The Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod was founded by supporters of David Henkel in 1820. It was born in controversy, and its view of Lutheran Identity just simply didn't make sense to anyone back then. But it turned out that by going back to the Confessions, they were ahead of their time. They were pioneers. Pioneers in living out on the fringe. Pioneers in translating Luther. Pioneers in translating the Book of Concord... And the Henkel family had a printing press to publish all this stuff.
And the Spirit of God accomplished its purpose in their publications... And the spirit of East-Coast Lutheranism slowly changed. Instead of making fun of wanting an exact translation of the Book of Concord, the 2nd edition of it was a joint work with other Lutheran bodies. Eventually they stopped attacking each other, and "Tennessee" joined in the United Synod, South - with a few reservations. Shortly after this, "Tennessee" commissioned a book to tell their History. That is the book here provided. It provides short summaries of issues discussed and decisions made at each of the first 69 times the Synod gathered.
I put "Tennessee" in quotes because from the time of the Civil War, it had no members in that state... Instead most congregations were in North Carolina, but they were against the Synod of North Carolina...
Anyway, source is from http://archive.org/details/historyofevangel00henk. There were very few things to tag, and so it is a very straight forward book.
SDG
Ken McGuire
