Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania
The Lutheran churches in Pennsylvania had largely been founded by lay ministers. As Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf was successful in winning a number of converts to the Moravian Church, the Lutherans asked German churches for formally trained clergy.
In 1742, Muhlenberg immigrated to Philadelphia, responding to the 1732 request by Pennsylvania Lutherans. He took charge of the congregation at Providence (Augustus Lutheran Church), in what is now Trappe, Pennsylvania. He also provided leadership to a series of congregations from Maryland to New York, working to secure control over less qualified pastors and starting new congregations among the settlers of the region. In 1748 he called together The Ministerium of Pennsylvania, the first permanent Lutheran synod in America. He helped to prepare a uniform liturgy that same year, and also wrote basic tenets for an ecclesiastical constitution, which most of the churches adopted in 1761. He did much work on a hymnal, published by the Ministerium in 1786.
The dedication stone of the Augustus Lutheran Church, above its door, is dedicated to Muhlenberg and its other founders.
Muhlenberg frequently traveled beyond the three congregations assigned to him. During his 45-year ministry, he reached from New York to Georgia. He ministered not only to the German-language populations he was assigned to, but to colonists from the Netherlands and Britain as well, in their native languages. His colleagues requested his help in arbitrating disputes among Lutherans, or in some cases with other religious groups.
Muhlenberg also worked to recruit new ministers from Europe and to develop more ministers from the colonists.
Poor health forced him into limited activity and retirement. He eventually died at his home in Trappe, Pennsylvania. He was interred in the rear of Augustus Lutheran Church with his wife Anna Maria, followed by their son, the colonial general Peter Muhlenberg. By request, he was buried next to the grave of his good friend and sponsor, Augustus Church co-founder Frederick Ludwig Marsteller.
Read more about this topic: Henry Muhlenberg
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