Legacy Lutheran Liturgical Snark

Adolph Peter Louis Wismar, circa 1906

One of my predecessors at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gretna, Louisiana was the Rev. Adolph P. Wismar (1884-1977) who served my congregation from 1910-1918.

I believe Salem was Pastor Wismar’s first call. His next call was to St. Matthew’s in Manhattan, where he served from 1918-1945, and was a member of the Liturgical Society of St. James. After retiring from St. Matthew’s, he would go on to teach at Valpo. Pastor Wismar was a grand-uncle of Dr. Arthur Just. Dr. David Scaer knew him. Interestingly, he died only 18 miles from where I grew up, five years before I joined an LCMS congregation at the age of 18 by baptism, confirmation, and first communion on the same day.

Pastor Wismar would be pleased to know that the liturgical practices he was advocating for decades ago have been implemented at his former congregation in Louisiana - though he would probably not approve of our conservatism and biblical confessionalism.

While digging around, looking for information on Pastor Wismar, I ran across this delightful bit of Lutheran snark dealing with the seepage of secular music forms into the Divine Service, and the fact that a group of LCMS pastors was restoring authentic Lutheran worship in the 1930s - among them the Rev. Dr. Adolph Wismar.

This piece was published in Time Magazine on Monday, February 19, 1934, and the text follows:

In the "Question Box" in the February American Lutheran:

Dear Sir: . . . My organist insists upon dragging his fingers over four or five keys, like an upward run, at least twice in each hymn stanza. He will not play the harmony as is, but manufactures harmonies of his own, with many fancy chromatic chords. His harmony is always thin, and lacking the power of the original as given in the hymn book. . . . He uses his tremolo too much, and drives everybody nearly to tears by his abuse of the chimes. Now he insists upon adding a Vox Humana stop to the organ. If I chant the Communion Service, as I do at our German Communion, he chases me on the organ, keeping about one note behind me. Should intoning be accompanied? He wants to play fancy chords while I read the Scripture Lessons, and I find it hard to stop him. What shall I do? —Despairing Pastor.

Answer: You have a problem. Organists with insufficient training like to do those things. The flip of the finger over several keys, known as glissando, has been popularized by the radio comedians Jake and Lena, and organists devoid of taste are doing it in church. The same thing is true of the man who injects shaving-parlor chords into a hymn, and Sweet Adeline harmonization, and dominant-seventh Amens, and too much tremolo. . . . I should not permit him to play dizzy chromatics, or anything else, during the Lessons and prayers.

What is to be done? Tell him in the gentlest, but most priestly manner, that all these tricks of the jazz radio organist are utterly out of place in church, and annoy everybody but the man who is guilty of them. Tell him that the church service is a very serious matter, and neither the time nor place for such vulgarisms. "Despairing Pastor" could not have voiced his troubles to a more sympathetic ear.

The American Lutheran labors unceasingly to assist pastors with their problems of finance, publicity, sermonizing, church architecture and decoration. Though it is an organ of one of the most conservative of U. S. Lutheranism's many sects—the Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States (membership about 800,000) —the magazine is sympathetic with a liturgical movement which currently is exciting Lutherans almost as much as the Oxford Movement excited Anglicans a century ago.

Leaders in the liturgical crusade are Pastors Frederick R. Webber of Cleveland, Adolph Wismar of Manhattan, Berthold von Schenk of Hoboken, N. J. and Carl Bergen of Leonia, N. J. They work through the Liturgical Society of St. James which they founded eight years ago. They advocate a change not in theological doctrine but in church services, with pastors wearing proper vestments, decking their altars with flowers and tapers, emphasizing the crucifix, reviving traditional Lutheran rubrics, singing only the purest liturgical music. These practices, common in Scandinavian Lutheran churches, are anathema in many a U. S. parish where Lutheranism is austere and puritanical.

The liturgists argue that what they want is nothing new. Martin Luther called a mass a mass. He favored vestments, tapers and incense; genuflected and even approved of private confession. And Luther, who wrote "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and liked Gregorian chants, would never have approved of the organist who chased his pastor, wobbled his tremolo and abused his chimes.