitely shaped the culture of local congregations, sometimes putting off new people who want to join. \u00a0I remember marveling at the Germanness of our congregation in Wisconsin, with its Men\u2019s Club singing \u201cSie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[2840,4336,4337],"class_list":["post-23304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-culture","tag-christianity-culture","tag-ethnicity","tag-religion-and-ethnicity"],"yoast_head":"\nLutheranism & ethnicity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lutheran churches in America have an ethnic origin--they were usually started by 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