First Lutheran Church in America Founded in Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Ministerium was founded in 1748 in Philadelphia, the first permanent Lutheran organization in North America. The man behind it was Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg, a German pastor who had sailed to America to find what he later described as chaos — German Lutheran congregations scattered across Pennsylvania with no coordination, no ordained clergy, and competing factions. He spent years traveling between them on horseback. The Ministerium gave the scattered communities a structure. It still exists, now called the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA.
August 26, 1748
278 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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