page_title: Confessional Lutheranism
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Confessional Lutheranism / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Franz August Otto Pieper, former Missouri Synod president and author of Christian Dogmatics
context_page_description: Confessional Lutheranism is a name used by Lutherans to designate those who believe in the doctrines taught in the Book of Concord of 1580 in their entirety. Confessional Lutherans maintain that faithfulness to the Book of Concord which is a summary of the teachings found in Scripture, requires attention to how that faith is actually being preached, taught, and put into practice. Confessional Lutherans believe that this is a vital part of their identity as Lutherans.
  The term Confessional Lutheran is generally used among the more conservative churches found in groupings such as the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. Churches of the larger Lutheran World Federation subscribe to the Book of Concord as an exposition of faith, in so far as it agrees with their interpretation of the Bible.
context_section_description: Two main confessional movements arose during the 19th century: the Old Lutherans and the Neo-Lutherans. The Old Lutherans originated from the Schism of the Old Lutherans, while Neo-Lutheranism arose in Germany in the 1830s from the Pietist driven Erweckung, or Awakening. Neo-Lutheranism itself contained differing camps. It gave rise later to those calling themselves confessional Lutherans.
  Neo-Lutheranism developed in reaction to Pietism on the one side and Rationalism on the other, both of which had arisen in the previous century. German clergymen like Martin Stephan, C. F. W. Walther, F. C. D. Wyneken and Wilhelm Loehe became a part of the movement as they studied the works of Martin Luther and the Book of Concord.
  The Old Lutheran and Neo-Lutheran movements spread to the United States with the Neo-Lutheran Wilhelm Loehe and the Old Lutheran free church leader Friedrich August Brünn both sending missionaries to newly arrived German immigrants in the Midwest and the immigration of groups like the Saxons, who settled in Missouri under Martin Stephan and C. F. W. Walther, the Germans who settled in Indiana under F. C .D. Wyneken, and the Prussians under J. A. A. Grabau in Western New York and southeastern Wisconsin (the Buffalo Synod).
caption: Franz Pieper (1852–1931) taught the importance of a quia subscription
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