Rev. Dr. Kazimierz Bem, Pastor of First Church, Marlborough, Massachusetts and Former CLA Research Fellow
World War I formally broke out on July 28, 1914, and while the United States did not enter it until quite late–April 6, 1917–“The Great War” had been by then featured prominently in United States public discourse, and thus also among the Congregationalists.
Though we often forget, since the 1840s many ethnic German immigrants from the German Empire and Russia joined and formed Congregational churches, rather than Lutheran ones. By 1913, there were over 132 financially independent German Congregational churches and another 86 had received aid from the Congregational Home Missionary Society. Many worshiped exclusively in German, and there were even separate German Congregational associations.
Initially, the denominational newspaper, The Congregationalist (also known during this period as The Congregationalist and Christian World), tried to steer a moderate course, expressing some sympathy towards Austria-Hungary. In a July 9, 1914 editorial shortly after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (which was the catalyst for the war’s outbreak), its editor wrote “one cannot help feeling the deepest sympathy with the aged Emperor Franz Joseph, whose whole long reign of more than sixty years has been overwhelmed with personal and political calamities and loss.” In another editorial on August 13, editors again reiterated support for both neutrality and peace, laying blame for the conflict at the feet of the deeply unpopular Emperor Wilhelm II.
But the mood among Congregationalists began to shift rapidly. The two clear turning points were the barbaric sack of Louvain (August 25, 1914) and the German destruction of the Reims Cathedral in France (September 14, 1914). When The Congregationalist ran on October 17, it included an article by the respected theologian Walter Rauschenbusch titled “Be Fair to Germany. A Plea for Open-mindedness.” The negative backlash from the readers was so severe that no new pieces by Rauschenbusch were published until the war’s end. An earlier translation of the “Letter of German Theologians” (that so-appalled Karl Barth and cast him on the route to write his famous Romenbrief) was published on October 8, 1914, but with a strong rejoinder by English theologians on November 4. Furious letters to the editors about the German letter followed.
As the war dragged on, the anti-German mood hardened. The same editorialist of The Congregationalist who had expressed sympathy and compassion for the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph in 1914, called the deceased emperor “the oppressor of Italy, the dupe and victim of Prussia” on October 31, 1918. The most shocking version of anti-German sentiment was expressed in The Blot on the Kaiser’s 'Scutcheon, a book written by Congregational minister Dwight Newell Hillis (1858-1929) from the influential Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. In it, he called outright for the mass forced sterilization of the Germans:
The Boards of Health are planning to wipe out typhoid, cholera and the Black Plague. Not otherwise, lovers of their fellow man have finally become perfectly hopeless with reference to the German people. They have no more relations to the civilization of 1918 than an organ-outang, a gorilla, a Judas, a hyena, a thumbscrew, a scalping knife in the hands of a savage. These brutes must be cast out of society.
Hillis was an extremist, but by 1918, anti-German feeling was high in America. On February 21, 1918, the editorialist of The Congregationalist had to defend Rev. Dr. Frederick Emrich, who pled for understanding for “loyal German Americans” and how he was attacked by the Boston Globe. The piece showed more sympathy with Emrich than with the “loyal German Americans” but shows how intense the feelings were.
A month later, on March 18, 1918, The Congregationalist (titled The Congregationalist and Advance during this period) published an extensive article titled “Our German Churches,” in which it sought to allay fears about the patriotism of the German immigrants in the Midwest. Reminding the readers that most of the Germans living there had fled from Russia, not Germany or Austria. It then added,
many of our young men have enlisted . . . they are purchasers of liberty bonds, liberal subscribers to the Red Cross. Many of our women are ‘doing their bit’ in connection with women’s unions . . . within a week a check was received from one of our parishes for $770 for Syrian-Armenian relief. They feel the weight of the war.
The anti-German and anti-Austrian sentiments within Congregationalism were also supported by other ethnic churches, whose nations had been oppressed by both empires: Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, and Italians. From early 1915 onwards, The Congregationalist ran articles supportive of the Poles and their desire for independence from Germany and Austria (and Russia, too).
Czech and Slovak Congregational churches were eager to broadcast their support of the American war effort. When after the war the denomination sent out a special questionnaire titled, “Congregationalists in the War,” Rev. Philip Reitinger from the mainly Czech Mizpah Congregational Church in Cleveland, Ohio proudly reported:
20 men were in army and navy service, 4 wounded, continually sent personal letters, boxes of food and clothing. . . . Main message from the pulpit: ‘Though naturally opposed to war, former experiences of pastor and people with the government of Austria caused both to take a very decided stance on the side of the U.S. government and the cause of freedom of oppressed nations. Much of the preaching was inspired by that spirit.’
All of this had another effect on American Congregationalism. Some congregations were literally rent asunder. At the Polish Congregational Church in Detroit, all of the founding members (who hailed from Prussia) left when the Polish pastor Pawel Kozielek took a clear pro-American and anti-German stance. He had the support of Polish converts and immigrants from Russia and Austria, but the church barely survived this exodus and he, too, had to resign in 1919. Many German congregations willingly began to abandon German as a language of worship. Throughout 1918, The Congregationalist ran regular notices how churches in Idaho and California dropped any association with anything German, changing names, language of worship, and hymns. The Montana German Association requested that it be admitted to the state Congregational Conference:
and passed resolution of loyalty to the cause of country and our allies. A resolution was passed by the conference expressing sympathy with these churches in the utter unpreparedness for the use of the English language in their services, and the hope that they might be permitted the use of German at certain time for missionary purposes but special training in English of their people was urged.
The pace was so quick, that on June 6, 1918, even The Congregationalist suggested caution as it might be “a boomerang [and] defeat the dissemination of democratic ideas whose widespread sowing is the only real cure for Prussian militarism.”
Both the number of young men of German background serving in the US Armed Forces, as well as these actions spelled the end of a multilingual and multi-ethnic American Congregationalism. With German congregations now quickly Americanizing, paradoxically the pressure grew on the remaining Czech, Slovak, Polish, and other ethnic congregations to switch to English, too. By the end of the 1920s, there was a need to radically transform the Home Missionary Board and give it a new direction organizationally and theologically.
Learn More . . .
Explore our German-American Congregationalism Research Guide, an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources on German-American Congregationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries available at and beyond the Congregational Library & Archives.
Read Hidden Histories in the United Church of Christ edited by Barbara Brown Zikmund, which features a chapter written by Vahan H. Tootikian on German-American Congregationalists.
Find a nineteenth-century discussion of the principles of Congregationalism in Kurze Darstellung der Hauptgrundsèatze des Congregationalismus, written in German by John Scharer around 1870.