Charles Porterfield Krauth: The Evangelical Lutheran Church

Charles Porterfield Krauth

“The American Chemnitz”

Charles Porterfield Krauth was born in Martinsburg, Virginia on March 17th, 1823. He was the son of the well- known Lutheran pastor Dr. Charles Philip Krauth. Krauth graduated from Gettysburg College in 1839, and at the time his father was the college’s president and he also assisted on the theological faculty of Gettysburg’s Lutheran Theological Seminary. In 1841, he graduated and the following year in 1842 he was ordained. He then served as local pastor in the following places; Baltimore, Shenandoah Valley, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. In the year of 1859 Krauth was called to serve at St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia for two years. However, he resigned due

The confessional section created the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1864. Krauth was asked to guide their new school and also to become its instructor of Systematic Theology (correction of Christian theology that expresses an arranged, balanced and articulate accounts of the Christian faith and beliefs). In 1867, the founding of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church was very instrumental under Krauth’s name. The General Council was a conservative Lutheran church organization, which was formed against the new American Lutheranism run by Samuel Simon Schmucker and his group the General Synod. In 1867 the General Council was founded along with the thirteen church groups within it. This is the group that founded the Akron Rule, a very important document in Krauth’s works. Krauth also wrote the position papers and the foundational document and drafted its constitution for the General Council. He was then elected the General Council’s president three years later, where he then served 10 years until

He agrees with Martin Luther and Martin Chemnitz, and what they stood for. This in my opinion is a brilliant part of his important work. He says “No particular Church has, on its own showing, a right to existence, except as it believes itself to be the most perfect form of Christianity, the form which of right should and will be universal. No Church has a right to a part which does not claim that to it should belong the whole. That communion confesses itself a sect which aims at no more than abiding as one of a number of equally legitimated bodies. That communion which does not believe in the certainty of the ultimate acceptance of its principles in the whole world has not the heart of a true Church. That which claims to be Catholic de facto claims to be Universal de jure” (Charles Porterfield Krauth,