Lutherans

In 1565, 40 years after Monk Martin Luther married Nun Katharina von Bora and thus symbolized a new order of religion, Pedro Menendez,* general of the fleet of King Philip II of Spain, nosed his galleons along the Florida coast. Where he found French colonists he asked: “Are you Catholics or are you Lutherans?’ Where they replied: “Lutherans of the New Religion,” he hung them on trees, and to the tree trunks affixed placards: “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.”

Henrich Christiansen, who in 1613 built the first habitation for white men on Manhattan Island, was a Lutheran. So, too, was Jonas Bronck who in 1639 came to make a clearing in what has long been called after him, the Bronx. The first white child born north of North Carolina† on Manhattan, in 1614, was John Vinje, a Norwegian Lutheran.

Lutherans, denomination of undemonstrativecommunicants—chiefly Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans—now count their Church history by centuries. Last week a few of them celebrated a minor event in their calendar. They attended services at St. James Lutheran Church, Manhattan, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its founding; saw unveiled a century-old portrait of Rev. Dr. Frederick C. Schaeffer, the church’s founder and first pastor.

*Possibly a Maranno, descendant of a converted Jew. Jews were potent in Spain before their expulsion, in 1492, by Fer dinand and Isabella, Columbus’ sponsors. A few who accepted Catholicism remained potent.

†Virginia Dare (born 1587) was the first English child born in what later became the English colonies.