The future of Loehe's Legacy.

"Loehe's Legacy" sounds rather old-fashioned and nostalgic and leads back to an old story from about 160 years ago. You cannot see many traces of it today. Perhaps it reminds you of Wartburg Theological Seminary and other institutions that were founded by coworkers of Wilhelm Loehe in the nineteenth century. Perhaps it reminds you of Frankenmuth and the other Franconian settlements in Michigan. In Germany the name Wilhelm Loehe is connected mainly with the second-largest social institution in the whole country, the Diakonie in Neuendettelsau with its 5,200 employees.

But what is Loehe's legacy? Not in terms of buildings, but in terms of spiritual insights, of visions? Are Loehe's original ideas still interesting at all--and will they be in the future? In Germany until a few years ago there was little interest in Loehe. But we recently have rediscovered his theological ideas and also his network of practical work. I have found that he had a fascinating vision, a vision that reaches far into the future.

One of Loehe's followers in Neuendettelsau, the later bishop Hermann von Bezzel, wrote a small poem that is very meaningful for me:

Give me a great thought to live from it.
This should be our prayer.
How often we are determined by unimportant small-minded thoughts.
Remember: God will make us kings and priests through the range of God's
word.

A great thought to live by. Is there a great thought to be discovered in Loehe's life?

The social situation and the church in the 19th century

Loehe's century and his biography seem to be a long distance away. Loehe lived from 1808 to 1872. Life was very different from today. Consider the social situation. In 1835 the first twenty miles of German railway were completed. In every subsequent year hundreds of miles of new railway tracks were built. Along the tracks industry was established. Because of the industrial revolution, salaries declined. To earn enough money to live on, people had to work under the hardest conditions at least twelve to fourteen hours a day, often children as well. On the other hand, the progress of medical knowledge brought a longer life expectancy.

As more and more people became unemployed, more and more fell into deep poverty. In German we call the whole desperate situation Pauperismus. This situation led Karl Marx to publish the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The politicians failed to manage the new situation. They did not know how to meet previously unknown problems. In Bavaria, for example, the king prohibited the marriages of poor people. They should not reproduce! You can imagine what happened. The number of illegitimate children increased dramatically.

There seemed to be only one way out of this situation: emigration. Between 1830 and 1870 more than 2.5 million Germans left Germany by ship, mainly toward North America. 228,430 of them came from Bavaria, mostly from Franconia, the northern and poorest part of Bavaria. It is a number hard to imagine. In many villages all of the younger people disappeared and with them the hope for a better future.

The situation of the church was also very different from today. The theology of the Bavarian Lutheran Church was characterized by enlightenment and rationalism. Many pastors preferred to preach about ethics instead of the gospel. And there was almost no life in the parishes except for the Sunday service. The church was ruled by state law. Historical developments had made the Bavarian king, a Roman Catholic, the leader of the Lutheran Church. And he had only one interest: to prevent the church from being a revolutionary hotbed. Every meeting of more than five people therefore needed a police permit. Mission circles and similar "subversive enterprises" were prohibited.

On the other hand, there had been a fresh wind in all of Europe since about 1800, the "Awakening." Christians in many denominations met in small house groups, exercised a living spirituality, and started missionary efforts. Lutherans, however, were hardly participating in these events, and the Lutheran Church in Bavaria not at all.

Loehe lived in this social and church context. His career as a pastor was a difficult one. He held no fewer than twelve jobs until he got his own parish, in Neuendettelsau, in 1837. It was also to be his last parish. During the next 35 years, until his death, he was banished to this village. The traffic connections were bad. Often he had to go the four miles to the next mail coach by foot. Once he complained that he sank deeply into the dirt as soon as he entered the main street of Neuendettelsau. The inhabitants of Neuendettelsau were not those you might call intellectual, and many of the younger people had already emigrated.

Loehe had to stay. He wished to work in a city, but the church government did not allow this because he was known as theologically conservative and politically progressive--a volatile mixture. Also, his personal life in Neuendettelsau was no paradise. In 1843 his wife Helen died, after only six years of marriage. He was alone with four children and never got over her death. In later years he suffered through illness and lack of money. If I were able to draw, my picture would look like this: a pastor in a village that was behind the times, in front of the ruins of a church, within a bleeding Germany.

Is Loehe only in the past? The first impression says Yes, a long way back; the attempt to claim him as modern or to transfer his ideas in an easy way to the present must fail. When we consider the specific situation of the nineteenth century and how it differs from today, however, we discover many points of connection. He was a man struggling in an unsafe situation for a vision in a dramatically changing world. This sounds very familiar.

