The First Slovak Lutheran Church in the Western Hemisphere

Saints Peter and Paul Lutheran Church holds a unique place in American religious history: it is said to be home to the first Slovak Evangelical Lutheran congregation organized in the Western Hemisphere. The congregation was established largely through the efforts of Michael Zemany, a pioneer Slovak Lutheran who recognized the spiritual needs of Slovak immigrants arriving in the Pennsylvania coalfields in the eighteen eighties.

The first service was conducted on February twenty-second, eighteen eighty-three, a date that carries extra resonance as George Washington's birthday. The present church building was erected in eighteen eighty-six and later remodeled. Slovak immigration to this region was part of a broader wave of Central and Eastern European workers drawn by the anthracite coal industry. Those immigrants brought their language, their faith, and their traditions, and this church was among the first institutions to give those traditions a permanent home in the New World.