Lutheran Pastor Research Articles

The Relationship between Lutheran Pastors’ Well-Being and Depression and the Professional Support Available to Them: A Quantitative Study in the Hungarian Lutheran Church

Introduction: Several studies confirm the unfavorable physical and mental health status of church pastors. These findings have often been linked to the level of social support they receive. Aims: The purpose of this study is to provide insights into the relationship between the mental health of Hungarian Lutheran pastors and the availability of professional support. We examined which form of support shows the strongest association with their well-being and depression. Methods: The quantitative research was conducted in 2022 in the Hungarian Lutheran Church. 54.0% of pastors (N = 148) completed the survey. Mental health status was measured using the WHO-5 Well-Being Index (WBI-5) and the 9-item Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Three kinds of professional support were measured in the questionnaire: supervision, spiritual direction, and peer group support. Results: The results clearly indicate a significant association between increasing levels of support utilized by pastors and improved well-being [χ² (3, N = 139) = 28.75, p < .001]. In the binary logistic regression analysis, the odds of being classified in the non-normal category of the BDI decreased by approximately 60.0% if pastors had a supervisor or spiritual director [χ² (3, N = 132) = 15.33, p = .002, Nagelkerke R2 = 15.1%]. Conclusions: Our results suggest that professional support has a stronger association with pastors’ mental health status than any sociodemographic characteristics. The authors conclude that it is important to establish professional support systems for clergy to strengthen their ministry within the Hungarian Lutheran Church.

Between Interwar and Postwar Reading and Memory Communities. A Look at the Bio-Bibliography of the Lutheran Pastor Alfred Csallner

The present paper investigates the reception of the activity and the works of Adolf Csallner (1895-1992). He was one of the most exponential figures of the eugenic movement which gained audience in the interwar period among the Transylvanian Saxons and stimulated the self-Nazification of Lutheran pastors of various ranks. Csallner started as a man of the church and from that position tilted to more radical völkisch ideas, finally, becoming fascinated by the national - socialist racial ideas and choosing to infuse his works with such ideological idiosyncrasies. In the present paper, I recognize four communities of reading, each having their advocates and an anticipated readership. Hence, the authors of different printings sought to guide and influence its anticipated public to a specific understanding of the career of this Transylvanian Saxon clergyman. First and foremost, I am pursuing the feedback received from the side of the (pan-)/German and Transylvanian Saxon readership from the interwar period who read Csallner’s texts at first hand and could be animated by the same essentialist ideas. Secondly, I distinguish between a community of reading which was expected to positively respond to the efforts of rehabilitating Csallner’s work in order to defend an entire nazified generation. In relation to this, I reflect on how a diasporic Saxon readership was invited to recuperate Csallner as a martyrized man of the church, always in the service of his ethnic group with all the argumentative means available. A third community of reading is constituted by the readers who may have considered Csallner’s career and works, by circumstantial bibliographical referencing, hence, portraying him as a eugenicist among others, a veritable exponent for the phenomenon of right-wing radicalization experienced by the ethnic minorities’ elites from the post-imperial states. Finally, I identify a fourth community of reading which has been guided to regard Csallner as a racial driven clerical fascist. In short, this paper aims to demonstrate how the profile of an author entangled with the collective identity projects of an ethnic group during interwar and, especially, in post-war eras.

Spiritual and Medical Melancholy in Lutheran Responses to Johann Weyer's Criticism of the Witch Trials.

This article examines responses from Lutheran pastors, theologians, and physicians to the arguments given by Johann Weyer in 1563 that those women who confessed to a pact with the devil suffered from melancholy and were thus not responsible for their acts. Weyer's conception of melancholy was a medical one, yet among Lutheran pastors and theologians the concept of a spiritual form of melancholy emerged that came from religious sources. The article clarifies the difference between the concepts of medical and spiritual melancholy within Lutheranism and reviews the respective roles they played in the debates over Weyer's arguments.

