Memoirs of the Lutheran Liturgical Association
1898-1906
In the last years of the 19th century, there was an increased interest in the history of the Lutheran Church, especially its liturgy, in the United States and Canada. In 1888, a “Common Service” was published, which was the result of an investigation into the liturgical practices of the earliest Lutheran churches, untouched by the Pietist and Rationalist movements in the church in the intervening centuries.
Background on the "Common Service":
The creation of a "Common Service" for all English-speaking Lutherans was proposed by the Synod of the South to the General Synod and the General Council in 1878. The guiding rule would be "The common consent of the pure Lutheran Liturgies of the Sixteenth Century, and when there is not an entire agreement among them, the consent of the largest number of those of greatest weight."
The first meeting of the subcommittee that would prepare the drafts of the Common Service was held June, 1886. Final copies of the service were published beginning in 1888 by the three bodies that participated in this project. All three would publish slightly different versions; the Synod of the South's edition was named the “definitive” version. The Common Service would form the background for the Common Service Book (1917), the Lutheran Hymnal (1941), the Service Book and Hymnal (1958), Lutheran Service Book (2006), Worship (2006) and other major Lutheran liturgies published in the 20th and 21st centuries.
At the annual meeting of the Pittsburgh Synod of the General Council at East Liverpool, Ohio, September 3, 1898, “20 or more” clergymen met together to look into forming an organization that would examine a number of issues facing Lutheran Churches in the New World. It was observed that:
Our wide dispersion, the various national and linguistic factors and especially the un-Lutheran and sectarian influences to which various parts of the Church were subjected have naturally resulted in a very decided lack of uniformity in our external life.
A month later, on October 3, 1898, a permanent organization was established and officers elected. The organization would be known as the “Lutheran Liturgical Association.”
The recognition of our essential doctrinal unity, the growing appreciation of the meaning and value of the liturgical, musical and other art treasures of our fathers, the adoption of common liturgical forms upon the basis of a concensus of historic usage, the general advancement in intelligence and culture as well as the rapid Anglicization of our vast numbers in this country, – these are the potent factors in the present powerful movement that seeks to secure beauty, correctness and desirable uniformity in the department of Liturgiology and Ecclesiastical Art – our Public Worship, Church Architecture and Ornament, Church Music, Hymnology, Ministerial Acts and every other element of a churchly life.
Between October, 1898 and December, 1905, monthly meetings were conducted and scholarly papers written and presented. By the end of 1905, the Association had nearly 400 members, “widely distributed throughout twenty-two States of the Union, four Provinces of Canada, the District of Columbia, and India, and representing five General Bodies, of the Church.” Scholarly papers were prepared by members of “nearly all the Synods of the General Council, the General Synod, the United Synod of the South, the joint Synod of Ohio, the Icelandic Synod and the United Norwegian Synod,” among others. The most valuable of these papers were printed in the annual Memoirs of the Association. The first document published by the Association, “Bibliography and Outline of Study,” (16 pages) has not been found (if you know where there's a copy, please let me know).
At the December 4, 1905 meeting, President Luther D. Reed asked that he be relieved of his duties. However, the Association declined to accept his resignation, but resolved that regular meetings and publications would be “for the present” discontinued, and that “the present publications” be collected and issued in a single bound volume. Volumes I and II were out of print, but Volumes III through VII were bound and published. Members were invited to have their copies of the first two volumes submitted and be bound together with the remaining volumes. To these were added a Preface by the President and an index of all seven volumes by the Secretary, Rev. R. Morris Smith. Ultimately, 56 papers would be published in the full 7-volume set. “Altogether they unquestionably comprise the most extensive and most valuable collection of Lutheran liturgical literature in the English language,” wrote LLA President Rev. Luther Reed in the “Preface” to the Memoirs. The Table of Contents is below.
Copies of both Volumes I-VII and Volumes III-VII have been scanned and posted online in PDF formats at Google Books and the Internet Archive (links below).
In the early 1990s, Professor Mark DeGarmeaux, Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, Minnesota, converted Volumes 1-6 of the Memoirs into HTML format, posting them on one of his web pages at the College. His original work, plus supporting PDF documents, can be seen at: http://www.blc.edu/comm/gargy/gargy1/memoirs.html
In the summer of 2010, Doug Anderson, a Lutheran laymen in Decatur, Alabama, pursuing a amateur's interest in the history of the liturgy of the Lutheran Church, converted Volume 7 from PDF into other formats, including Open Office™, Microsoft Word™, Adobe PDF™, HTML, and the ePub and mobi e-Reader formats. He also converted the texts prepared by Prof. DeGarmeaux into those formats.
