And they were not alone. Confusion about authority and individuality was growing all over Europe. Many forces and schools of thought were vying for the liberation of people from the dominance of kings and royal princes. This Saxon group, isolated and far from home, was a microcosm living out that struggle against royal tyranny going on in Europe and the United States. The voices in the three groups reflected those of many other people fighting for their own freedom as individuals and at the same time trying to find the right path to walk in their spiritual and daily lives. What the colonists wanted collided with what they needed.
They needed the peace Jesus brought to the disciples in the locked upper room. When He first appeared to them, He didn’t blame them or say, “How could you?” He simply offered “Peace.” Then His forgiveness overflowed, and He directed them to forgive one another. More than anything else, the community needed the peace and forgiveness they had denied Stephan.
NOTES
1 George J. Gude, “Practical Implications of the Missouri-Synod’s Position Regarding Church and Ministry,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 79, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 164–65.
2 William Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838” (unpublished ms., Stephan Family Archives and Concordia Historical Institute, 1935), 171.
3 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,“170–71.
4 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,“172.
5 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,“174–75.
6 Koepchen, “Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,“156–57.
7 Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 477. For a more complete reaction of the Stephanists in Dresden and Leipzig read Forster’s Zion on the Mississippi, chapter 18.
8 William Koepchen, “Conference Notes,” trans. Axel Reitzig (unpublished ms., Stephan Family Archives, 1934), 50–51.
9 Koepchen, “Conference Notes,” 52.
10 Koepchen, “Conference Notes,” 53.
11 Koepchen, “Conference Notes,” 54–55.
12 Carl Eduard Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration to America, trans. Rudolph Fiehler (1840; Tuscon: M. R. Winkler, 1977), 32ff. This translation by Winkler was financed by the Christian News, an ultra conservative newspaper spawned in the 1960s and prominent in the Missouri Synod battle over the Doctrine of the Word and the Church. This translation was used to prove the conservative position on the nature of the church and that it belonged to the laity. Pastors were only legitimate if they were called by a congregation.
13 Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration to America, 17.
26
Emerging Leadership and C. F. W. Walther’s Legacy
The struggle of the Society for the “correct” spiritual path in the kingdom of God was well known by C. F. W. Walther. Many years earlier he had been a spiritually and emotionally troubled student of theology. Martin Stephan had rescued him from a fanatical dedication to some twisted pietistic ideas, bringing him to the grace and mercy of Christ. Walther grew in understanding God’s grace; yet after Stephan’s expulsion he failed to reflect that grace. He knew the difference between living by the law of God and living by the grace of God. At times he found it difficult to leave his legalistic past. Walther knew how to make his way through the chaos and to find strategies that would ultimately bring him into a leadership role.
The three factions continued arguments and discussions about who they were as a church. The lack of resolution of this issue for over two years depressed the members. It is a wonder that the colony maintained any kind of community with such divisive attitudes. Without the demanding daily work of providing food and housing they would surely have gone under. The fact that they were able to argue and differ openly probably helped relieve the tension; it did not seem to spill over into their daily business.
During these tumultuous two years, the Society accomplished a great deal: they divided the land into individual farms, housing tracts, church lots, towns, and schools. They began to build their towns and to plant crops. Unfortunately they had to let go the dream of building a near-commune style spiritual community. Realism had set in alongside their splintered theology, and this particular utopian spiritual experiment had come to a dead end.
In St. Louis, January 1841, Pastor O. H. Walther died. One of the principal leaders of the emigration, he had been pastor of the Saxons who remained in St. Louis. His brother, C. F. W. Walther, was called by Trinity congregation, but he declined the call, only to accept it later. Eduard Vehse was gone; he returned to Germany a disillusioned and angry man. Marbach and his group refused to participate in worship with the other Saxons any longer.
In Perry County, discussions and meetings continued unabated. In March of 1841 a formal conference with the three factions was held in the town of Dresden. Apparently Marbach asserted strongly that “there was no church among them.” Some pastors, especially Loeber, Keyl, and Gruber, did not agree with Marbach, but they were at a loss for words to prove him wrong. Into this dilemma C. F. W. Walther inserted himself, realizing that both the vacuum in leadership and the impasse in theology were deadly.
Walther set out to find a way through the morass of opinion and “wounded” thinking, proposing ideas that all sides could accept. His theological path had to do with helping the people understand what church and ministry meant in their novel situation. Politically astute, he acknowledged the positions of both sides of the church question. His view was that wherever God’s people gather around word and sacrament they may call themselves a church. Later he would say that the congregation has the sole right to call and ordain pastors, because they are a church. He tried to reconcile this impasse without giving up too much of his own point of view.
