German Religious Views

Religious views for German immigrants varied greatly. While the majority of Germans followed the Protestant and Lutheran faith, there were also some who were Catholic as well as Jewish.

Most German immigrants were Protestants, with Lutheranism by far the most numerous denomination; perhaps a third of German immigrants were Catholics, and perhaps 250,000 were Jews.(1)

However the Lutheran community within America was not welcomed by incoming immigrants.

Within the Lutheran community in the United States there was considerable friction. Nineteenth-century German Lutheran immigrants found that the existing German Lutheran churches in the United States had developed unwelcome tendencies.(2)

This was not the case for catholic Germans. Although they were accepted amongst the incoming, their small numbers were overcome by the Irish.

Catholic Germans were allowed national parishes but were swamped by the numbers of Irish immigrants in eastern dioceses, such as New York, where the clerical leadership was almost invariably Irish or Irish American.(3)

This caused a constant struggle between the Irish and Germans for power within the church. The liberal attitudes of German Catholics often conflicted with the attitudes of the conservative Irish.

In much of the Midwest, German and later German American bishops and eventually archbishops came to prevail, but in their struggles with the Irish and Irish American bishops for control of the American church, the Germans lost...The differences have come to be expressed primarily in social and political rather than doctrinal terms. As a rule German and German American prelates have been and are more liberal on social and political questions.(4)

1. Daniels, Rodger. Coming to America. Pg.153
2. Daniels, Rodger. Coming to America. Pg.153
3. Daniels, Rodger. Coming to America. Pg.153
4. Daniels, Rodger. Coming to America. Pg.153