page_title: Luther Alexander Gotwald
section_title: Heresy trial
hierarchical_section_title: Luther Alexander Gotwald / Heresy trial
caption_attribution_description: Attorney John Luther Zimmerman, Board Chair Wittenberg Theological Seminary in the USA.
context_page_description: Luther Alexander Gotwald, D.D. was a professor of theology in the Wittenberg Theological Seminary in the United States. He was tried for heresy by the board of directors at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, on April 4 and 5, 1893, which put on trial many key issues that Lutherans still debate today.
  Gotwald died in 1900 in Springfield, Ohio.
context_section_description: Gotwald was tried for heresy by the board of trustees at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, on April 4 and April 5, 1893. In his book The Gotwald Trial Revisited, Luther A. Gotwald, Jr tells the story of this trial in detail, and why and how his famous ancestor was tried for heresy on a charge of "false teachings". This charge was brought by three members of the First Lutheran Church of Dayton, Ohio, who were members of the Wittenberg Board of Trustees. These board members alleged that his teachings espoused the doctrine of the General Council denomination of the Lutheran Church.
  
  The author states that "As unusual as it is for a theological professor to have such charges preferred against him, what is even more unusual is the fact that the two competing denominations were making overtures toward closer cooperation with hopes of their eventual merger." According to A History of Wittenberg College, "the 'trial' of Professor L. A. Gotwald at Wittenberg, in 1893, arose from fear that the liberal traditions of the college were threatened by a rising 'exclusive and conservative spirit' symbolized by Gotwald." As the Gotwald heresy trial book put it, "The 1890s were times when Lutheran were choosing between two identities—Lutherans who were adapting their teachings and practices to Protestant America following the lead of Dr. Samuel Simon Schmucker; and those who sought their role as maintaining the understandings of the Lutheranism of the Sixteenth Century Reformer Martin Luther. Both sides maintained they were true." Gotwald was defended at this trial by Judge Joseph W. Adair of Noble County, Indiana. At the conclusion of the trial, even the prosecutors joined in the unanimous vote for his acquittal.
  The charges that Professor Gotwald was not teaching correct Lutheran theology swirled around quite some time before formal charges were brought to the Wittenberg Board of Trustees. It undoubtedly owed much of its genesis to Gotwald's ministry in Dayton in which he became embroiled in many stormy debates about church doctrine with some other church leaders. It reached the point that his health gave out and he had to resign his ministry and spend a period of time away from the ministry to recover. It was no coincidence that his most vocal critics and accusers came from Dayton. Perhaps most damaging in the leadup to the trial were articles in the Lutheran Evangelist that named "Luther Gotwald as a teacher not fit to teach in a General Synod Seminary".
   A minority of the Wittenberg board of directors, consisting of Ernest E. Baker, Alexander Gebhart, and Joseph R. Gebhart, sent a minority report to the Miami Synod Convention, which was held in Springfield, Ohio, on October 5 through October 7, 1892, requesting that it investigate whether Prof. Gotwald "gloried in the idea that the logical interpretation of the [Augsburg Confession, i.e., orthodox Lutheranism] would lead to the doctrinal basis of the general council (i.e., unorthodox and, at the time, actively competing Lutheranism)." The board of directors, after lengthy debate, pointedly supported all their faculty of their seminary.
  Further, a majority of the Wittenberg board of directors had little heart to hear the heresy charges against Gotwald. In fact, the Wittenberg board of directors as well as the Miami Synod Convention passed on the chance to act on the charges brought by this minority of the Wittenberg board of directors. Some Wittenberg Theological Seminary faculty members even tried to talk the accusers out of their intention to take action against Gotwald.
  Even so, these accusations motivated Gotwald to assure the Wittenberg board of directors in writing on October 31, 1892, that he had "never contemplated a change in the doctrinal basis of the General Synod". His assurance included a list of the theological positions he accepted and those he rejected. He requested the opportunity to go before the board and make this assurance in person. However, at this point, the president of the board saw no need, after their lengthy discussion at their regular meeting, to ca
caption: Attorney John Luther Zimmerman, Board Chair
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