interlocking--to construct an identity that is simultaneously genuinely Lutheran
and authentically American.

Often this struggle has taken the form of theological debate. Christa R. Klein
has persuasively suggested that Lutheranism might even be understood as a
continuity of argument. ¹ Mark Noll has written about the struggle as learning
to speak Lutheranism with an American accent. ² Though these historians and
others such as Robert Bruce Mullin cast the task of denominational identification
in terms of language--and rightly so since language has been a major factor
among Lutherans--more than words and ideas have been at stake. ³ The struggle
to construct an identity both Lutheran and American has also included financing
voluntary religious institutions from the congregation to the college; providing
qualified leadership and devising adequate organizational forms; responding to
innovations such as revivalism, Sunday school, and women's organizations; and
participating in non-Lutheran activities such as public education, social and ser-
vice organizations or ecumenical worship.

Lutherans appear in general histories of American religion such as Sidney Ahlstrom's
A Religious History of the American People or Winthrop Hudson
Religion in America or Mark A. Noll A History of Christianity in the United
States and Canada as an exceptional case--one that neither fits the conventional
patterns for Protestant descendants of Puritans nor is so innovative nor so exotic
as others. Shakers or Mormons, for example. ⁴ Historians have written Lutherans'
tale into the counterpoint rather than the melody. American factors contribute
to this. The coincidence of the arrival of large numbers of non-English-speaking
Lutherans with the settlement of the Midwest, for example, resulted in both
linguistic and geographic isolation of many Lutherans. Nonetheless, factors in
the religious Lutheran identity also help to account both for their different re-
sponse to the common challenges and for their rendering as challenge things
others regard as commonplace. Efforts to conserve both ethnic and religious
culture combined, in some cases, in support of parochial schools as alternatives
to the public schools. Differing legacies of piety lead some Lutherans to embrace
and others to oppose temperance and some to participate in, and others to pro-
test, revivalism.

Let us turn now to a preliminary consideration of Lutheranism, specifically,
to the double question, What is Lutheranism, and who is one? The most
commonsense response to the second question is the institutional one. A Lu-
theran is a person who belongs to a Lutheran church. Unfortunately in this case
what is obvious is not always true, nor even very helpful. ⁵ What Nancy Ammer-
man has pointed out in reference to surveys about church membership applies
here. People report themselves as belonging without any behaviors of affiliation. ⁶
So, too, there are people who consider themselves Lutheran but who neither
hold membership in a Lutheran congregation nor attend one. Some count them-
selves as Lutherans when no congregation does, on the basis of family affiliation
or a general sense of belonging to a culture rather than to an identifiable institu-

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