Published on February 18, 2026 [Episode 444]
Introduction
Lutherans are a strange denomination in American religious history and culture. For Catholics they are certainly Protestants. For Protestants they are sometimes suspected of being crypto-Catholics. They have been present in North America since the Swedes established their short-lived colony on the Delaware River—and yet in the American imagination they have typically received about as much attention as that short-lived Swedish colony itself.
But my guest Timothy D. Grundmeier argues that this neglect obscures something essential about nineteenth-century America. In Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith, he contends that Lutheranism was not marginal but central to American religious life in the era of the Civil War. By 1900 it was the nation’s fourth-largest denomination. It occupied a distinctive place between revivalist Protestantism and sacramental Catholicism. And in Union states outside the Northeast, Lutheran churches often reflected what he calls the “moderate majority.” Like every other major American institution, Lutheranism was reshaped by the Civil War and Reconstruction—and in turn helped shape the political, ethnic, and religious culture of the nation.
About the Guest
Timothy D. Grundmeier is Professor of History at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith is his first book.
For Further Investigation
Timothy D. Grundmeier, Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith (LSU Press, 2026)
Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1998)
George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Related Episodes
Ruin Nation: Megan Kate Nelson on the Destruction of the Civil War
Armies of Deliverance: Elizabeth Varon and a New Interpretation of the American Civil War
Reflection Questions
What does Grundmeier mean by the “moderate majority”?
How did ethnicity, immigration, and theology intersect within nineteenth-century Lutheran communities?
In what ways did the Civil War reshape American denominational structures?
Tags
Civil War · American Religion · Lutheranism · Nineteenth Century · Timothy D. Grundmeier · American Culture
