History
The Danish Evangelical Lutheran Association in America (or Blair Church) was formed in 1884 by a group of Danish members who left the Conference of the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Many of Blair Church pastors were supportive of the Inner Mission. The Blair Church was based in Blair, Nebraska.
The Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America (or North Church) was formed in 1894 when seminary president Kristian Anker and professor Peter Sørensen Vig, along with a number of pastor and congregations, left the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over theological differences. These two churches merged in 1896 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to form the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church (in addition to being known as the United Church, this new church continued to be referred to as the "Blair Church").
The United Church quickly formed a system of education, centered in Blair, Nebraska. The center-piece was Trinity Seminary, an institution designed for the training of pastors. Trinity was supported by the Dana School. The Dana School was originally intended to provide future pastors with a pre-seminary education, and others in the community with a secondary education. The school, eventually became a two-year college, and then a four-year college, now known as Dana College.
In 1946, as the second and third generation of Danes in America started to merge into the American culture, the word "Danish" was dropped from the official name of the church. In 1960, the United Church merged with churches that were ethnically German and Norwegian to form the American Lutheran Church. At the time of the merger, there were 73,000 baptized members of the United Church in 182 congregations. In 1988, the American Lutheran Church became a part of the largest Lutheran denomination in America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As a result of the merger, Trinity Seminary closed its doors, becoming a part of Wartburg Theological Seminary. Dana College in Blair continued to be a college of the ELCA until its closure in 2010.
Read more about this topic: United Evangelical Lutheran Church
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)