Finding Common Ground: Halle Pastors in North America and Their Shifting Stance Towards a Transnational Mission to Native Americans, 1742–1807

Abstract

While Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg and his pastor colleagues from Halle have gone down in history for their pioneering work – organizing the Lutheran Church on North American soil – they are not known for missionary projects to Native Americans. This article examines how things changed after a second generation of Halle pastors arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1760s. It was, above all, down to Mühlenberg’s later son-in-law Johann Christoph Kunze, who had a rather different view on America’s indigenous people. During his whole lifespan in America, Kunze pursued his goal of establishing a mission to Native Americans. This engagement contributed to a paradigm shift in the Lutheran Church. In contrast to Mühlenberg and the first generation of Halle pastors, Kunze sought transnational support that was no longer exclusively centered in Halle’s Glaucha Institutions but based on pan-Protestant, maritime networks.