In the Face of the West Wind

Rural Churches in the Midwest

"I see them now, brave men and braver women, eyes front to all that need be to make a good life in a strange new land. Toilers in the harvest fields, sweat streaks gathering dust and rust, hands calloused from plow-handles and pitchfork, scarred by thorny weeds in harsh grain-bundles; and their women folk beside them or in their homes about endless tasks – household conveniences as yet un-invented. All, men and women, young and old, busy from sunup till beyond sundown, uncomplaining in their fellowship of toil.

Come Sunday at the white church, their horses fly-brushing at the long hitch-rack, I hear the slow cadence of their hymns and the voice of their minister. I listen in again to the clusters lingering long about the church door as they hear and tell of success or failure, of joy or sorrow, of fear and hope and faith."

--T.F. Gullixson,
In the Face of the West Wind
Augsburg Publishing House, 1962.


The typical 19th-century Midwestern Lutheran congregation was rural. Immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and other European countries, along with second-, third-, and fourth-generation American Lutherans from eastern states, came to the Midwest, seeking land, freedom, and opportunity, and bringing their religion.

The steady migration of Americans from the farms to the cities began after the Civil War and was spurred by the First and Second World Wars. By the late 1920s, only 47 percent of Lutherans lived in rural or small-town settings, compared with 44 percent of the general population. At that same time, however, nearly 70 percent of Lutheran congregations were rural. In his 1916 book, The Lutheran Church in the Country, G.H. Gerberding warned that large corporate farms, run by tenants, would cause the rural community and the Lutheran Church to suffer.