Book Description

Matthias Loy (1828-1915), a major educator, editor, author, church president, preacher, and Lutheran theologian, illustrates the dilemma of the second generation immigration in America. Born the fourth of seven children of impoverished German immigrants in Pennsylvania, Loy grew up torn between the European Legacy and the American Reality. His life as a major Lutheran leader in the Gilded Age indicates that struggle, seeking bilingualism (he wrote and preached in both German and English), personal and denominational success in the American Republic, combined with a determined Repristination of what he felt were the best elements of seventeenth century German Lutheran theology. The resulting synthesis made Loy not only one of the five most influential Lutheran leaders of his century, but a very rewarding study in the process of Americanization - not in the first generation (which often experiences ghettoization) nor the third (which is often Americanized), but the crucial - and neglected second generation - where the terms of engagement between the Old World Tradition and New World Innovation have to be negotiated.