The St. John's congregation dates its origins to the 1742 arrival of Dr. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the father of the Lutheran Church in America. He stopped for two days in Charleston on his way to visit the Salzburger colony at Ebenezer, Georgia. He returned a month later and spent three weeks waiting for a ship to Philadelphia during which time he held services, taught catechism to the children of the German residents, and held services with communion on Sundays. Two Georgia Salzberger preachers visited for a few days in 1753 and conducted services and gave the sacraments. Rev. John George Friederichs came in 1755 and organized the congregation. While it appears there were several educated and trained men conducting Lutheran services in South Carolina prior to this time, the organization of the congregation into a formal body and the hiring of a pastor seems to mark the beginning of Lutheranism in South Carolina (HSC). Services were held in the French Huguenot Church until the first Lutheran church was completed in 1763. Frederichs left soon after laying the cornerstone of the new church in 1759 and was in turn replaced by Pastor Heinrich Burchard Gabriel Wartmann. Wartmann stayed for two years or less. It has been suggested that while Wartmann was a good speaker and diligent, he had a fiery disposition which seems to have alienated the congregation. Rev. John Nicolas Martin came in 1763. Martin dedicated the new building on June 24, St. John the Baptist Day, 1764. The congregation adopted the St. John's name at that time. Martin accepted a call to a new church in the interior in 1767.

The German Friendly Society was founded in 1766 by Michael Kalteisen and 15 other men, all members of the St. John's congregation, as a men's fraternal organization. It has always maintained close ties to St. John's. The society collected 34 pounds, 5 shillings, and 6 pence to purchase a clock for the church in 1775. The clock was later returned. The church observes a German Friendly Society Sunday, with members of the society walking en masse from their meeting hall on Chalmers Street each year in January.

The internal struggles within the church continued. Rev. John Severin Hahnbaum replaced Martin in 1767, but passed in 1770. The congregation was then taken over by his son-in-law whom he had trained. The new Rev. Daser was quite controversial in the church and the council, but not many parisioners, found him to be lacking and was soon discharged, though the church continued to financially support Hahnbaum's daughter and grandchildren (Muhlenberg). Henry Melchior Muhlenberg came down from Philadelphia in 1774 and was able to unite the factions within the congregation to petition London for a new pastor. Pastor Martin returned from the upcountry to lead the congregation that year, but was expelled by the British two years later in 1776 for his refusal to lead prayers for the king during church services.

Rev. Christian Streit, the nation's first military chaplain, served as pastor until he was arrested in 1780 for his frequent criticism of the British. Streit is credited with introducing the first English sermons to the church. He did not return after his arrest and served the remainder of his career at a church in Winchester, Virginia. He was replaced at St. John's by the returning Rev. Daser who remained for five years this time before also removing to Virginia where he too ended his preaching career. Martin was recalled for a second time in 1786. He served as pastor for a year before retiring in 1787. He died in 1797 and is buried in the church burying ground.

Jacob Sass played an important role in shaping the church during this period as congregational president from 1807 to 1836. His twenty-nine year tenure included the hiring of the church's single most prominent pastor, construction of a new sanctuary, parish building, and numerous other improvements. The loss of church records for this period make it difficult to determine his exact role, but considering the accomplishments made during this period they must have been considerable.

Reverend John Bachman

Rev. Dr. John Bachman (1790-1874) brought a golden era to St. John's in the nineteenth century. He was a powerful force in founding the Lutheran Synod of South Carolina (1824), the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary (1832), and Newberry College (1856). As a scholar, Bachman collaborated with John James Audubon in the production of Birds of America and was co-author of Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1846-1854).

Dr. Bachman was a leader in promoting Christian life among the city's African-Americans. In 1860 the church had 370 Euro-American and 190 African-American communicants. (Horn) In that year he baptized 67 Euro-Americans and 76 Afro-Americans; confirmed 19 Euro-Americans and 40 African Americans; and the church had twenty teachers and 120 Euro-American students attending Sunday school among its white members and the African-American Sunday school, which met in the basement of the Sunday School building erected in 1831 had 32 teachers and 150 students. African-American members eventually also conducted Sunday afternoon services where a three-piece-band performed some of the nation's earliest African-American church music.

Bachman tutored three African-American men to be Lutheran pastors, including Jehu Jones, who organized an independent Black Lutheran congregation in Philadelphia (1834); Daniel Alexander Payne, later a bishop in the AME church and president of Wilburforce University (Ohio); and Boston Jenkins Drayton, who became a Lutheran missionary to Liberia (1845) and later chief justice of the Liberian Supreme Court.

