Historical Theology

Anna Hoppe, the daughter of Prussian-Lutheran immigrants transplanted to Milwaukee, came of age during a transitional period in American-Lutheran history.  Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin amongst German-speaking Lutherans, guided by the tutelage of Johannes Bading and John W.O. Brenner of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, she began penning religious verse as a young woman.
As the Wisconsin Synod Quartalschrift transitioned into English as The Northwestern Lutheran, Hoppe contributed original verse, hymnic translations from the German, and opinion essays as the only woman during her time.  Her creative skill captured the attention of Augustana Theological Seminary professor, Dr. Adolf Hult, who was leading the Augustana Synod's hymnal committee. 
At Hult's commission,  Hoppe composed poetic texts for each pericope in the historic lectionary, some of which appeared in Augustana's Hymnal and Order of Service (1925), but later emerged in their entirety as Songs of the Church Year (1928).  Hoppe assisted Augustana pastor Adolf Hanser with the Selah Song-Book (1922), a dual-language English-German hymnal, submitted hymns to American Lutheran Hymnal (1930) and The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), and published additional verse in The Lutheran Witness, the Lutheran Companion, The American Lutheran, and others. 
Though she remained a clerical employee and Milwaukee resident the whole of her life, Hoppe's influence within the Synodical Conference and its neighboring synods is unparalleled, as a key figure at the nexus of the Wisconsin and Missouri Synods in Milwaukee.  Ernest Edwin Ryden, Carl Døving, Theodore Graebner, Carl Sødergren, and countless pastors and hymnologists are counted as her personal correspondents.  Her liturgical hymnic texts, numbering over 600, provide a unique female literary expression of the Christian faith, and her Songs of the Church Year models a new paradigm for Lutheran hymnody in America.

"No, this is not advisable, rather very incorrect and pernicious."  In such a way Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther responded to a Lutheran pastor's query regarding the usage of "Methodist Hymns in a Lutheran Sunday School."  Walther sensed the peril of bestowing Lutheran usage to Protestant hymns, and outlined the theological implications in his response.
Though Walther's polemical contentions against Methodism may be caricatured and relegated to his historical climate, this hymn study shows how his 1883 opinions bear pertinence to 21st-century Lutherans in America.  The didactic and confessional role of the Kernlieder eclipses all competitors in the Lutheran church, and their unique doctrinal content ensures that they are the optimal choice for Lutheran church and school.

Though Lutheranism's illustration of salvation shifted from a mobile discussion to a uniform model in the ordo salutis, its revelation in hymnody manifested itself differently. Its impact, as shown by this study, appeared not in the microstructure of the content, but in the thematic direction, and thus the superstructure of the hymnal.

Pastor, professor, and cantor Nikolaus Selnecker (1530-92) is best acclaimed for his contributing role in the Formula of Concord, in addition to championing late-Reformation hymnody preceding Philipp Nicolai and Paul Gerhardt.  Though he appears to play a "supporting role" to the bombastic Lutheran personalities of Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz, his diplomatic aplomb provided a conciliatory force between the Philippists and the Flacians (Gnesio-Lutherans). 
Along with other fellow theologian-musicians of his day, Selnecker was instrumental in cultivating a Lutheran "de tempore" hymn cycle.  Patterned after the Latin tradition of propers and gradual texts, the de tempore or Chief Hymn illustrated the Gospel pericope in song. This tradition forms the basis for J.S. Bach's Orgelbüchlein, among other textual and musical cycles.  Selnecker's hymn plan provides a wellspring for the concept of Lutheran Kernlieder ("core hymns"), the presence of which identified an orthodox Lutheran hymnal in 19th-century America.

Organ recital paper submitted in partial fulfillment of a Master of Church Music degree, Concordia University, Mequon, Wisconsin on June 23, 2016.  Biographical essays and musical analysis of organ works by J.S. Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude, Johannes Brahms, Jan Bender, Hermann Schroeder, and others.

The song of the Lutheran church has assumed many forms over its five centuries of history. As each generation, culture, and language relays the Gospel proclaimed in music, they supply their own unique mark on the chorale tradition. Martin Luther, of course, wrote many heartening, valiant texts and tunes to bolster the faith of the earliest Lutherans. Paul Gerhardt, a century later, translated these doctrinal truths into personal, often devotional confessions of trust. Heirs of this tradition across the North Sea, such as Thomas Kingo, Hans Adolf Brorson, N.F.S. Grundtvig, and others, supplied a uniquely Scandinavian expression of the chorale. In addition, let us not forget the women of the European chorale tradition:  Elisabeth Cruciger, Ludamilia Elisabeth, Amilie Juliane, and Birgitte Boye. 

Yet, naturally, as confessional Lutherans in the New World, hymnody demands a bold, new manifestation in American English, as it has drawn from every era in the past.  Indeed, what is the original American-Lutheran voice of hymnody?  How can and should Lutherans confess their beliefs, and “sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” (Psalm 137:4)?  One might find this fulfilled in the writings of a young Lutheran and German-American woman, born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Her name is Anna Bernardine Dorothy Hoppe.