Protestant clergyman and theologian, born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, USA. A studious child, he was ordained in the Lutheran ministry at age 19. As a leader of conservative Lutheranism, he helped to revive older European forms of worship, including confession, in America. He edited the journal Lutheran and Missionary (18617) and from 1868 until his death was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His Conservative Reformation and Its Theology appeared in 1871.
Charles Porterfield Krauth (March 17, 1823 – January 2, 1883) was a pastor, theologian and educator in the Lutheran branch of Christianity. He is a leading figure in the revival of the Lutheran Confessions connected to Neo-Lutheranism in the United States.
Education and parish ministry
Krauth was educated at Gettysburg College (then called Pennsylvania College), of which his father Chales Philip Krauth was president, and the Gettysburg Seminary.
The Confessional Revival
In 1861, Krauth resigned from parish ministry to serve full-time as editor of The Lutheran, a theological journal. One of The Lutheran’s goals was to restore the confessions of faith found in the Book of Concord to prominence in Lutheran church life.
These documents, especially the Augsburg Confession, have always been identified as the cornerstones of a distinctively Lutheran theological identity. A key figure in this movement was Samuel Simon Schmucker, one of Krauth’s professors at Gettysburg, whose “American Lutheranism” as outlined in the Definite Synodical platform of 1855, proposed that the Augsburg Confession was mistaken on such questions as Baptismal Regeneration and the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
In contrast, Krauth and his collaborators (who eventually included his own father and Beale Melanchthon Schmucker, the son of Samuel Simon) preferred a more literal reading of the Lutheran Confessions.
Krauth was personally influenced by his reading of the Mercersburg theologians, John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff, who had attempted a similar repristination of Calvinist theology within the American branch of the German Reformed Church.
Similar revival movements like Neo-Lutheranism took place in the early nineteenth century among Roman Catholics and Anglicans, as for example in Gueranger’s re-founding of the abbey at Solesmes, and in the Oxford Movement.
The General Council
Conflict between the “American Lutherans” and the leaders of the confessional revival led to a schism. In 1867, they founded the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
As the first professor of theology at the new seminary, Krauth was at the intellectual center of the General Council.
One of Krauth’s most controversial acts was to prepare a series of theses on pulpit and altar fellowship. Called the “Akron-Galesburg Rule,” these may be summarized as saying “Lutheran pulpits are for Lutheran ministers only, and Lutheran altars are for Lutheran communicants only.” Although Krauth’s Rule permitted exceptions, it was nonetheless a strong repudiation of the broad ecumenical relationships pursued by the General Synod.
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