“Regarding the Mormons”: Danish Lutheran Pastors’ Reports to the Bishop of Zealand on Latter-day Saints in 1854

“Regarding the Mormons”: Danish Lutheran Pastors’ Reports to the Bishop of Zealand on Latter-day Saints in 1854

The moderate Enlightenment in the Baltic provinces: Gustav von Bergmann

ABSTRACT Gustav von Bergmann (1749–1814) was a Lutheran pastor in Livland, one of the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Being interested in Enlightenment ideas, he published a string of literary, historical and political works in German and Latvian. In these works, the tension between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ wings of Baltic Enlightenment becomes visible, and they can serve as an example of intertwined and often conflicting ideas concerning the education of the ‘common people’ and agrarian reforms within the context of Volksaufklärung (Popular Enlightenment). In the article, an overview of the debates on serfdom and political reforms has been provided by sketching different approaches of Baltic intellectuals and also influences on their ideas from German-speaking countries. Bergmann wrote historical works that emphasised the need of social reforms, but at the same time opposed radical political changes; the shift in his views was influenced by French revolution. His publications in Latvian were in line with Volksaufklärung ideas and corresponded to the concept of gradual transformations by preparing peasants for freedom through the means of education. Belletristic fiction in almanacs, sermons, and translation of German bestseller Noth- und Hülfsbüchlein (1788) served this purpose along with the practical work such as smallpox inoculation.

Priests’ Influence on the Seasonality of Marriages and Births at the End of the XVIII–XIX Centuries in Staroshvedska (Gammalsvenskby) Colony

The article is dedicated to the seasonality of marriages and birth rates in the Old Swedish Colony, as well as the potential influence of a Lutheran pastor on these demographic processes. Hypotheses regarding the connection between marriage dates and the seasonality of firstborn births and the differences in marriage seasonality between the Old Swedish Colony and Josephstal colonies are examined. Metric books and family lists serve as the primary sources. Marriage dates and firstborn birth dates are compared based on data partially reconstructed through family history research methods. Due to the specificity of the sources (lack of surnames, matching names, age information, or its fragmentary nature), it was possible to link personal information regarding marriage records from metric books and family lists for only some couples. Marriage dates and firstborn birth dates were identified for only 63 cases. Spearman’s rank correlation was used to search for correlations, and a correlation between marriage months and the seasonality of firstborn births was found (Rs = 0.32, p = 0.01, n = 63). However, no differences in marriage seasonality between the Old Swedish Colony and Josephstal were detected. Still, differences in the seasonality of firstborn births and subsequent children were observed. In spring, the number of firstborn births was lower compared to later children. Some cases of premarital conception were also identified. Most marriages, both in the Old Swedish Colony and Josephstal, were recorded in September, contradicting the observations of Anton Karlgren (1905), who claimed that most marriages in the Old Swedish Colony occurred in November. Nearly half (48%) of the marriages were double weddings, where multiple couples got married on the same day (2–4 couples). However, the number of such weddings decreased starting from the 1850s. It is worth noting that there was no significant concentration of double weddings in any particular year. The high concentration of double weddings in the late 18th century is explained by compensatory marriage rates after the cholera epidemic. Nevertheless, double weddings in the 1830s‑1850s may have been influenced by the short periods when the pastor visited the colony for wedding ceremonies.The author concludes that pastors had the opportunity to influence the seasonality of firstborn births through the timing of their visits to the colony for marriage ceremonies. However, the most significant impact of pastors on demographic processes was seen in the increase in double weddings, which resulted from the necessity of marrying when the pastor was present in the colony.

Rice and Arak: the South Indian Diet of the Early XVIII Century through the Eyes of Europeans according to the Documents of the Danish Royal Mission

Since the beginning of the XVIII century, the Danish Royal Mission has been working in the South of India. For the first years, it consisted mainly of people from the University of Halle. Many historical sources have been preserved, according to which this page of the history of the penetration of Christianity into Asia and the formation of European Oriental studies is being reconstructed today. Lutheran pastors studied languages, translated sacred literature, preached, created schools, built churches. A significant amount of research has been devoted to these problems. However, the daily life of Europeans in the South Asian region at the beginning of the XVIII century until now has attracted little attention. Numerous reports on the work of missionaries in India allow us to envision how the Lutheran ministers of the church adapted to local household traditions, including culinary traditions. The first head of the mission, B. Ziegenbalg in his works gives overall information about the diet of local residents. In addition to telling about the main dishes and drinks of India, he provides valuable data on the relationship between cooking and Indian medicine. His works also contain materials concerning the specifics of the diet of ascetics. Finally, in connection with culinary topics, his materials preserve data about the economy of the region (trade relations, cultivated crops, prices for basic food and beverages, etc.). The texts of Ziegenbalg allow us to raise an important academic problem of meeting, interaction and mutual adaptation of two completely different cultures – European and Indian.

