Verhandlungen der 110ten jährlichen Versammlung des Deutschen Evangelish-Lutherischen Ministeriums von Pennsylvanien und den benachbarten Staaten. / ...111ten... / ...112ten... / 117ten...

Sumnytown, PA: Druck und Verlag von Enos Benner, 1857. Paperback. Four (4) issues. 8vo. Blue printed wrappers. 55pp, 48pp, 56pp, 94pp. Overall very good. Outer wrappers (only) show varying edgewear; last 3 with folding chart at rear; second issue (only) lacks rear wrapper. Four complete issues, entirely in German, for the 110th, 111th, 112th and 117th annual assemblies of the German Evangelical-Lutheran Ministry of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States. (Third issue, 112th, was published in Lancaster by Johann Bär's Söhnen and the fourth, 117th, by Trexler, Harlacher und Weisser in Allentown.) This quartet of yearly reports preserves the detailed affairs of this important German-American church association, reporting sessions devoted to ministry business -- finances, foreign and domestic mission activities, parochial numbers, etc. To recap this organization's complex history: The influential "Pennsylvania Ministry" is the oldest Lutheran church body in the U.S. and created the first Lutheran liturgy; originally called the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministry of North America" when founded in 1748, it became the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministry of Pennsylvania and the Adjacent States" in 1792. Only in 1918 did it cease to exist when the three major Lutheran church bodies joined to form the United Lutheran Church in America -- which in 1962 joined other American Lutherans and morphed into the Lutheran Church in America -- which in 1988 transformed into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.