Loehe's newly discovered work

Only recently has Loehe been newly discovered in Germany. How is this possible? Of course, Loehe was always known as a founder of social institutions and of the mission department in Neuendettelsau. Schools, streets, pharmacies, and book shops are named after him. For some people he was a saint of the Bavarian church's history, a shining example for social work. For many others, however, he was a narrow-minded denominationalist and a squabbler within the Lutheran denomination. The recent interest is in Loehe not as a shining or bad example but as a human being with both light and dark sides in a specific historical context. In the last few years I have received requests from around the world--from Hungary, America, and Japan--asking "Who was this Wilhelm Loehe?"

There is a new interest in historical research. And there are new possibilities for such research. More and more historical sources are becoming accessible that allow for a very personal and detailed picture. In 1985, three thousand of Loehe's letters were published. You can imagine the insight one can get through these letters. I do not have three thousand letters from any other person, not even my closest friends. And there are even more letters than that. When I was in Dubuque for the first time in 1993, I found some letters of Wilhelm Loehe in the archives that were unknown in Germany.

The newly discovered sources give us a new picture of Loehe's life and work. We did not know how far this work reached, especially his mission work. It is well known that Loehe sent young preachers to the Germans who had emigrated to North America. But it was not known why he did that and how he developed a whole system of support. A map that Loehe published in 1848 shows that there was already a detailed system. The title is "Overview for the German Lutheran Mission Work in the United States."

Loehe's mission work had very small beginnings. During a visit to Erlangen, thirty miles northeast of Neuendettelsau, in December 1840, he read a newspaper account of the desperate situation in North America. The German emigrants did not have any church support or pastoral care, nobody who could baptize children, teach young people, counsel adults, visit the sick, or bury the dead. Loehe read this and felt that he had to do something. His only idea was to publish an article in a church periodical as a cry for help.

In the spring of 1841, a young craftsman came to Loehe in Neuendettelsau and said, "I read your article, and I am ready to go to North America if you teach me how to help there." Shortly after that, a second man came forward. Loehe gave them accommodation in his house and taught them for one year. Because he had found no theologians, he sent these hardly educated craftsmen in the summer of 1842 at his own expense across the Atlantic. He called them Nothelfer--"helpers in need" or "auxiliary saints." It was an adventure with very small resources. But many more young men followed, until by Loehe's death in 1872 no less than 185 had been sent. Loehe paid many of them privately. He was always trying to get enough money together. They found their way to the Missouri Synod until 1853, when some deep theological and practical differences surfaced. Loehe was still in contact with twenty-two of the "helpers in need" and recommended that they establish the Iowa Synod with its own seminary, Wartburg.

In Germany Loehe established a network of cooperating parishes throughout the country. In 1845 he published a "letter from the home country to the German Lutheran emigrants," signed by no less than 946 people from 22 territories, with 350 theologians among them. Loehe sent ministers to the most important harbors in Europe and North America to care for the emigrants. He collected a "colonization fund" to give credit to poor emigrants. He tried to bring together the emigrants into congregations before their departure from Germany. One time he gathered about twenty people together to emigrate with a young pastor to form a new congregation, the beginning of the community in Frankenmuth. Loehe suggested establishing mission farms with a monastic lifestyle committed to mission among Indians. He also planned to work among Chinese people in California. And much more. In fact, Loehe was one of the cofounders of the Lutheran Church in America and of the Missouri Synod. I read an estimate that the number of Lutherans today would possibly be halved without Loehe's and his coworkers' commitment.

Also worthy of notice is Loehe's mission work in Europe. He initiated or supported the foundation of free Lutheran Churches in Nassau, Prussia, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and France. He arranged for several deaconesses to work abroad, not only in North America but also in Russia, Estonia, and Bessarabia.

These many facets of Loehe's mission work, discovered only in the last few years, have disproved a lot of faulty assumptions. It is not true, for example, that Loehe was interested only in practical work and not in matters of strategy. Without a plan, this far-reaching work would not have been possible. The belief that Loehe was a narrow-minded denominationalist is also untrue. Without an open-minded perspective, this international network would have been impossible. Indeed, Loehe can be seen as an early ecumenical thinker.

What was the reason for Loehe's far-reaching plans? What is his specific legacy?

Loehe's legacy: A worldwide vision

Research has shown that all of the different parts of Loehe's work come from a single global conception. His ideas and their realization in church social service, mission, pastoral care, liturgy, education, and homiletics come from one vision. All of the various projects of his life serve a common goal, with at least six components.