The Sacramentality of Scripture in the Writings of Johann Gerhard

Abstract: Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) was a Lutheran pastor and university professor in Germany whose writings on scripture stand as some of his most important theological contributions. In these works, he developed the doctrine of scripture in several significant ways. This essay addresses one such development: Gerhard’s understanding of the sacramentality of scripture. Though scripture is not a sacrament properly speaking, the relationship of its external form to its internal divine meaning and purpose presents an interesting sacramental analogy. In speaking of sacramentality, Gerhard is concerned with the status of scripture as a means of grace and the efficacy of the word in itself. This essay will focus on the continuity of Gerhard’s views on the efficacy of scripture, especially in the face of an episode known as the Rahtmannian debate. Two points will be stressed throughout: (1) Gerhard took a consistent approach to the efficacy of scripture throughout his writings and (2) this approach provides a helpful foundation upon which to establish a theology of the sacramentality of scripture.

Dietrich Bonhoeffers „religionslose“ Evangelisation: Formate seiner ökumenischen Spiritualität und die Oxfordgruppenbewegung

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), made a martyr by the Nazi German regime in 1945, is still widely read because of his ideas: the proclamation of Christian faith in a non-religious comprehen-sive worldly way, a Bible oriented spirituality of silence, confession with a political horizon. In Norwegian sources the profile of the US based Oxford Group Movement, founded by the Lutheran pastor Frank Buchman (1878–1961; later: Moral Rearmament, today: Initiatives of Change) has been identified as an influential revival movement appe-aling to political elites in Europe in the 1930’s. The article tries to show to which extent Bonhoeffer may have shaped his ideas on preaching and spirituality in confrontation with Buchman’s movement. The Nor-wegian author Ronald Fangen (1895–1946) plays a substantial role for the profile of the Oxford Group Movement in Norway.

A Unique Copy of Alphabetum Russarum, Printed in Stockholm by Peter van Selow

ABSTRACT This paper describes a virtually unknown Russian alphabet table, Alphabetum Russarum. It consists of only two leaves and presents the Russian alphabet, including detailed pronunciation rules in Latin. The copy is damaged, the impressum is lost. It is clear, however, that the printer was Peter van Selow (1582–1650). The only known copy belongs to the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, where it functions as a kind of appendix to the Lutheran catechism, printed in Stockholm in 1628 by the same printer, Van Selow. Alphabetum Russarum was undoubtedly intended as an “international” counterpart to the well-known Swedish edition Alfabetum Rutenorum, although the former does not contain any texts from Luther’s catechism. Both tables appeared without a print date, but they were apparently issued in the late 1630s or the early 1640s. The unique Weimar copy of Alphabetum Russarum is also very special in another way: along with minor additions and corrections to the printed text it also contains a handwritten appendix in Latin, most likely written by Laurentius Rinhuber, the assistant to the first “Russian playwright” and author of the first court plays ever presented in Moscow (in the 1670s), the Lutheran pastor Johann Gottfried Gregorii.

Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier by Kirk D. Farney

Reviewed by: Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier by Kirk D. Farney Kathryn M. Galchutt Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier. By Kirk D. Farney. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2022. 345 pp. In our multi-media saturated times, it is difficult to imagine the singular importance of radio during its golden age, from the 1920s to the 1950s. During that era before television, the essayist E. B. White described radio as having a "godlike presence" in homes across America. In his book Kirk Farney notes that radio had a range of qualities, from intimate to communal, from democratic to authoritative. Yet Farney's study is less concerned with the medium of radio and more concerned with the impact of two men and the messages they spoke to millions during the 1930s and 1940s. The Lutheran pastor Walter A. Maier (1893–1950) and the Roman Catholic priest Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) were two of the most popular and prominent broadcasters during radio's golden age. Both men came from religious backgrounds that were considered on the periphery of mainstream American Protestant religion. Maier came from a German-American Lutheran background and was a member of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a synod which some saw as an ethnic and theological enclave. Sheen came from a primarily Irish-American Catholic background and sought to counter the historic anti-Catholicism in American society. Farney explains how Maier and Sheen preached messages rooted in their own religious traditions, yet succeeded in appealing to wider audiences. Both men "combined a traditional theological conservatism with an equally traditional American idealism" (133). Maier and Sheen took to the airwaves after the Modernist and Fundamentalist debates of the 1920s. Both men were vocal critics of modernist [End Page 191] theology. They preached messages of traditional Christian theology, putting a strong emphasis on the doctrines of the atonement, sin, and grace. Given the well-known antagonism between Protestants and Catholics, it is remarkable that the Protestant Maier and the Catholic Sheen asserted such similar teachings about the foundations for faith and life (160). Maier and Sheen also made connections with the difficult times in which they were living, commenting on the economic challenges of the Great Depression, the conflicts and controversies of World War II, and the threat of communism. Both were careful to avoid partisan politics. But they reflected a spirit of American patriotism while also calling on Americans to repent and to avoid a stance of national self-righteousness. Farney notes that Maier and Sheen were critical of racial and ethnic discrimination in America and urged the church to recognize the equality of all people before God (257). Farney could have done more to explain the significance of their stances in the context of American race relations in the 1930s and 1940s. Both men reached out to many beyond their respective religious communities. Farney describes how Sheen received considerable attention for the prominent converts to Catholicism whom he reached, including Henry Ford II and the American Communist Party leader Louis Budenz. Besides the famous, Sheen also reached "the obscure … of all races and incomes" (297). Farney describes Maier's contacts with political, military, and cultural leaders, but did not mention specific converts. More could be done to examine those who made a commitment to Lutheranism because of Maier's "The Lutheran Hour." Among these are Mary Banta, who contributed to the development of True Light Lutheran Church, a Chinese-American congregation in Manhattan and Chris McNair, who lost his daughter Denise in the Klan bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. Exploring the international impact of the "Catholic Hour" and "The Lutheran Hour" is another potential area of future research. Farney has written a very significant study of two of the most important radio preachers in American history, examining the similar ministries of a Lutheran pastor and Catholic priest. The parallels ended when Maier died relatively early of a massive heart attack [End Page 192] in 1950 and Sheen transitioned to even greater fame with a...