As the Society tried to decide which faction provided the best definition of church in their circumstances, Walther was able to weave his way through the turmoil by giving each side a little of what they needed to hear. When the clergy were attacked for their lack of leadership and blindly following Stephan, Walther was smart enough to concede the issue. But unlike Vehse and Jaeckel, he did not concede that the clergy have no power or authority unless it is given explicitly by the congregation. At the same time he could not go along with Marbach’s position that those people who came to Missouri were no longer a church because they had severed themselves from the church in Germany or because they had no pastor.
The social climate became so bitter that some kind of breakthrough was urgently needed. A debate about these propositions regarding the church and ministry was held at the new little Concordia College in Altenburg, Missouri, on April 15 and 21, 1841.
Walther set forth eight propositions that expressed the nature and form of the “true” church, reflecting what Franz Delitzsch had written to Barthel.1 Walther stated that the church was the gathering of all believers since the beginning of time and these believers were called by the Word of God. Only God knows who they are.
This proposition became known as the statement of the “invisible church.” At the time of the debates, this news probably brought the most comfort to the colonists and helped them realize they were no longer alone but in the shared company of all the saints who went before them. To some later theologians and laity as well as the sixteenth-century Lutheran Reformers, this invisible church was not meaningful in the real world. The “invisibility” of the church was an obscure abstraction. However, for those who lacked a name and a group to identify with, this invisible church was at least a start toward participation in the church universal.
Things we value most are invisible and enduring—love, friendship, honor. Visible things are fleeting and temporary—a budding rose, our human lives. But the deeper invisible things are difficult for our physical human nature to hold on to. Hence we adopt visible realities to help express the invisible, for example, roses for a loved one. Similarly, the visible church helps us participate in the enduring and in
visible communion of saints.
Walther quoted the Augsburg Confession, article 7, “Of the Church,” reminding them that the church is present wherever the people gather around word and sacraments. This was the most solid of his thinking. This proposition was known as the statement of the “visible church.” The visible church also exists where there is “false teaching” or where people have partially left the truth, but they are still the church as contrasted with worldly organizations. Much of what Walther proposed in the remaining propositions had to do with separating heresy from false doctrine and determining if a heterodox church can be part of “the true church.” As long as the people of God gather around word and sacrament, they can be called a church and have ministers and valid sacraments. These remaining propositions spoke to the great numbers of doubters in the Marbach and Vehse camps.
These debates became known as the Altenburg Debates and later formed both the theology and polity of the successor church known as the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. It was the discussion between Marbach and Walther that helped the group find a new path, and it was Walther’s carefully worded and clear statements about the true church that helped the colony break free.
What Walther did those days in April was lay a foundation that could be agreed upon by the original congregations. When the community came together on these principles, they were able to move on and form congregations that called pastors to preach and administer the sacraments. They now could grasp a visible expression of the church, which Walther continued to impress on them. This time, however, they were organized into individual congregations. Six years later they would join in a loose federation of which he would be elected president. The “synod” structure they adopted was supposedly only “advisory” to the congregations.
Although it took only two years to end the strife and to mend relationships, this painful time seemed like ages. People had married and given in marriage, children were born, crops harvested, and craftsmen honed their skills. The demands of their worldly lives and their faith had sustained them through the dark period, a deep personal faith that had been nurtured by Bishop Martin Stephan.
Under Walther’s leadership, the synod would eventually ban practices grounded in authentic pietism such as conventicles. The fractious events of Stephan’s deposition set the stage for ambivalence about the practice of confession and absolution. It soon fell out of use. For fear of losing a meaningful role for laity in governance, they abandoned the episcopacy. Ironically, the “loose” federation making up the synod became more and more centralized, concentrating authority in a few officers.
Marbach soon left for Germany, a somewhat humbled and chastened man. He had been unable to practice his profession as a lawyer in the United States. Although he had lost the argument at Altenburg, he was not bitter. He had also lost five children. He retuned to Germany to grieve. Walther, on the other hand, accepted the call to the St. Louis congregation soon after the Altenburg Debates. This congregation became known as Trinity or Old Trinity Lutheran Church in south central St. Louis. A few years later Walther taught at the Concordia Seminary and became the first president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
NOTE
1 For a complete discussion of this debate see Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 523–25.
VII
SUNSET
27
The Bishop’s Family in Germany
During all the drastic events in Perry County, the Stephan family back in Germany continued to make their lives work sometimes under difficult circumstances. Histories of this Saxon emigration include little about Julia Stephan and her daughters. Stephan’s wife Julia never came to the United States. The money that Stephan set aside for his family’s travel to America while he was still living in Dresden was taken from him. Dr. Marbach kept other monies in trust for their travel and care, which he secured in black bags and gave to Julia. It was not used either. Julia may have feared that spending the money might implicate her in Martin’s problems. The most likely reason they never went was that, given his expulsion, the state of their marriage, and the number of children, such a trip was just too difficult.
