As Lutheran communities grew in America, Lutherans recognized the need for trained clergy and began cooperating through newly formed synods. In October 1820, Lutheran leaders met in Hagerstown, Maryland, and formed the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America to unite regional church bodies and establish theological seminaries.
The Society of Inquiry on Missions was a student organization that focused on expanding missionary interest among students of theology. It predated the seminary, and students met in Samuel Simon Schmucker's parsonage in Newmarket, VA. With the foundation of the Seminary, the society transferred to Gettysburg.
At the 1825 meeting of the General Synod, a committee proposed a plan for the establishment of a Theological Seminary, to be overseen by a Board of Directors made up of pastors and laymen connected to the General Synod
On May 2nd, 1826, the first board of trustees meeting for the newly formed Theological Seminary of the General Synod took place
On the first Tuesday of September 1826 operations at the Seminary commenced, and Prof. Schmucker was inaugurated as the Chair of the Faculty
In 1835, Daniel Alexander Payne was the first African American to study at a Lutheran Seminary. Ordained in 1839 by the Franckean Synod, he later joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and was later elected bishop.
Daughter of Professor Charles Porterfield Krauth and wife of Professor Adolph Spaeth, Harriet was a prolific hymn translator.
In his Definite Synodical Platform, published anonymously in 1855, S.S. Schmucker and three other authors offered a reinterpretation of the Augsburg Confession through the lens of nineteenth-century American evangelical theology, thereby shaping and solidifying the theology of "American Lutheranism."
This parish, largely made up of German Lutherans immigrants, was the host congregation for the beginnings of Philadelphia Seminary.
Due to the tensions of the Civil War, debates about the role of German language in worship and education, and disagreements regarding fidelity to the Lutheran Confessions, LTSP was founded by the Pennsylvania Ministerium and former faculty at LTSG. Originally located in Center City, Philadelphia, in 1887, it was moved to Mt. Airy in northwest Philadelphia.