British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations. By Andrew Chandler

In contrast to much existing historiography, which tends to emphasize Christian complicity or indifference to fascism, Andrew Chandler’s fascinating new monograph argues that British Christians pursued “a succession of initiatives which sought to protest against a … dangerous dictatorship and demonstrate sympathy for its victims” (pp. 51–52). We are introduced early on to the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, the book’s main protagonist, due to his affiliation with Germany’s oppositional Confessing Church. Other important figures include Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Manchester (later Canterbury), William Temple, and the relatively sympathetic (to Nazism) Bishop of Gloucester, Arthur Headlam. The “political” pastors on the German side include ardent Nazis, such as the Reich Bishop Lüdwig Müller, whose German Church sought to eliminate all “Jewish” elements from Protestant theology; and non-conformists, such as the conservative Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, and more liberal Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, whose June 1934 Barmen Declaration, which Niemöller and Bishop Bell also signed, became the founding document of the Confessing Church in its defense of traditional Protestant theology.

Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) by Sigrun Haude

Reviewed by: Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) by Sigrun Haude Peter Thaler Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). By Sigrun Haude. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2021. Pp. xv + 311. Hardback $91.00. ISBN 978-9004466470. Stimulated by pertinent anniversaries, researchers have reexamined the history of the Thirty Years’ War in recent years. A noteworthy aspect has been the widespread focus on individual suffering. Sigrun Haude’s study of personal experiences and coping strategies during the great central European cataclysm of the seventeenth century fits in perfectly with this scholarly reorientation. Having analyzed the confessional era in central Europe in several previous books, Haude came well-prepared for her task. In her current study, she explores how people tried to survive the Thirty Years’ War; on what resources they drew to endure violence, hunger, loss, and disease; and how they tried to make sense of a conflict that appeared ever more meaningless (6). To answer these questions, she primarily turns to well-known contemporary diaries, which she complements with archival sources from southern German archives. Haude centers her investigation on Bavaria and Franconia, which provides for both regional proximity and denominational variation, as Bavaria was strictly Catholic, whereas significant parts of Franconia were Lutheran. The core of the study draws on personal accounts by members of the clergy. These sources might be described as ego-documents, but Haude considers this term insufficient because the texts are strongly colored by their social context and thus reflect more than an individual perspective. Most important for the study are the testimonies provided by the Augustine prioress Clara Staiger, the Benedictine abbots Maurus Friesenegger and Veit Höser, the Dominican nun Maria Anna Junius, and the Lutheran pastor Bartholomäus Dietwar. These personal accounts show a complex web of experiences. Most universally, they express fear. Life had lost all stability—people lived in constant expectation of violence, dislocation, hunger, and poverty. Local governments tried to ameliorate these consequences of war but to little avail. In fact, troops sent to protect the populace were just as likely to commit violence or cause starvation as the invading armies they were supposed to repel. The ravages of war deepened the need for protection not only in military terms but also in spiritual terms. With regard to the latter, the religious remedies offered by the churches frequently proved insufficient, which increased the demand for more unorthodox measures commonly denoted as magic. Another source of resilience was humor, which several protagonists were able to muster even during the most challenging periods. Finally, some of the authors also describe the possibility of respectful interactions and exchanges between supposed enemies. Oftentimes it [End Page 317] was Catholic nuns who successfully appealed to the gallantry of Protestant officers and secured their protection. Coping with Life during the Thirty Years’ War focuses on individuals. In many ways, Sigrun Haude has composed a psychohistory of the wartime experience, with an emphasis on how people felt during this conflict. The Cincinnati historian does not attempt a comprehensive reinterpretation of the Thirty Years’ War and becomes somewhat less sure-footed when she moves beyond her core topic. Her terse summary of the war on pages eight to sixteen leaves no room for discussing alternative understandings. Some of the self-made maps, such as the map of the Holy Roman Empire around 1618 on page eleven that, inter alia, seems to include southern Schleswig in that polity and divide Pomerania in an anachronistic manner, can be slightly misleading. A number of lesser oversights or imprecisions—such as making 1527 the norm year of the Peace of Prague (15) or describing the Habsburgs as a royal dynasty that ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1440 to the late eighteenth century (237)—could have been caught by more careful external proofreading. Yet, drawing on an abundance of sources, Haude has provided a well-researched study of the human experience of the Thirty Years’ War. She describes this experience in great detail, which at times gives the narration the flavor of a chronicle. In this way, her study reminds of Hans Medick’s 2018 volume Der Dreißigjährige Krieg: Zeugnisse vom...