Julia stayed in Dresden and cared for their seven living daughters under a municipal court settlement she and Martin had agreed to that would provide for their children while he was gone. Julia had some resources of her own, interest on loans she had made, some inheritance money from an aunt and uncle, and also Martin’s Saxon Church pension. She placed two of her three hearing and speech impaired daughters in an Institute for the Deaf in April of 1839, the other, Celestine, stayed with her godmother for a time before she too was placed in the Deaf Institute. Attorney Krause was the guardian for these children, and later Attorney Koerner in America was also named their guardian.
The six-year-old charges of embezzlement, brought by several of the Bohemian members of St. John’s congregation, were relinquished on February 27,1844, in agreement with Stephan’s lawyer, including a claim on a golden communion chalice presented to Pastor Stephan on the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1830. This chalice is not to be confused with a chalice presented by a Polish duke to Pastor Stephan on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary of ordination into the ministry. Claimants also agreed to stop hassling Mrs. Stephan about living in the parsonage. The settlement was approved by the city council of Dresden and by the consistory superintendent on March 12, 1844, just months before Julia died.
Julia learned this verdict from Dr. Marbach, now back in Dresden. She also asked him to look into the two black bags Marbach left for emergency or for the daughters’ travel to America. Julia had never opened the bags. Marbach found in them 400 Thaler and reported to her that the money was legitimate, not stolen from the Credit Fund of the Emigration Community. Martin’s name had been cleared in Dresden but it was never cleared in Perry County, even though Dr. Marbach knew the money left behind was not.
In order to finish his legal role with the Stephan money, Marbach wrote to the Municipal Court of Dresden, “Pastor Stephan did not take the 400 Thaler out of the credit account for the emigration, but rather these were from his own means. Stephan always referred to this money as his ‘savings coins.”’1 Marbach notified the court that he was no longer responsible for the money Stephan had asked him to keep. Why Stephan had chosen Marbach to do this when Marbach was going to America with him is not clear, especially when the money was actually left with Julia. When Marbach came back from America, he repeatedly wrote to Stephan asking how he should handle the money. Since he had not heard from Stephan in five years, Marbach turned the money over to Krause and Koerner, the guardians of the children, for their ongoing care. The 500 Thaler Stephan had posted as a security bond in the St. John’s case disappeared. There is no evidence this money was returned to Julia or to Martin.
It is ironic that the one close friend of Stephan who led in stirring the congregation to the hostile eviction of their pastor is also the one who assured Julia that Martin was innocent of the embezzlement charges. Perhaps for Julia, Martin, and the children, Marbach had done too little too late.
Julia’s reaction to her husband’s departure and the bishop’s deposition is sketched in several letters she folded into one mailing to her son Martin, July 18–August 13, 1839. They are filled with deep affection for her son, news about her financial situation, and activities that she and the children did together in the spring of 1839. Although some financial burdens had been lifted, she still had four daughters to support as the only resident parent.
Her letter to son Martin begins with a lament:
With unbelievable fear and longing I have looked forward to a letter from you, because one letter after another brought joy to those left behind here, but for me there was no sign of life from you. Alas, this was a heavy load and very hard on me. I had nearly given up all hope to ever hear from you; because in none of the other letters which I was a
llowed to read was there ever any mention of you let alone any details about your life, not even in the letter of our dear Hellwig.2
Martin Jr. had written his sister Concordia, who gave his letter to her mother. Julia was overjoyed to know he was well and safe. During the six months since her husband and son had left, she had not yet heard any specific news from her son and naturally asked him many questions: how he was and where he was living. She urged him to write more specifically about what was going on in his life. She was glad to hear about his journey, but she did not know much about what had happened to him, or what had happened to other people on the ship. She wanted to know where he lived and if he liked his quarters, what he was doing and what kind of occupation he was considering, was he taking advantage of all the new things he was experiencing. She wondered about different parts of America and wanted a description of the land and plants and trees. She asked if he looked for strange plants on the grasslands and valleys and added, “Maybe it is wishful thinking, but I pictured you as a naturalist and researcher, something I would have liked you to become.”
Then she told him that she had been “real sick,” suffering from arthritis and chest pains that she said was natural because of the stressful things that happened before he and his father left Dresden. She told Martin that his letter was “welcome medicine” and reassured him with her confidence that God would help her get well. She was already beginning to feel better. Good friends had supported her and been with her in her “hours of need and suffering.”
This mother made it very clear that she missed her son, saying, “If I could just see you once, my good boy; if I could just find out how you really are, in all truthfulness....” She referred to other letters she had written him in Bremen before he sailed to America, but evidently he had not received them yet; and she regretted having addressed them to his father. She hoped he would eventually receive them.
In Pursuit of Religious Freedom: Bishop Martin Stephan's Journey Page 28
