Lutherans are a strange denomination in American religious history and culture. For Catholics they are certainly Protestants. For Protestants they are crypto-Catholics. While they have been around since the Swedes established their short-lived colony on the Delaware River, they have typically received as much attention in the American imagination as the short-lived Swedish colony on the Delaware River.

But my guest Timothy D. Grundmeier has a different point of view. He argues in his new book Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith that Lutheranism was a central component of nineteenth-century American religion and of the era of the Civil War. This is because Lutherans were numerous, the nation’s fourth largest denomination by 1900; they were uniquely positioned in the American religious landscape; and they almost invariably expressed the opinion of the “moderate majority” in Union states outside the Northeast. And, as with every other aspect of American society, Lutheranism was reshaped by the struggle of the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Timothy D. Grundmeier is professor of history at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. Lutheranism and American Culture is his first book.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:60 - What is Lutheranism?

00:06:21 - The Civil War Era Defined

00:09:01 - Three Varieties of American Lutheranism

00:19:44 - The Old Lutherans and Missouri Synod

00:27:38 - How the Civil War Fractured Lutheranism

00:39:36 - The Slavery Debate: Walter and the Norwegians

00:47:20 - Lutheran Quietism After the Civil War

00:52:38 - The Great Lutheran Realignment

01:02:35 - Ideas, Institutions, and Cultural Context