Errors only are my own.
Please note that in the original Memoirs, there was a considerable variety in the formatting of book titles (capitalized or not capitalized), Latin phrases (italicized or not italicized), etc. For example, in two different articles, the following phrase could appear in either of these two “formats”:
“... the Gloria Patri, the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Collect, the General Prayer, the Preface, Sanctus, Agnus and Nunc Dimittis ...”
“... the Gloria Patri, the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Collect, the General Prayer, the Preface, Sanctus, Agnus and Nunc Dimittis ...”
I have attempted to present the text exactly as given in each individual article. I have not “corrected” the text for spellings or formats in use today (e.g., “centre” vs. “center”). The only exception to this is the use of “Small Caps.” Due to the large number of these, a word or phrase that is in “Small Caps” in the original is rendered in capital letters in these texts. Where a word is split between pages, I have placed the entire word on the page where the first portion of the word appeared.
I have used as my “baseline” document, the PDF of the single-volume text of Volumes I-VII found at the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/details/memoirsofluthera00luth. The filename was memoirsofluthera00luth.pdf; its size was 42,029 KB. This volume may have slightly different formatting from other volumes, especially at the page breaks. A copy is available for downloading from this web site (below).
There are problems with the electronic versions (epub and mobi) of these texts, especially as related to the limitation to the Western Latin alphabet. This causes some of the Greek characters not to be accurately reproduced and to be replaced with the question mark. Other issues may be attributed to my lack of expertise in the creation of these types of files.
Although great care has been taken to faithfully reproduce the original texts, one can assume that some errors will have escaped the attention of those who have attempted to turn the original printed text into an electronic format. The patient understanding of the reader is appreciated ("All we, like sheep, have turned astray;" Isa. 53:6). Errors will be corrected as promptly as possible, subject to the limitations of health, prior commitments, etc. Please direct corrections to doug “at” hymnsandcarolsofchristmas “dot” com.
All linked documents are placed in the Public Domain, and may be distributed in any form by anyone, without limitation. Please make copies for yourself and distribute to others who are interested. No web site lasts forever, including this one, and backup or "mirror" sites would be a welcome method to ensure that these documents do not sink into the mists of history. I will happily link to any web pages that contain derivatives or corrections of these documents, or which contain discussions germane to the evolving liturgies of the various Lutheran churches, wherever they may be located.
Doug Anderson
Decatur, Alabama
February 9, 2011
May 16, 2011 Update:
In February, I created a print-on-demand volume of the Memoirs from my publisher, Lulu.com. After carefully reviewing its contents, a number of corrections have been made, usually related to punctuation issues (evidently, between these new screens and my diminishing visual acuity, I had difficulty in "seeing" some of these problems). This will be my last exhaustive review of these documents. Future corrections will be on an article-by-article basis (although I will also update the Single Volume and individual Volumes).
This volume is now available, “Print On Demand,” for the cost of printing ($18.72), plus postage, from the publisher, Lulu.com. I will derive no profit from its publication. It can be ordered from my page at Lulu, Books by Doug Anderson.
DDA
June 13, 2011 Update
In reviewing the materials I discovered that one article was not updated in several collections. The article was "Liturgical Colors" by P. Z. Strodach. The following zipped files have been created or updated.
The book at Lulu.com has also been updated, The Memoirs of the Lutheran Liturgical Association (ID #10143998).
DDA
September 1, 2011
I've begun a new page related to Lutheran liturgy, Luther's Liturgical Writings. There's only one text there so far, but more are on the way.
Downloads in “Zip” format
The single document containing the contents of all seven Volumes of Memoirs (Open Office™ , Microsoft Word™ , HTML, PDF formats; no ePub or mobi versions are available at this time):
Volumes I – VII (Open Office™, Microsoft Word™, Adobe PDF™, HTML, ePub and mobi formats); a Table of Contents for each of the seven volumes is reproduced below:
All individual articles, plus the Preface and Index (Open Office™, Microsoft Word™, Adobe PDF™, HTML, ePub and mobi formats):
Additional Liturgical Writings (Luther and many others, including some cited in the articles). Note: Some of these are “works in progress,” and are provided “as is.”
A file containing a scan of the original cover, Tables of Contents (original, by title, and by author), and the original Index.
A file consisting of a crude Bibliography created by me from any "Authorities Cited" paragraphs in individual articles (just a few, unfortunately), plus additional sources culled from the footnotes.
