The Origin of the German Evangelical Synod of North America

Abstract

The German Evangelical Synod of North America, now merged with the Reformed Church in the United States under the name of Evangelical-Reformed Church, was founded in the year 1840 as Der Deutsche Evangelische Kirchenverein des Westens. It might appear to the casual observer that the establishment of the Kirchenverein, like the founding of all immigrant churches, represented purely the transplantation of a foreign culture to the new world where, protected from old-world influences and indifferent to the forces of a strange environment, it would develop its independent forms. The development of this German religious community on the Missouri frontier, however, can not be understood apart from the conditions prevailing in both Europe and America at the time. From the time of its inception it was put to the task of emancipating itself from the ties which bound it to the fatherland and establishing such contacts with the new environment as would constitute it an American body.