A Difficult Letter Tells a Story, and a Team of Transcribers Brings it to Life

Understanding American Lutheran divisions over doctrine cannot be disentangled from disagreements over slavery. In this presentation, Dr. Maria Erling will discuss a letter sent by C.F.W. Walther,  a leader of the conservative Missouri Synod, to Gustav Seyffarth, an antislavery Egyptologist who left St. Louis and came out against the Missouri Synod’s position on slavery. This letter sheds light on the slavery debate in that synod during the Civil War, and the severing of a relationship between two professors. Members of the Horner Library’s Transcription Tuesday Group, who helped transcribe the letter, will talk about the process of group transcription.

Maria Erling is a Lutheran pastor and scholar of American Lutheranism. This talk is the first in a series related to scholarship made possible by the transcription of historic documents written in German. Registration for Zoom link.

Eastern time zone | hybrid | English