The original PDF file upon which I based these versions (originally downloaded from the Internet Archive). This file is not included in any of the above Zip files.
Memoirs of the Lutheran Liturgical Association
(1898-1905)
Volume 1 - Vol_01.zip
Page - Title
1 – The Fundamental Principles of Christian Worship - J. C. F. Rupp
9 – Our Distinctive Worship – The Common Service and Other Liturgies, Ancient and Modern - L. D. Reed
19 – The Significance of Liturgical Reform - E. T. Horn
41 – The Sources of the Morning Service of the Common Service - R. M. Smith
Volume 2 - Vol_02.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – The Architecture of the Chancel - E. F. Krauss
7 – The Significance of the Altar - W. E. Schramm
15 – The Swedish Liturgies - N. Forsander
29 – Altar Linen - L. D. Reed
35 – The Sources of the Minor Services - R. M. Smith
57 – The History of the Liturgy of the Lutheran Church in Denmark - E. Belfour
75 – Thematic Harmony of Introit, Collect, Epistle, and Gospel - D. H. Geissinger
83 – Art in Worship - J. F. Ohl
Volume 3 - Vol_03.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – The Administration of the Lord's Supper in Different Ages of the Church - G. S. Seaman
9 – The Liturgical History of Confirmation - C. T. Benze
19 – The Church and the Liturgy - C. M. Jacobs
35 – The Church Prayer - C. A. Miller
47 – The Value of Liturgical Study for Organists - G. C. Rees
59 – A General Survey of the Book of Common Prayer - S. A. Bridges Stopp
75 – Means of Liturgical Reform - T. W. Kretschmann
81 – Liturgical Education of the Church's Youth - R. E. McDaniel
89 – The Sacrificial Idea in Christian Worship - G. F. Spieker
101 – The Place of Liturgy in the Church's Thought, Life and Art - J. A. W. Haas
113 – The Liturgical History of Baptism - H. S. Gilbert
Volume 4 - Vol_04.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – The Liturgical Influence of the Lesser Reformers - C. T. Benze
17 – The Ecclesiastical Calendar - N. R. Melhorn
29 – Luther's Liturgical Writings - E. A. Trabert
47 – The Pericopes - A. Spaeth
63 – Liturgical Development in the Period of the Reformation - E. T. Horn
67 – The Liturgical Deterioration of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries - J. F. Ohl
79 – Liturgy and Doctrine - D. H. Geissinger
85 – Early American Lutheran Liturgies - D. M. Kemerer
95 – The Liturgy of the Icelandic Church - F. J. Bergmann
Volume 5 - Vol_05.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – The Liturgical Influence of Gregory the Great - A. L. Ramer
9 – The Function of the Minister in Divine Worship - E. F. Krauss
21 – A Laity Liturgically Well-Informed - A. B. Markley
31 – The Significance of Symbolism and Its Employment in the Service of the Church - G. J. Gongaware
41 – The Collects - S. A Bridges Stopp
53 – The Fundamental Principles of Divine Service - G. W. Mechling
69 – Regulations and Customs Pertaining to the Use of the Sacraments - I. M. Wallace
85 – Liturgical Accuracy and Spirituality - H. D. Spaeth
Volume 6 - Vol_06.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – Contributive Influences Noted in the History and Structure of the Liturgy - W. A. Lambert
17 – Remarks on Some of Our Liturgical Classics - E. T. Horn
23 – Preaching and the Day - P. Z. Strodach
41 – Christian Worship in the Apostolic Age - C. M. Jacobs
65 – The Liturgical History of Confession and Absolution
77 – The Sacramental Idea in Christian Worship - A. Spaeth
89 – Paraments of the Lord's House - G. U. Wenner
Volume 7 - Vol_07.zip
Page – Title – Author
1 – Liturgical Colors - P. Z. Strodach
19 – Consecration - G. U. Wenner
27 – The Liturgical Use of the Creeds - J. W. Horine
35 – The Liturgy of the Norwegian Lutheran Church - E. K. Johnsen
49 – Christian Worship in the First Post-Apostolic Age - C. M. Jacobs
75 – The Application of Lutheran Principles of the Church Building - E. T. Horn
121 – The Bidding Prayer, Litany, and Suffrages - C. K. Fegley
159 – The Use of Stained Glass in Ecclesiastical Architecture - E. F. Krauss
169 – Sacred Monograms – The Charisma and the Holy Name - E. F. Krever
Index of all 7 Volumes