This year, we are privileged to celebrate the 175th anniversary of our synod’s founding. As we look back over those 175 years, we will find much to be thankful for. But one of the greatest blessings that shaped our synod took place shortly after our synod was founded.

The year was 1850, 11 years before the tragic Civil War would begin. While tensions over slavery and states’ rights had been simmering for decades, it was a time of tremendous economic growth and increasing immigration of Europeans to the United States.

Among those immigrants were large numbers of German Lutherans. After arriving in New York, many of them traveled west and settled in the newly formed state of Wisconsin. Those immigrants brought their faith with them, and one of the first things they did was establish Lutheran congregations.

In the Milwaukee area, three Lutheran congregations—one in downtown Milwaukee, one in Oakwood (what is now Oak Creek, a southern suburb), and one in Granville (what is now on the north side)—decided that it would be beneficial to join together. They formed a new synod called The First German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin. Johannes Muehlhaeuser was chosen as the first president.

This new synod was not what we would call a “confessional” Lutheran church body. Its pastors had come from Prussia. There the distinction between Lutheran churches and Reformed churches had been blurred when the Prussian leader declared that those churches were to be merged into a single “Evangelical” church. While holding to Lutheran doctrine for the most part, the congregations of the new Wisconsin Synod were comfortable worshiping with Reformed churches and exchanging pulpits with them. One pastor wrote that he could not join this new synod “because [its] practice is neither strictly Lutheran nor strictly Evangelical (Reformed), but [it claims] to be both.” Likewise, the Missouri Synod, at the time a faithful, confessional Lutheran church body, steered away from the Wisconsin Synod because of its less than Lutheran practices.

But things began to change when John Bading was elected as the second synod president. Because of his training in a different part of Germany, Bading was committed not only to the Scriptures but also to the Lutheran Confessions. In his addresses to the synod conventions in 1861 and 1862, he stressed the importance of adhering to the confessions. He pleaded with delegates that the synod should be willing for the confessions’ sake “to sacrifice good and blood, life and limb and rather suffer all than depart one hair’s breadth from the truth we had learned.”

The young synod followed his leadership. By 1868, the confessional Missouri Synod recognized that the Wisconsin Synod had become truly Lutheran. The two synods declared fellowship, and in 1872, they joined with several other confessional Lutheran synods to form the Synodical Conference. That relationship would continue for 90 years.

How easy it would have been for our synod to be a completely different church body than it is today. By the grace of God, a synod that was founded on a shaky doctrinal foundation became a synod firmly committed to the truth of God’s Word and the teaching of the Lutheran Confessions.

This year, we celebrate this and so many other blessings from our gracious God.

Mark G. Schroeder | WELS President

Learn more about the resources and events celebrating our synod’s 175th anniversary. Celebrate the anniversary at a special dinner event on May 28. Register by May 12.

Author: Mark Schroeder
Volume 112, Number 05
Issue: May 2025