Identity, Belonging, and Christian Community in Protestant Responses to the Aryan Paragraph in Nazi Germany

Examining Christianity and its representative denominations and groups in Nazi Germany has led scholars to try to construct how these Christian groups interacted with a government which institutionalized the death of millions. The focus of past scholarship has centered on debates over the extent to which institutional Protestant Christianity and individual Protestants opposed Adolf Hitler’s regime and Nazism. The focus of this thesis examines how four Protestants or Protestant groups employed definitions of what made one a Jewish Christian, what being Jewish meant, and who was included within the larger Christian community in their 1933 responses to the Aryan paragraph. These responses originated from the Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the General Synod of the Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union, the faculty of theology at the University of Marburg, and the German Christian movement. Though each response to the Aryan paragraph utilized a unique definition of Jewish Christians and Christian community, they all reveal a Protestant church unprepared to answer the questions of belonging and identity posed by its society. In their search for a unified answer to the question of whether a baptized Jew belongs in the Protestant church, Protestants displayed that they had no unified answer. The consequences of not belonging in Nazi Germany could and did lead to discrimination, persecution, and genocide.

Crafting Lutheran Pastors in Tanzania. Perceptions of Theological Education and Formation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania by Johannes Habib Feiler

Crafting Lutheran Pastors in Tanzania. Perceptions of Theological Education and Formation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania by Johannes Habib Feiler

To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Reviewed by: To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Mark Nygard To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy. By Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. Thornbush Press, 2021. 185 pp. Most seasoned pastors can tell wild and wooly baptismal stories where the context was, to put it mildly, daunting. I remember my first call in North Dakota when grandparents asked me to baptize a new granddaughter but the father was dead set against it. In my second call in Cameroon a woman of traditional tribal religion could not articulate Christian faith in any way but earnestly wanted to join her friends in baptism the next morning. During my third call in Senegal a catechumen advised me that if he were to receive baptism, his father-in-law would simply take his wife away from him. Baptism is certainly a flashpoint in ministry, as any pastor on the planet can testify. Consequently, it would seem that this book should receive wide interest. Based on a dozen years of teaching seminars on Luther and Lutheranism in Wittenberg, Germany, under the auspices of the Lutheran World Federation, it reflects the actual questions and experiences of hundreds of Lutheran pastors “from places as far distant as Greenland and Senegal, El Salvador and Myanmar” (1). The book has two parts. Part I reviews the doctrine of baptism by examining the New Testament witness—“Baptism is the beginning of life in the Spirit and the first act of association with the church” (15); pondering what baptism does—“Baptism saves,” the stark [End Page 450] two-word paragraph beginning the entire section (18); debating infant baptism versus believer’s baptism—“In the New Testament, acts of prayer and vicarious faith appear again and again in the Gospels” (27); affirming pastoral authority to baptize—“Hopefully you are so intoxicated by the gospel that the very prospect of withholding baptism fills you with repugnance. And yet . . .” (32); and making a distinction between the validity of baptism and its effectiveness— “No amount of doubt, denial, or even outright rejection can undo a baptism” (40). Most Lutherans and their ecumenical partners would not only recognize themselves in this discussion, but rise to its vigorous expression. Part II brings the discussion rudely down to earth by presenting 49 case studies of problematic baptismal situations using three considerations: questions of validity, questions of integrity of witness, and questions of safety or permission. For example, does one baptize someone who was not baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, or maybe in the name of Jesus (the question of validity)? How about those who are using it to help them get a job, or tourists who would find it so meaningful to do it again in the Jordan River (risk of integrity of witness)? What about a teen in the youth group whose parents forbid it, a Jew seeking political protection through it, or a hospitalized person whose perilous medical condition makes human proximity problematic (the safety/permission issue)? In each case Wilson’s presentation follows the same pattern: “The Situation,” “Considerations,” and an answer, “To Baptize or Not to Baptize.” That very pattern will be off-putting to some. Wilson herself warns, “Chances are pretty good that at least one, and probably more than one, case in this book will make you uncomfortable because you landed on the other side of the judgment offered here” (7). But she makes her cases with humility, “as a pastor among pastors” (8), and the theological reflection she elicits is renewing. Frankly I enjoyed the book immensely, and I heartily recommend it as lighter minis-terial reading for pastors and accessible theology for lay discussion. [End Page 451] Mark Nygard St. Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768–1870 by Alexander M. Martin

