The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838 and Their Settlement in Perry County, Missouri by J. F. Koestering (review)

Reviewed by: The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838 and Their Settlement in Perry County, Missouri by J. F. Koestering Jon Diefenthaler The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838 and Their Settlement in Perry County, Missouri. By J. F. Koestering. Translated by Matthew Carver. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2022. 245 pp. This is the second of two volumes Concordia Historical Institute has published in view of the 175th anniversary of the founding [End Page 111] of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). The first was Seminex in Print: A Comprehensive Bibliography (2021). Both works shed considerable light on the role the LCMS plays in the family of Lutheran denominations in America. This work was written only twenty-five years after the crisis of 1839 over the leadership of Martin Stephan. Johann Friederich Koestering (1830–1908) did not emigrate from Germany until 1849. He graduated from the Ft. Wayne seminary in 1853 and was called in 1864 to serve Trinity parish at Altenburg in Perry County. The fact that this congregation was the one in which Georg Schieferdecker was charged with preaching false doctrine (chiliasm) in 1857 and removed as its pastor and from the synod's clergy roster motivated Koestering to investigate the Stephan crisis that unfolded in the settlement where Pastor Schieferdecker was among the original immigrants. This book is a collection of historical essays. The chapters that follow Koestering's recounting of the Saxon emigration and deposing of Stephan trace the controversy over chiliasm (millennialism). Because Schieferdecker recanted his position in 1875 and succeeded in being reinstated as an LCMS pastor, the author subsequently added five separate biographical vignettes on Schieferdecker's life and ministry. In compiling this, Koestering not only relied on the work of C. F. W. Walther but also claimed to have done his own research in the archives of congregations in Perry County and St. Louis (13). The first German-language edition of the book appeared in 1867. The current English translation includes the later additions to the original manuscript. This book contributes significantly to the historiography of the LCMS. Up until Walter Forster's Zion on the Mississippi (1953), chroniclers of Missouri's origins tended to bury the scandalous details of the Stephan crisis. Koestering, on the other hand, fully exposed not only Stephan's sexual and financial misconduct and the dictatorial temperament that paralyzed his fearful followers, but also his theological and ecclesiastical aberrations. In his view, Stephan was also a chiliast who believed his Saxon band of Lutherans to be the "true visible church on earth," and who saw himself as their sole "dispenser of grace and salvation" (40–42). Missing, however, is any [End Page 112] discussion of how Walther, in reaction to Stephan, found it necessary to empower the Synod's laity. Koestering furnishes a possible link between the Stephan crisis and Missouri's passion for unity based on doctrinal purity as well as complete agreement on church practices. He suggests that their guilt over the idolatrous trust they placed in Stephan did not negate the kind of commitment to the confessional version of Lutheranism he had initially instilled in them (19–20). Koestering shows how subsequent events served to strengthen it, especially the bitter battles with Johannes Grabau and his Buffalo Synod (74–91), the uncompromising stance taken by Der Lutheraner of "not ever sacrificing the slightest truth for the sake of love and peace" (92), and the break with Wilhelm Loehe over the issue of "open questions" (102–103). In this way, he sets the stage for his historical overview of Schieferdecker's theological misstep, entitled "The Altenburg Congregation's Battle to Preserve the Pure Doctrine Against Chiliastic Enthusiasm" (125–182). Not to be overlooked is the pious perspective with which Koestering cloaked the downside of these conflicts. As with Joseph in the Old Testament, God meant for good the evil Stephan had inflicted on them (60–61); regarding the battle that led to their excommunication by Grabau, he wrote:"Truth increasingly broke more ground and won over more hearts" (91). By 1917, the LCMS had in fact grown to become the largest Lutheran church body in America. This publication...