Book Review

In this work Wolfgang Splitter investigates Pennsylvania Lutheran identity, organizational structures in congregations, relations among the laity, vestry, and clergy, and involvement in politics before, during, and after the Revolution. He has thoroughly reviewed contemporary printed materials in German and English in this country, including newspapers, political, devotional, and educational materials, printed and reprinted document collections such as diaries, letters, and reports of clergy, and some manuscript materials in Pennsylvania archives. He has not relied on manuscript or contemporary printed sources in Europe, such as those in the (Lutheran) Francke Foundations in Halle, which sent many pastors to work in the Pennsylvania field. Splitter's findings include a preeminence of ethnicity over religion in Lutheran identity and a resistance to assimilation throughout the era, as Lutherans tended to live in ethnic enclaves and reject efforts at anglicization. Further, according to Splitter, the pastors sent from Halle were able to extend the oligarchic, hierarchical, autocratic church structure of that institution to the Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania. That politicized the laity against the clergy and prepared them for the Revolution; the laity quickly supported it, while the support of the clergy lagged. The Revolution brought "legal emancipation" and unprecedented political representation of Germans in government, yet Lutheran influence in government and administration ultimately stagnated and declined.

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