Concordia Theological Seminary
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
Just ahead is Concordia Theological Seminary, one of the oldest Lutheran institutions in the United States. In eighteen forty-six, Reverend Wilhelm Sihler opened the school with eleven students in a Fort Wayne parsonage, all sent by the Bavarian pastor Wilhelm Lohe. The following year, the newly formed German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States took over the seminary, grounding it in the confessional Lutheran tradition it still holds today.
The school moved to Saint Louis in eighteen sixty-one, during the Civil War, then to Springfield, Illinois, in the eighteen seventies, and finally returned to Fort Wayne in nineteen seventy-six, where it trains pastors to this day. That modest parsonage school launched what became one of the most influential strands of American Lutheranism.
