11 Facts About Henry Muhlenberg

Henry Muhlenberg was integral to the founding of the first Lutheran church body or denomination in North America, and is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States.

Henry Muhlenberg was ordained in Leipzig in 1739, and served as assistant minister and director of the orphanage at Grosshennersdorf from 1739 to 1741.

Accordingly, in 1742 Henry Muhlenberg emigrated across the Atlantic Ocean, where he essentially organized the Lutheran Church as an institution in North America.

In 1742, Henry Muhlenberg immigrated to Philadelphia, responding to the 1732 request by Pennsylvania Lutherans.

Henry Muhlenberg provided leadership to a series of congregations elsewhere, including those from Maryland to New York, where he worked to secure control over less qualified pastors and started new congregations among the settlers of the region.

Henry Muhlenberg helped prepare a uniform liturgy the same year and wrote basic tenets for an ecclesiastical constitution, which most of the churches adopted in 1761.

Henry Muhlenberg did much work on a hymnal, published by the Ministerium in 1786.

Henry Muhlenberg frequently traveled beyond the three congregations assigned to him.

Henry Muhlenberg ministered to the German language populations he was assigned to, and to colonists from the Netherlands and Great Britain in their native languages.

Henry Muhlenberg's colleagues requested his help in arbitrating disputes among Lutherans, or in some cases, with other religious groups.

Henry Muhlenberg worked to recruit new ministers from Europe and to develop more ministers from the colonists.