Call for Papers

“Lutherans and Popular Culture”

Throughout history religious institutions continually negotiate, resist, and often participate in the creation of popular culture. In addition, religious communities grapple with popular culture’s influences on the church and its members. North American Lutherans are no exception. However, Lutherans’ complex relationship with popular culture has gone understudied. This conference will explore the theme of Lutherans and popular culture. Specifically, it will examine ways in which popular culture has influenced Lutheran theology, forms of worship, schools, missions, and engagement with local and national communities. In addition, this conference will investigate how Lutherans both contributed to popular culture, as well as pushed back and resisted popular cultures’ influences on the church.

Papers detailing any aspect of this theme are welcome, as are topics outside of the theme! Presenters will be given 20-25 minutes for their presentation, followed by a question and answer session. Paper proposals should include a title, 250 word abstract, and brief biography.

The 2014 LHC Conference will be held October 10-12 at Milwaukee Lutheran College, Milwaukee, Wis.

Proposals and inquiries are due April 15, 2014 and should be sent electronically to the Program Chair: Julieanna Frost, Ph.D., jfrost@sienaheights.edu.

Winter 2013 Newsletter Now Online

The Winter 2013 LHC Newsletter is now online in PDF format.

Journal of the LHC

The first issue of the LHC’s new serial publication, the Journal of the Lutheran Historical Conference was issued in October and has been mailed to members. This new publication will be produced annually, and will include articles on North American Lutheran history, as well as an annual bibliography of other publications in this field. The editor of the Journal is Mark Granquist, Associate Professor of Church History, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. He can be reached at mgranquist001@luthersem.edu. Please contact him if you have manuscripts or ideas for submissions.

The first issue continued papers from the 2011 conference. Those were:

• “From Piety to Policy: The Danish Lutheran Mission School for Indians in Oaks, Oklahoma,” by Maria Erling
• "Arthur Simon: From Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Bread for the World,” by Kathryn M. Galchutt
• “Trexler’s Travels: Samuel Geiss Trexler and the Emergence of International Lutheranism,” by Michael G. L. Church
• “Lutherans, Watergate, and Morality: Engaging the Political Realm,” by David E. Settje
• “Laughing with the Lenape: Swedes and Native Americans in Colonial Delaware,” by Kim-Eric Williams
• “Images of the Inupiaq: The Photography and Mission Work of Helen C. Frost,” by Julieanna Frost
• “Revolutionary Accompaniment: Lutherans and Nicaragua, 1979-1990,” by Richard M. Chapman
• “Sister Margaret Fry at Willow Run,” by Marilyn H. Stauffer
• “An Early American Orientalist Lutheran Perspective of Islam: Lewis Eichelberger and his Sources,” by David D. Grafton
• “Answering the Call: The Pioneer Church Engages the World,” by Kathy Graumann
• “Fellow Workers: Lutheran’s Service to Refugees as Public Engagement,” by L. DeAne Lagerquist
• “Equality Denied: Lutheran Responses to the Equal Rights Amendment,” by Elisabeth A. Unruh
• “Hannah and Marie Larsen at the Schreuder Mission in Zululand,” by Rachel Vagts
• 2009 and 2010 Indexes of Writings in the Field of American Lutheranism as Published in the November 2010 LHC Newslette

Additional volumes can be purchased through Lutheran University Press at www.lutheranupress.org.  

Essays and Reports, Volume 22

Lutheran Identity and Regional Distinctiveness


Volume 22 in the LHC Essays and Reports series is now available. The volume contains the papers presented at the 23rd Biennial Meeting of the LHC, held at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, S.C., on October 12-14, 2006.

The volume is available from Concordia Historical Institute, 804 Seminary Place, Saint Louis, MO 63105-3014. The cost is $20.00, plus $3.00 for postage and handling. Many earlier volumes, as well as other LHC publications, are also available.

Become a Member of the LHC

Lutheran archivists, librarians, historians and other interested individuals and institutions are invited to become members of the Lutheran Historical Conference, an interdisciplinary organization founded in 1962. Click here for membership information.

Looking for Resources

We offer a service for anyone seeking information on a topic related to Lutheranism in North America. If you need help finding resources, we will be happy to post the request here on our web site and also in our print newsletter. Send your request to luthhist@luthhist.org.

Click here to see what people are looking for.

Join our email discussion list!

This is a discussion list for members of the Lutheran Historical Conference (LHC) and others interested in discussing the history of Lutheranism in North America, asking questions and seeking resources for the study of the subject. Members of the LHC include archivists, historians and librarians of the various Lutheran church bodies, as well as anyone interested in the subject.

To join the list, send any message to lutheran_history-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

General Information

The LHC holds biennial meetings at which papers on the history of Lutheranism are presented and discussed. These papers are published in a series called Essays and Reports. Monographs on American Lutheran history are also published by the conference.

Lutheran History Resources Online

Links to ebooks and other Lutheran history publications available on the Internet.

• George Wenner, The Lutherans of New York: Their Story and Their Problems (1918)
  (A Project Gutenberg EBook)

Things to Come

Watch this page for announcements of future developments and resources relating to the work of the LHC, including:

• Electronic versions of out-of-print LHC publications
• Descriptions of research in progress
• Additional links to sites with resources related to Lutheran history

Links

• Project Wittenberg
• Concordia Historical Institute
• ELCA Archives Home Page
• Evangelical Lutheran Synod Historical Society
• Georg Sverdrup Society
• Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection (Pitts Theological Library, Emory University)