myself why a particular piece of information or interpretation would matter to
them.

While I affirm the centrality of Word and sacrament to the life of the church,
I also know that those practices are embedded in the larger social worlds oc-
cupied by those who hear the gospel preached and receive the sacraments. I
have attempted to portray Lutheranism in the United States by attending to
Lutheran people, to keep the members and their practice in the foreground with
matters of structure and often of theological debate in the background. Those
readers who long for more details or greater engagement in the issues will need
to consult other works. Here they encounter descriptions of patterns and repre-
sentative or significant examples. There is no intention to be exhaustive, though
there is effort to be evenhanded. This is the case in the narrative as well as in
the biographical entries. In my commitment to attend to laypeople, to women,
and to people of color, other individuals and concerns have moved from center
stage, and some have disappeared altogether from these pages. I have attempted
to include some figure from most major synods and to strike a balance with
regard to chronology and regions. I have taken the formation of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America as the end point, not because it is the end of the
story, but because it provides a clear place for a pause as the story continues.

No doubt some readers will object that I have not achieved all that I set out
to do, that I have not made good on my convictions in one way or another, and
I will have to plead guilty as charged. There are aspects of Lutheran life in the
United States that I hoped to explore but was prevented from doing so for want
of time or sources. What does appear here bears the marks of my own experience
of American Lutheranism as a white laywoman, of a certain age, who has lived
in the upper-Midwest and in southern California, and who has been nurtured in
specific congregations and educated at specific schools.

Nonetheless, I hope that this book will introduce American Lutherans to read-
ers who do not know us in a way that gives them access to our critical concerns,
characteristics, and contributions and that suggests points of commonality with,
as well as challenge to, other traditions. I hope, further, that Lutheran readers
will learn something of themselves, not only or primarily the facts of names,
dates, and places but more the dynamic life of people nurtured by, and nurturing,
a tradition whose founder described faith as "a very mighty, active, restless,
busy thing, which at once renews believers, gives them a second birth, and
introduces them to a new manner and way of life, that it is impossible for them
not to do good without ceasing" ( Weimar, vol. 10, III, 285).

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