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| Heinrich Christian Schwan was a missionary in Brazil, a parish pastor, a district president, a synodical president, and the force behind the Schwan Catechism, as it came to be called. More details and the links to the Schwan Catechism, PDF and print, are here. |
Heinrich Christian Schwan was the Missouri Synod president for 20 years (1878-1899), but that lengthy service and his pastoral and missionary activities have been effaced from the LCMS histories. Schwan's presidency was sandwiched between the presidencies of CFW Walther and Walther's hand-picked successor in teaching, Franz Pieper. Walther and Pieper were advocates of Objective Justification.
Schwan was educated in Germany and served as a missionary in Brazil from 1843 to 1850. His first parish call was to Black Jack, Missouri (North St. Louis), when he joined the Missouri Synod. He spent the next 50 years serving as pastor and assistant pastor - in that order - of Zion, Cleveland, Ohio. That is where he introduced the Christmas tree to America. He was also the district president and the LCMS president during his pastoral work in Cleveland. He was commissioned to write a catechism for the synod, which was published in 1896 and became known as the Schwan Catechism.
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| Schwan became an assistant pastor at Zion, after being the senior pastor, so he could serve part-time as the Ohio District president of the LCMS and part-time as the Missouri Synod president. |