1. The Lutheran Church is specific in its confession. Loehe took as a starting point the church. This is not surprising for a parish minister. He suffered in a situation that I have described: the Lutheran Church was hardly alive while the Roman Catholic and Methodist churches were experiencing a great renewal in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was a real question when Loehe asked, "Will the Lutheran Church survive? Will there be a Lutheran Church in North America?"

In Loehe's opinion, the Lutheran Church was in a desperate situation. Despite that, he was convinced that this church had a unique treasure. Loehe had discovered this treasure in his parish ministry, especially in pastoral care. The treasure was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This doctrine--or, better, this experience!--was the center of the Lutheran confession, in Loehe's eyes. God calls us justified, not regarding our power or success, not regarding our feelings. It is so important in pastoral care to be able to say: "Do not trust in your feelings, trust in the word of God." Loehe was Lutheran because of justification by faith alone.

2. The church has to discover its eschatological dimension. Loehe saw one big problem in the Lutheran Church: narrow-mindedness. It was committed only to the present time and location. It thought of itself as a club, as an association within society. But the church is much more than that; it needs to discover its global, eschatological dimension. It is related to eternity. Loehe discovered the importance of this relation during his daily visits to sick and dying people in Neuendettelsau, through the social situation in the whole of Europe, which he read about in the newspapers, and through his wife's death. The church must understand itself as a community with a global mission that reaches beyond particular locations and times.

3. The church has to leave the status quo and become a global church. This movement is called mission. It is very urgent that the church start moving. The church must get away from self-centered thinking and protecting its ownership. It needs to find a global and missionary perspective. The Lutheran Church had experienced reformation regarding doctrine, but a reformation of practical life was still missing; it did not yet use its confession for the world's sake. The Lutheran Church is called to bring together people all over the world and to build a global church. In Loehe's words, "For mission is nothing but the one church of God in its movement, the actualization of the one universal, catholic church." (1)

This was the vision of Loehe. He drew a picture with words. The church is like a huge pilgrimage ascending a mountain. The first pilgrims have already reached the top. But the top is covered by clouds and cannot be seen from afar. At the end of the pilgrimage, people of all nations and colors join in. The pilgrims are a unity because they share the way.

4. The missionary church is a living community with a biblical structure. The church as a whole has to be responsible for mission. Mission is not a special task for special groups but is essential for the whole church. To be missionary the church needs not only a confessional stance but also special life patterns and structures. Life patterns are discipline, community, and sacrifice. In today's language we might name pastoral care, practical help from one to another, and commitment to God. We could also call it a committed life together. Loehe saw the special structure of the church in the ministries of the New Testament, the ministry of the elders, the deacons, and the priesthood of all believers. Every congregation needs multiple ministries, not just one pastor.

5. The church's mission takes place through Word and Sacrament, but in various forms. Mission happens through Word and Sacrament, nothing else. But mission takes place in various forms. One form is evangelization, proclaiming the gospel. A second form is diakonia, practical help. A third form Loehe called "free love," an expression easy to misunderstand! Loehe believed that the missionary church is always spontaneously looking for new forms of mission. The intention is always a love that serves. Mission has no worldly power at all. Mission is not arrogant. Loehe gave the deaconesses a guiding principle, "What do I want to do? I want to serve the Lord in serving his poor and sick people." (2)

6. The church's mission takes place in inner and foreign missions. Mission always starts in the church. In his original words,

Mission is nothing else than the task to call, to bring together, to
enlighten and to preserve the Church of Christ for eternal life.
Everything which is necessary to fulfill this command among the people
who are not baptized is the outer mission, while the inner mission
consists of everything that you have to do to fulfill this command among
the baptized. (3)

This is Loehe's vision. The church is appointed to become a blessing for the world. The church must become what she truly is. Therefore the church is commissioned to be alert to the challenges of the future.

This missionary vision stands behind all of Loehe's projects. He was committed to send young preachers to North America until 1853. Afterward, he established the deaconess house in Neuendettelsau. But in fact, this second big project was nothing other than the attempt to lead the church along its missionary way. When his commitment was no longer needed in North America, he introduced the ministry of deaconesses in Germany.

The future of Loehe's legacy

Is there a future for Loehe's legacy? Does his vision for church and world have relevance for today?

As I have already said, I question every direct application of tradition to today's challenges. If we do the same as Loehe did 150 years ago, we will not do what he wanted. But if we keep in mind the big difference between contexts, his thoughts are indeed inspiring.

I want to mention three basic lines of his thinking.

1. Loehe was an alert contemporary. Loehe tried to be informed, which was not easy in nineteenth-century Germany. He ordered several newspapers from different parts of Germany. He tried to understand the complex developments in society.