Reviewed by: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768–1870 by Alexander M. Martin Patrick O'Meara Martin, Alexander M. From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768–1870. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2022. xix + 393 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £90.00. Rosenstrauch is, to be fair, hardly a household name in either German or Russian history. However, by means of ingenious detective work, Alexander Martin, the distinguished American historian of nineteenth-century Russia, seeks to pluck his subject from perhaps undeserved obscurity in order to realize through the prism of Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch's life (1768–1835) some sense of what it meant to be alive in Germany and Russia (both terms broadly understood) in the Age of Revolution. The stated purpose of this 'microhistory' is to explore how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time. Martin was led to Rosenstrauch by a manuscript in a Russian archive which contained a German eyewitness's description of what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's ill-fated occupation, as one of the 6,000 out of the pre-war population of 275,000 who stayed put. Its author proved to be Rosenstrauch, a man constantly on the move and reinventing himself, and the six weeks he records here is the best documented period of his entire life. Half of it he spent in the Holy Roman Empire, and the remainder in both Russia and Ukraine. He was in turn a barber-surgeon, an actor, a merchant who founded a business in Moscow that flourished until long after his death, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason and a Lutheran pastor. He participated in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist awakening and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea Steppe. For the reconstruction of Rosenstrauch's biography, Martin draws on an impressive array of sources, both published (especially in Russian and German) and in archives (principally in Russia, but also in Germany). Every [End Page 764] stage of Rosenstrauch's existential development is contexualized in its time and place, thereby generating a broad panorama of life in the German lands and the Russian Empire from the Old Regime to modernity. For example, Rosenstrauch's apprenticeship as a barber-surgeon in Breslau prompts an interesting excursion into the history of medicine, while his move to the stage seven years later, and his entry into the 'bourgeios public sphere', provides a cue for some detailed theatre history. Equally, Rosenstrauch's involvement in Freemasonry from 1792 leads Martin, in a particularly solid chapter, to a deftly detailed sketch of its purpose and structure as an important institution of the Enlightenment, as well as a graphic description of Rosenstrauch's initiation (Martin points out that Alexander I attended several meetings of the same St Petersburg lodge and so, intriguingly, the two men may have met there); Rosenstrauch's departure from Kassel to join the court theatre of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is accompanied by some fascinating details of stagecoach travel which are in turn underpinned by four useful maps of his extensive itineraries in the 1790s and 1800s. Similarly, Rosenstrauch's passage from Rostock to St Petersburg in 1804 brings a snapshot of Baltic shipping and trade. Martin reminds us that with 24,000 Germans resident in St Petersburg by 1817 (compared with a mere 1,349 in Moscow), it was easily the most German city in Russia. From 1820, Rosenstrauch embarked on the final (and well-documented), Ukrainian, chapter of his life, first as Lutheran pastor to German colonists in Odessa (Odesa), and then as pastor in Kharkov (Kharkiv) where he died in 1835 aged 67, his funeral there attended by an astonishing (estimated) 10,000 mourners and, moreover, reported in the St Petersburg Gazette. Martin argues convincingly that Rosenstrauch remained long in living memory, traced here over three generations, as founder-benefactor of the church school in Kharkiv, and subsequently in cultural memory through his publications, particularly An Evangelical Pastor's Experiences at Deathbeds (1833 in German, 1846 in...

