The Black and Lutheran website is part of the work of The African American Lutheran History project begun by The Rev. Dr. Richard N. Stewart with initial funding by a grant from the Louisville Institute. From the Institute’s website:
Gathering African American Lutheran History and Dissemination in Luther’s 500th Anniversary year.
“… [What does] it mean to be Black and Lutheran in the United States 500 hundred years after Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the Church door at Wittenberg?”
About this project grant for researchers
Unlike Episcopal Churches, Presbyterian Churches, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Churches, or the histories of separated Historic Black Churches, European Lutheran bodies sent missionaries from Germanic and Scandinavian church bodies along the lines of their separate ethnic church bodies and followed emigration patterns from east coast, southern movement and emigration to the Upper Midwest, offering the Gospel message to all who found them.
As Frederik Lutheran Church in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, celebrates the 350th anniversary as the oldest continuous worshiping community, October of 2016; and with the re-dedication of the Historical Marker for the first Black Lutheran Congregation, (St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 1834) in Philadelphia, November 19, 2016; the commitment in the research team is to collect and categorize the documents of congregational life to provide a collective history of Lutherans of African Descent in North America. With the 500th anniversary of Luther’s act of defiance at Wittenberg in 2017, the African Descent Lutheran Association meets the summer 2017 in Philadelphia. Congregational documents and pictures will be scanned for preservation, and oral histories taken and collected. Early Spring 2017, through summer of 2018, the research team will interview clergy and lay leaders in structured interviews to produce monographs/articles to be shared through Lutheran publications and a Web site, owned by the Conference of International Black Lutherans.
Consultation with the Archives Office of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Office of Black Ministries of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has generated requests from the Missions office and theologians of the Wisconsin Synod and Pastors and leaders of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to be open to the sharing of stories from the past and ministries of the present in a form to be shared across the entire Lutheran Body.
Richard Stewart’s work is being carried forward by a group of scholars and interested individuals, including his wire Dawn, to build a living resource. We encourage others to join us in this endeavor.
The story behind the Black and Lutheran History Project
What isn’t written down or recorded can be lost.
For decades the Rev. Dr. Richard Nelson Stewart, a seminary professor in Philadelphia, took to heart a mission to make use of his communications skills to document the history of Black and Lutheran leaders who were part of the church he loved so their stories could live on. Grover C. Wright, a former Pullman porter turned recruiter of gifted Black leaders to study for rostered ministry, persuaded Stewart he was meant to do this work. Rich served the faculty and students at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, now part of United Lutheran Seminary. He taught in the areas of media and parish administration for three decades.
The Black and Lutheran Project has been generously funded by the Louisville Institute. “Rich” had a vision that the history would have a timeline basis and that as a resource on the worldwide web, scholars and individuals curious about the history of Black Lutheran leaders would have easy access to background they wanted to learn about. Well-documented here are both struggles and accomplishments that deserve continuing notice.
Rich himself recorded, often in the company of his spouse, Dawn, at least 40 interviews with a wide variety of historic figures. This site includes them and other repurposed background and information reflecting the stories of hundreds of key leaders. He was bringing all of his research to life gradually as time permitted until he tragically fell ill with a brain tumor in 2022, dying in November of that year.
Grieving his loss, friends, his spouse, Dawn, and Black scholars decided to form a succession planning group to complete the work Rich started. The scholars have included Dr. Charles Leonard, convener; Dr. James Thomas, Dr. Richard Perry, Dr. Nelson Strobert, Dr. Joseph Donnella and Dr. Beverly Wallace. More information about them appears elsewhere on this site. Rich’s widow, Dawn, is a vital part of the initiative. John Kahler adds essential technical support. Journalist and writer Mark A. Staples, a friend of Rich’s over four decades, lends his presenceand encouragement.
The site is a work in progress. The scholars are contributing essays that relate to their expertise, research and disciplines. Mark and Dawn have assembled data on some 400 stories about Black leaders and activities from church periodicals with a particular focus on the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. With the support of the succession planning team, Mark Staples has assembled a simple display focusing on more than 30 African American church leaders, rostered and lay. The display, also a work in progress, appears on this site in its most recent iteration and has been distributed widely.
It is not lost on the minds of the succession planning team that in a polarizing time some in the culture seem determined to ignore or expunge from our collective history certain aspects of that history. The Black and Lutheran Project aims to preserve a part of American history that is an underpinning of our collective culture.
Black Lutheran History Project: The Continuing Story from The Seminary Explores – United Lutheran Seminary
This episode focuses on the work of Dawn Stewart and Mark Staples. They are part of a group of friends and colleagues of the late Dr. Richard Stewart. Dr. Stewart concentrated his work on the history of Black Lutherans. Mark and Dawn share their two-year project of reading and identifying articles in The Lutheran, Lutheran Standard, and Partners magazines which centered on Black Lutherans.
In continuing the work of Dr. Stewart, they hope to make their findings available to the public, students, and scholars. From their investigation, they were able to identify trends (Civil Rights, Housing, etc.) in the reporting as well as Black Lutherans who contributed to daily life in the United States and to the Lutheran Church.