Many church representatives condemned emigration. Loehe tried to understand the reasons for emigration, the experiences of the emigrants, and the situation in North America. He tried to understand the problem of women not having professions and with no chance of getting an education, or the situation of handicapped children who were hidden in their houses out of shame, including in Neuendettelsau.

Loehe lived with an alert view for his time. He tried to be sober-minded and realistic. He was critical about easy solutions. He warned against ideologies. Instead he demanded education for all people in society. In the deaconess house in Neuendettelsau he founded his own academy. He was even critical of easygoing mission work. In 1866 he wrote:

You can claim the whole history of God's kingdom to be unsuccessful
because there has been only limited success or success on some
occasions. God's plan continues under difficulties, which cause not only
delay but touch also the heart of our Eternal Father. Part of God's
perfection is sadness. God is sad about his own failure. The Redeemer
cries in Jerusalem. Also the Holy Spirit can be made sad by a human
being. If the Eternal Father's plan continues only under difficulties,
under Jesus' tears and the Spirit's sadness, how could we expect
anything better for our plans? (4)

2. Loehe was a biblical visionary. Loehe did not get stuck in the status quo. He always looked and thought beyond the present situation. The reason was that he lived with the Bible. In his diary you can see that he had time for visioning every day. Almost every evening he wrote letters, and every day he reflected on his experiences with the Bible.

In the Bible Loehe read about social justice. This gave him the power to denounce the unjust society--for example, the prohibition of marriage for poor people--and thereby to come into conflict with the police on more than one occasion. He was one of the first church representatives who did not condemn emigration but recognized it as the only solution for many. He recognized the support of emigrants as the missionary challenge of his time.

Loehe learned from the New Testament and the first Christian churches that women are not just responsible for household and family. In the book of Acts he read about diakonia being a task for every single congregation, as it provided help for poor and handicapped people. Both insights were connected by his planning to reestablish the ministry of deaconesses in every parish. So he gave women a profession and poor people support.

Loehe found new ideas in the Bible and the motivation to realize these ideas. He learned from the Bible that faith takes risks. Our confession of faith waits to be used, not protected. The talents wait to be used to win more talents. If we try to protect faith, we will lose. If we dare to take risks, we will win.

3. Loehe loved the church. This was not easy at all. And it did not become easier. For most of his life he struggled with the institutional church. Often his critics were very harsh. Twice he lost his church employment.

But he loved the church. He loved the global church of Christ and never failed to accept the Lutheran Church in Bavaria as a part of it, though a difficult part. And he did not get tired of working toward a better church:

* a church with a clear confession--a church with clear principles, committed to the Bible. This does not exclude tolerance. The opposite is true: it makes tolerance possible.

* a church of social work--a church doing the small jobs. Loehe wrote, "If the church in our century is what she shall be for the world's sake, she is a small minority. She will not be a power if she does not become small." (5)

* a church in mission. Loehe wrote, "Mission has to become the work of all Christians. The mission societies and committees (or whatever you call all these vehicles of the greatest thought of God) must be only center points in the big sea of the missionary church. This can only happen by God's help." (6)

These three points I understand as most challenging for the church today.

* a confessing church. It is time to live with the Bible in everyday life, to reserve a time for hearing and creating new visions.

* a serving church. It is time to leave arrogance, to begin a new conversation with the other world religions, to look together for peace, and to give testimony in a humble way.

* a missionary church. It is time to leave the church walls and to reach the unchurched people. Many of our Sunday services are sick because they do not touch the majority of our contemporaries any longer.

Give me a great thought to live from it. This should be our prayer.

These are some inspiring thoughts to live by, which I find in Loehe's life and work. It is a legacy also for the future.

1. Wilhelm Loehe, Three Books about the Church, trans. and ed. James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 59.

2. Wilhelm Loehe, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Klaus Ganzert (Neuendettalsau: Freimund, 1951-86), 4:614.

3. "Innere Mission im allgemeinen [1850]," in Loehe, Gesammelte Werke 4:179.

4. "Das Jubilaum unserer 25 jahrigen Missionsthatigkeit [1866]," in Korrespondenzblatt der Gesellschaft fuer innere Mission nach dem Sinne der lutherischen Kirche, ed. Friedrich Bauer (Noerdlingen 17, 1866), 41.

5. Loehe's letter to Karl von Raumer, Aug. 21, 1848, in Loehe, Gesammelte Werke 2:39.

6. "Zum Schelwigschen Aufsatz [1852]," in Loehe, Gesammelte Werke 4:199.

Christian Weber

Pastor and member of the Steering Committee for Missions Nuremberg-Gebersdorf, Germany