The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos by Keith Lemna

Reviewed by: The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos by Keith Lemna Aaron Williams The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos by Keith Lemna (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2019), xxx + 488 pp. Keith Lemna has done the theological world a great service. In The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer's Theological Recovery of the Cosmos, he offers the English-speaking world for the first time a monograph on the thought of the Oratorian Louis Bouyer. Bouyer is undoubtedly one of the theological giants of the twentieth century. Born in Paris in 1913, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1936. After only three years as a Lutheran clergyman, he was received into the Catholic Church at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Wandrille. Then ordained as an Oratorian priest in 1944, he taught from 1946 to 1962 at the Institut Catholique de Paris and abroad for the three decades following.1 He is most well-known for his work on the liturgy both before and after the Second Vatican Council. With fifty books to his name, including a nine-part synthesis on Christian doctrine, the breadth of his theological vision and work is astounding. In France he is considered one of the four preeminent theologians of the post-World War II era, and his theological contemporaries in Europe, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, always held the Oratorian in high regard.2 Yet, in the English-speaking world, much of his work has gone without comment.3 Thankfully, into the void steps this excellent work by Lemna. [End Page 1353] Anyone familiar with the Bouyerian corpus knows the challenge of approaching it. With its vast array of subject matter, ranging from biblical to liturgical to historical to spiritual to speculative theology, one wonders whether there is any one thread woven throughout the varied strands, a single theme around which the whole sprawling corpus can be understood. In fact, there is, and Lemna has deftly identified it. For Bouyer, the fundamental question of theology is the world's relation to God.4 The structure of the first six books of his nine-part treatise on systematic theology attest to the priority of the question with the first three works addressing the question of the world, or the economy of creation and salvation, and the latter three works addressing the question of God, or theology properly speaking: the doctrine of the Trinitarian God. Interestingly, though Bouyer's work on theological cosmology, Cosmos, is the third book in the series, it was, in fact, the last of the six to be written. In this sense, as Lemna points out, "Cosmos is a capstone monograph . . . summarizing in important ways the decisive first six volumes" (xiv). Theological cosmology fully illuminates the God–world relation as Bouyer sees it, and since this relation sits at the heart of his thought, Cosmos is for Bouyer both his "most personal, as well as most speculative work" and indeed, "opens up the meaning of his other writings" beyond the dogmatic sphere (25). One could, then, scarcely choose a better entry point into the wide theological world of this "mind with a very special character," as Joseph Ratzinger saw him.5 The Apocalypse of Wisdom is an expansive commentary on Bouyer's cosmology at the heart of which is a liturgical, even nuptial, vision of the whole of creation known and loved in the mind of God from all eternity, as the uncreated Wisdom of God. In creation God freely gives existence to the world ex nihilo, so that it might return to him in a liturgical song of praise and thanksgiving, as the Bride of his eternal Son, the eschatological and cosmic Church, created wisdom now made glorious and radiant through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As Lemna puts it, "Bouyer shows that cosmology should be a pursuit of wisdom, but that Wisdom is ultimately a gift revealed or uncovered by means of apokalypsis in the re-creative interventions of the divine Word and Holy Spirit in history" (xvii). The wisdom of man seeking a unified vision of the whole of reality [End...

Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto

Reviewed by: Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany by Uwe Siemon-Netto Robert Benne Urchin at War: The Tale of a Leipzig Rascal and his Lutheran Granny under Bombs in Nazi Germany. By Uwe Siemon-Netto. Irvine, California: 1517 Publishing, 2021. 286 pp. This remarkable memoir covers only the first eleven years of Uwe Siemon-Netto's life. Many Lutherans are aware of Siemon-Netto's work, The Fabricated Luther (1995), where he dispels the claims that Luther was to blame for the rise of Nazism. In that book he gave a few vignettes of his life as a child growing up in the war years. Happily, this engaging book, one of three planned, covers in colorful detail his early years in war-torn Leipzig. Given the daily bombing, it is a wonder that he lived to tell his story. The main story involves a rather distinguished anti-Nazi Lutheran family's struggle to survive the World War II years in Leipzig in the midst of daily bombings by the Allies, on the one hand, and intense Nazi pressures to conform, on the other. One word in the title—urchin—does indicate one truth illustrated richly: Uwe was a member of a kids' gang that did lots of rascally things, such as derailing trolleys. But there is quite another set of ingredients in his growing up. His father was a highly educated lawyer who was blinded in WWI. His mother was a budding concert singer. His grandmother, the central character in the book (besides the author), was a strong, well-educated, devout Lutheran, whose steady strength carried the whole family though those harrowing days. She was a real Mensch who calmly taught Luther's Catechism to Uwe as they took cover in the bomb shelters during the daily bombings. Uwe was brought up to appreciate Bach's music and Lutheran theology. Fine literature and art were part of the family's heritage. Uwe was hardly an ignorant street urchin, though he did have enough freedom to act like a naughty little boy. In their desire to protect Uwe from the bombs, his parents sent him to a country town to live with a Lutheran pastor and his family. What seemed like a good prospect turned out to be a nightmare of abuse and heresy. The pastor was an ardent Nazi who preached Nazi propaganda from the pulpit. He and his family ostracized and humiliated Uwe because he used French words and spoke high German. The memoir does depict vicious Nazis who affected their [End Page 243] lives, but spends more time on the many Germans—ordinary and extraordinary—who despised and resisted the Nazis in their own quiet yet dangerous ways. His experience of the war years is narrated by Siemon-Netto as he returns to visit and walk around his beloved Leipzig, now rebuilt and thriving. What is striking is his amazing recall of so many details of his early life. Certainly the dramatic—and frightening—experiences he had account for some of that recall. It is more likely, however, that he already possessed some of the gifts he needed to become the accomplished journalist that he became later in life. The book is a handsome and substantial one, replete with many pictures from that time. I found the book both edifying and entertaining. I eagerly await the sequels to his remarkable story. I recommend the book to all readers, but especially to Lutherans. Robert Benne Institute of Lutheran Theology Brookings, South Dakota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Sincerely Luther: Narrative Letters of the Great Reformer by Neal E. Snider

Reviewed by: Sincerely Luther: Narrative Letters of the Great Reformer by Neal E. Snider Mark D. Tranvik Sincerely Luther: Narrative Letters of the Great Reformer. By Neal E. Snider. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing, 2019. 304 pp. As readers of this journal know, Martin Luther is among the most written-about figures in human history. Novel approaches to his life [End Page 224] and thought are rare, but Neal Snider's book opens a fresh path. The author, tongue in cheek, has claimed to receive 110 "letters" from Luther from beyond the grave. By means of this correspondence, Snider, a retired Lutheran pastor who is extremely well read in the works of the reformer, provides his readers an overview of Luther's life and theology. The result is an imaginative blend of biography, theology, and history with a bit of whimsy mixed in. The first thing I checked in this book was the author's grasp of Luther's profound and tension-filled theology. I am happy to report that Snider has done a fine job of exploring some of Luther's most complicated topics. He handles the gradual "conversion" of the reformer with nuance and subtlety. His summary of the Heidelberg Disputation and the theology of the cross is illuminating. He also does nice work explaining Luther's sacramental theology and the changing contexts that led the reformer to accent the promise in his early career and then underline the value of the element in later life. In Letter 91 he tackles the famous 1525 debate on free will with the humanist Erasmus. I particularly enjoyed Snider's account of Luther's views on the bondage of the will: "Consider the implication of affirming free will in relation to God. If you have a free will, then God is in your hands; He awaits a decision from you. Don't you see the blasphemy? God is at your disposal; you can accept Him and His promises or reject the same. In either case, you are in control of God" (243). That is a fine summation of Luther's argument. Snider also does not duck the troubling writings in Luther's works. There are letters covering his responses to the Peasants' Rebellion as well as one that deals with his hate-filled remarks concerning the Jews. While the author clearly loves his subject, this is not hagiography. Moreover, Snider's eye is clearly on the world of the parish pastor. He devotes moving letters to the topics of marriage, suffering, the struggle of prayer, and the trials of preaching. Throughout the text the reader can detect the experiences of one who has struggled on Saturday nights with sermons, prayed next to many bedsides, and officiated at countless funerals. A few items are missing that might have made this book stronger. It could use an index and a chronology, since those unfamiliar with Luther's life and teaching need such aids to fully comprehend the [End Page 225] reformer. Also, the accent here is clearly on the early Luther. The later Luther is also a fascinating figure but the references to the 1530s and 1540s are brief. Finally, one could get the impression from Snider's book that Luther was a solitary figure leading the charge of reform. References to the wider "Wittenberg movement," as it is known today, would have shown the reformer's dependence on a remarkable community of scholars and preachers. None of these criticisms should obscure Snider's accomplishment. This is an imaginative book that sparkles with insight. It clearly comes from one who has been captivated by the life and theology of Martin Luther and who has sought to pass along his reforming spirit to twenty-first century readers. Mark D. Tranvik Luther Seminary St. Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.