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| Stephan's hat probably represents Herrnhut. |
bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Complete Rough Draft of Chapter Four - Luther vers...":
About Walther and slavery, a topic that some are studying. The Moravian mission sites that Herrnhut set up around the world, especially in the Caribbean, used slaves to make a profit and set up more Moravian mission sites.
With Stephan being a former Hernnhuter, he had no problem setting up shop in southern Missouri. Sparsely populated Perry Co. had 150 slaves, I recall reading, when the Saxons arrived there. The census information is online, but I think one can find that info on Perry Co history pages. By contrast, the Scandinavian immigrants to America were specifically warned not to settle in the South or anywhere there was slavery. Hence, Norwegians are found in northern tier states mainly.
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GJ - Perry County also had mineral springs, so Stephan could continue treatment for his syphilis.
The Swedish Augustana Synod loathed slavery and voted Republican.
Here is Cascione's amen corner for everything Walther ever thought, including slavery.
More Walther and slavery.
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Norman Teigen, Walther, Slavery:
Norman Teigen says:
September 30, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Thank you for posting this very interesting discussion. I had no technical problems.
I have always admired Walther but in the past year or so I have become quite troubled with Walther and the issue of slavery. I believe that the historical record shows that Walther was a southern partisan. I think that the evidence is pretty solid on this point.
There were lots of southern partisans, of course, and one shouldn’t be too hard on these followers of the cause that was lost. What is troubling to me is how Walther justified slavery on an argument based on his interpretation of Scripture, an argument which I feel does not stand so much on Lutheranism as it does on culture.
Walther’s argument on slavery closely follows the standard Southern defense of the institution. Walther’s argument that he only cares about Scripture and not about civil matters seems to cloud the picture rather than clarify.
Walther’s influence on other Lutherans was profound as the professors discuss. I am of the Norwegian branch of Lutheranism and my spiritual ancestors sought advice from Walther on the topic of slavery. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Norwegians accepted Walther’s views on the subject rather than the better advice which they received from theologians in Oslo. The Waltherian view caused, I think the historical record will show, great sorrow within the Norwegian branch of the faith.
The theological battles of the Civil War, as Professor Mark Noll has written, were settled by the two eminent theologians Ulysses Simpson Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. What has prevailed, I think, is that Walther’s explanation of the slavery question is the biblically based, solidly Lutheran explanation.
I think that that question is open to serious discussion and I would like to hear from the professors about this over-all issue of the slavery problem and Walther’s explanation. I won’t ask the professors to resolve our Norwegian interpretations of these historical events but would like a clarification of the slavery problem.
Incidentally, the Missouri Synod is still getting beaten up on slavery in recent days as a writer demonstrated earlier this summer in a local paper, The Metro Lutheran.
Thank you,
Norman Teigen
Hopkins MN
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Norman Teigen has left a new comment on your post "Walther and Slavery - Another Inconvenient Fact":
Thanks, GJ, for posting this. This comes from the Concordia Seminary site. I was pleased in this exchange to have a seminary professor there acknowledge that Walther was wrong on slavery. This admission was encouraging to me because it was the first time that a reliable source had admitted that. I think that one can admire Walther's contribution to the faith and admit that he was once wrong about something.
My interest is in the ideas involved. I have not been able to further my Walther studies this Fall because I ran a campaign for election to the Hopkins MN City Council. I was unsuccessful - no Boss Teigen here, just Ten Percent Teigen-and now I can renew my studies.
I will concentrate on Walther's assertion that slavery is a civil matter and has nothing to do with spiritual matters. This is the essence of the Walther slavery problem and I am reasonably sure that my explanation will be on target.
I will submit it to you and your readers for review and comment. I had a blog once but it was officially shut down. Now the ban was been lifted but I am slow to get the blog going again.
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bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Walther and Slavery - Another Inconvenient Fact":
Cascione wrote: "Walther shows that the American slave masters could hardly claim they were following the Bible."
Ha! That's a bunch of historical revisionism. Walther claimed that slavery was biblical, and that abolitionists were wrong when they condemned slavery. Walther clearly taught that only the abuses associated with slavery ought to be condemned, not slavery itself.
People argued against Walther's assertion by saying the abuses were intrinsically bound up with slavery itself, so even if Walther were right, he still ought to condemn slavery itself. Walther, however, chose to believe that abuses of slaves were not widespread, a total myth that abolitionists tried to dispel.
Besides that, almost as soon as Christianity took over the Roman empire, at least widespread slavery was a dead institution, so other Christians were 1300 years ahead of the caveman Walther on that point.
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bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Walther and Slavery - Another Inconvenient Fact":
Norm Tiegen, If you really want to know why Walther was pro-slavery, it all comes down the inherent antinomianism of UOJ. Walther thought, "So what if there are widespread abuses inherent in slavery, since all that is forgiven." It's similar to how Stephan's abuses of his office were no no concern since they figured he was forgiven before his was born for those sins, and what's all-important is he's carrying out his duties as cleric:
In Forster's Zion of the Mississippi one can read:
...anything which promised to discredit him before the people or even to rid them of him was accepted without further scrutiny. Their attitude in Germany had been typified by Keyl's remark noted above, that he did not believe in the assertions against Stephan to be true, but that if they were, he was certain Stephan had repented, and all was well (pp. 394-5).
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "Walther and Slavery - Another Inconvenient Fact":
Walther's theological contribution? The promotion of quasi universalism?
I began being cynical of Walther when I read his essays on Lutheranism. Like a typical cult leader he believed his own propaganda. It is high time that he gets put on the scale and out of the pedestal. It is time to see how he weighs.
LPC
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GJ - Walther created many needless splits by making his own opinions the ruling norm for all Lutherans. He won in this sense - at first the General Council taught justification by faith and the Means of Grace. Now ELCA is just as UOJ as the Olde Synodical Conference.
The Lutheran Reformers would have laughed at a bachelor's degree from Leipzig qualifying Walther to judge and condemn everyone else. Herrnhut cell groupies are not exactly the Concordists brought back to life, even if the terminology was borrowed for every LCMS institution.
