Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio

The Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States, commonly known as the Joint Synod of Ohio or the Ohio Synod, was a German-language Lutheran denomination whose congregations were originally located primarily in the U.S. state of Ohio, later expanding to most parts of the United States. The synod was formed on September 14, 1818, and adopted the name Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States by about 1850. It used that name or slight variants until it merged with the Iowa Synod and the Buffalo Synod in 1930 to form the first American Lutheran Church (ALC).^[1]

In 1929, just before its merger into the ALC, the Ohio Synod had 768 pastors, 876 congregations, and 166,521 members.^[2]

History

Origin and names

During the 1780s and 1790s, German-speaking Lutherans began to move into the portion of the Northwest Territory that is now the state of Ohio, with the numbers increasing after Ohio gained statehood. The Pennsylvania Ministerium sent two itinerant Lutheran pastors, Wilhelm Georg Forster and Johannes Stauch, to minister to the immigrants. By 1818 the Ministerim has sent another ten pastors, including Paul Henkel and John Michael Steck. These pastors began meeting together as the Ohio Conference of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, with the first convention on October 17–19, 1812, in Washington County, Pennsylvania. and the last on September 20–24, 1817, in New Philadelphia, Ohio. However, the Ohio Conference was not an independent synod, and so any candidates for the pastoral office were required to go to Pennsylvania for ordination. Most candidates found it difficult to make that trip, so instead the Ohio Conference merely licensed them to preach. In order to remedy this, the conference asked for and received permission from the Pennsylvania Ministerium to form a new synod, and on September 14, 1818, in Somerset, Ohio, the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Preachers in Ohio and the Adjacent States (German: General Conferenz Der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Prediger in Ohio und den angrenzenden Staaten) was organized.^[3][1]

The synod was known under other names during its history, including the German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium in Ohio and the Neighboring States (German: Das Deutsche Evangelisch Lutherischen Ministerium in Ohio und den benachbarten Staaten) from 1818 to 1849, and the Synod and Ministerium of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the State of Ohio from 1830 to 1843. It adopted the name Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States by about 1850, and used that name or slight variants thereafter.^[1] The term "Joint Synod" reflected the division of the synod into Eastern and Western districts or "district synods" in 1931, and the organization of an English district in 1936.^[4]

Theological development

The theology of the Ohio Synod was initially shaped by that of the Pennsylvania Ministerium and the Tennessee Synod, and by unionism and the New Measures of the Second Great Awakening.^[1] In 1820 the synod discussed joining the Lutheran General Synod, but, for "practical reasons" rather than theological ones, decided not to.^[5] The establishment of relations with Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe and the immigration of Lutheran pastors from Germany in the early 1840s resulted in the synod taking a stronger stance in support of the Lutheran confessions.^[1]

General Council

In 1866 the Pennsylvania Ministerium proposed a union of Lutheran synods to a number of conservative synods, including the Ohio Synod. Ten of those synods adopted a proposed constitution and in a convention on November 20, 1867, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, established the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America. The Ohio Synod sent representatives to the convention, but declined membership until differences on certain points of doctrine could be addressed. Those so-called Four Points, all of which the Ohio Synod opposed, concerned the teaching of millennialism, allowing non-Lutherans to commune at Lutheran altars, allowing non-Lutheran ministers to preach in Lutheran pulpits, and permitting Lutherans to hold membership in Masonic and other secret societies. Failure to reach agreement with the General Council on these points led the Ohio Synod to look elsewhere.^[6]

Synodical Conference

In October 1870 the Ohio Synod contacted several of the conservative Midwestern Lutheran synods that had either never joined the General Council or had withdrawn from it, to discuss the possibility of a union. This led, on July 10–16, 1872, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the Ohio Synod, the Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, the Minnesota Synod, the Illinois Synod, and the Norwegian Synod forming the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America.^[7] However, in 1881, less than ten years later, the Predestinarian Controversy led to the Ohio Synod leaving the Synodical Conference. In that controversy the Ohio and Norwegian synods held that God elects people to salvation "in view of the faith" (Latin: intuitu fidei) he foresaw they would have, while the Missouri and Wisconsin synods held that the cause is wholly due to God's grace. Efforts made between 1903 and 1929 to reach agreement on the issue were ultimately unsuccessful.^[8]

Mergers

During the discussions with the Missouri and Wisconsin synods, The Ohio Synod continued to work with the smaller Iowa and Buffalo synods. In 1930 those three synods (largely made up of German-American Lutherans) merged to form the American Lutheran Church. In 1960 that body merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church (mainly Norwegian-American Lutherans) and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (mainly Danish-American Lutherans) to form a new body named similarly as The American Lutheran Church. That body in turn merged with the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in 1988 to form the current Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Seminaries and colleges

In 1830 the synod instituted its Theological Seminary in Canton, Ohio, with two students in attendance. A year later the seminary was relocated to Columbus, Ohio. Growth in the range of subjects offered led to the division of the institution into two parts. The non-theological programs became Capital University (founded in 1850), and the seminary was renamed as the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary. The Theological Seminary continued to serve as a seminary of the Ohio Synod's successor church bodies, the first and second instances of the American Lutheran Church. In 1974 it merged with the Hamma Divinity School, which was the theological department of Wittenberg University and associated with the Lutheran Church in America, to form Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

A "practical" seminary requiring less academic study was begun as a department of the Theological Seminary in 1881. It moved to a separate campus in Afton, Minnesota, in 1884 and named Luther Seminary. In 1892 it moved again to the Phalen Park area of Saint Paul, Minnesota, and became part of the St. Paul Luther College, Seminary, and Academy. The seminary merged into the Iowa Synod's Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1932,^[1] shortly after the merger of the two synods into the American Lutheran Church.

The college division of St. Paul Luther College, Seminary, and Academy operated in Afton, Minnesota, from 1884 to 1893, and in Saint Paul from 1893 to 1935, at which time it merged into Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. The Ohio Synod also operated several educational institutions that were relatively short-lived: Hebron Academy opened in Hebron, Nebraska, in 1911, added a junior college in 1924 as Hebron College and Academy, and closed in 1942. Similarly, St. John's Academy opened in Petersburg, West Virginia, in 1921, added a junior college in 1931 to become St. John's Academy and College, and closed in 1933. Other schools included Woodville Normal School in Woodville, Ohio, from 1882 to 1923; a second practical seminary in Hickory, North Carolina, from 1887 to 1912; and Pacific Seminary in Olympia, Washington from 1907 until 1911, when the theological department was discontinued, and 1917, when the remaining college department was discontinued.^[1]

Notable people

• Carl Christian Hein, last president of the Ohio Synod, 1924—1930.
• Paul Henkel, one of the founders of the Ohio Synod.
• Richard C. H. Lenski seminary professor and author.
• Matthias Loy, president of the Ohio Synod, 1860—1878 and 1880—1894.
• Blanche Margaret Milligan, author.
• Wilhelm Sihler, Lutheran pastor

Notes

References