Charleston and St. John's were devastated by the War which quickly brought an end to the church's golden age. During this period the parish building burned and the 1600 volume Sunday School library, the original communion silver, Dr. Bachman's library and many of his papers were lost. The church was hit by cannon fire and the newly installed bell was melted for cannon by the Confederate government. Dr. Bachman sought refuge inland only to be captured, beaten, and permanently disabled by federal troops. St. John's was the first Christian church to reopen in the city after the war.

African-Americans at St. John's

The history of African-Americans in the congregation is very mixed. Henry Muhlenberg records two of the earliest black baptisms in South Carolina in 1774 at St. John's. (Johnson) In 1809 the North Carolina synod, which oversaw congregations in Tennessee and South Carolina as well, resolved that "pastors have permission, on the wish and pledge of their Christian masters, to baptize their slaves." This was not met with universal favor in South Carolina. Charleston, however, was not the rest of South Carolina. The practice of hiring out slaves, usually artisans, meant that the number of Free Colored in the city was comparatively large, more than 10 percent of the population of African-Americans living in the city through most of the early nineteenth century and totally 1,492 in 1848. John Bachman requested permission to baptize and commune free coloreds in the church in February 1816 and upon agreement by the vestry African-Americans began joining the church as the new building was being completed. "The black communicant membership of St. John's reached its all-time high of 200 in 1845. There was a separate black Sunday school with an enrollment of 150 pupils and an all black teaching staff of over 30. The black Sunday school was larger than its white counterpart. By 1860, blacks constituted 35 percent of the communicant membership of St. John's Church.

"The attendance of blacks at the worship services was constantly growing. In 1818 the St. John's vestry had to enlarge the original space set aside for blacks, and again in 1832 and in 1842. The black members were both slave and free.... It was widely recognized that, organizationally, there were in fact two congregations within St. John's-- one black and the other white. " (Johnson. 116-17)

The African-American organization of the church was quite separate: 1) they had their own worship services (generally twice a week -- on Sunday morning and on some other mid-week evening). It has been suggested that some of the first African-American instrumental church music in America was performed during these services, and certainly singing took place; 2) they had their own Sunday school with its own teachers; 3) they had their own cemetery, separate from the Euro-American cemetery, located on Columbus, near Hanover, Street. At least 150 were buried there. It reverted to the city in the 1950s.

This period of racial enlightenment largely disappeared after the Civil War, but had made an important mark in American Christian history while it lasted. Three of the nation's most important early African-American leaders came from the congregation (discussed above with links) and the first group of Lutherans to send an American missionary to Africa also took place within the congregation.

The influence of the church in the city was never again quite the same after the Civil War as new German immigrants tended to settler further up the peninsula, founding several new Lutheran congregations north of Calhoun Street, and the church's dominant role in the Christian life of the city ebbed.

Note: The above account, and its ancillary links, of the history of St. John's Lutheran Church, Charleston, should be viewed as an evolving work in progress based primarily on secondary sources. Many primary sources have been lost or never existed. The secondary sources are riddled with contradictory, self-serving, and/or "polite" accounts of the past characteristic of local histories. The goal of this document is to search the published and unpublished sources to create a document in keeping with standards of modern, professional historiography. Information is posted as it is encountered and this caveat will be removed when the document is complete. RP

Sources

1. History of Synod Committee, 1971. A History of the Lutheran Church in South Carolina. Columbia, S. C.: The South Carolina Synod of the Lutheran Church in America.
2. Horn, Edward T. 1883. A Discourse: Embracing a Sketch of the History of St. John's Lutheran Church, Charleston, S. C., From 1734 to 1861, with special reference to the erection of a Thanksgiving Chapel. Charleston: Lucas & Richardson.
3. _____. 1884. Yearbook: city of Charleston, 1884. (Charleston: News and Courier).
4. Johnson, Jeff G. 1991. Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.
5. St. John's Lutheran Church, n.d. Charleston: St. John's Lutheran Church.
6. Theodore G. Tappert (Translator), John W. Doberstein (Translator), Helmut T. Lehmann (Translator), John W. Kleiner (Translator). 1993. Journals of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg, 1742-1787. Picton Press.
7. Vestry Minutes. various dates. St. John's Lutheran Church. Unpublished.