Lome, Johannes Konrad Wilhelm b. February 21, 1808; Furth, Bavaria d. January 2, 1872; Neuendettelsau, Bavaria
Bavarian pastor, theologian, and architect of confessional Lutheran missions to the United States. Lohe studied at Erlangen, and eventually settled into a pastorate in Neuendettelsau.
His ministry was characterized by a strict Lutheran confessional- ism. Though he never visited America, Lohe was preoccupied with the spread of Lutheranism in North America during the 1840s and 1850s, writing Agende fur christliche Gemeinden des lutherischen Bekenntnisses (The Lutheran Emigrants in North America, 1841) to encourage fidelity to the Lutheran confessional books and, especially, the Lutheran Church as an organic and divine institution. Particularly troubling for Lohe was the rise of interdenominational missionary organizations, which he believed undermined the integrity of the gospel by reducing it to the whims of individual Christians. Dozens of German churchmen responded to the passionate call of Lohe by settling frontier America, and during the 1840s, partly through reports by these missionaries, Lohe was able to offer news of American Lutheran growth through his journal Kirchliche Mittheilungen aus und uber Nor- damerika (Ecclesiastical Miscellanies from and about North America). As Walther Conser observed, Lohe turned his “parish at Neuendettelsau [into] an important headquarters for the missionary movement” (Conser 2001). Lohe was instrumental in the early history of the Missouri, Iowa, and Buffalo Synod branches of Lutheranism in America, as well as settlements in central Michigan, and he contributed to the founding of a seminary at Fort Wayne, Indiana. He likewise helped to commit American frontier (now midwestern) Lutheranism to rigorous confessional standards and worship in the German language, believing that one could only learn the Lutheran faith from thoroughly German institutions.R. Bryan Bademan
See also Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
References and Further Reading
Conser, Walther H., Jr. “Moral Order on the American Frontier: Lutheran Missions in the 1840s.” In Ethical Monotheism, Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Wendell S. Dietrich. Eds. Theodore M. Vial and Mark A. Hadley. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2001, pp. 120-137.
Deinzer, Johannes. Wilhelm Lohes Leben, 3 vols. Gutersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1880-1901.
Schaaf, James L. Wilhelm Lohe,s Relation to the American Church: A Study in the History of Lutheran Mission. ThD dissertation. University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, 1961.