Language 2: Learn English! (& keep German) – Walther

           This continues from Part 1. Lest anyone thinks that these German American Lutherans thought themselves too high in their German pedestal, a few months after the exhortation to preserve the German language came a short blurb, surely by editor Walther, that exhorted these Germans to learn English.  However it ended with a more "sacred duty". From Der Lutheraner, vol. 11 (Feb. 13, 1855), p. 103:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Luther's exhortation to learn to speak English.  

“I do not think much of those,” Luther writes, “who are so fond of only one language and despise all others. For I would gladly raise up such youth and people who could be of use to Christ and speak with the people also in foreign lands” 

(i.e., not only about business matters, as many Christians here [in America], even young immigrants, do not get any further in English); 

“that it may not happen to us as it did to the Waldensians in Bohemia [like Americans!], who have so caught their faith in their own language that they cannot speak intelligibly and clearly with anyone, unless they first learn their language. This is not what the Holy Spirit did in the beginning; He did not wait for all the world to come to Jerusalem and learn the [Hebrew] language, but gave all kinds of tongues for preaching, so that the apostles could speak wherever they went. I would rather follow this example; and it is also right that the youth should practice many languages: who knows how God will use them in time? For this purpose also the schools are endowed.” ("Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdienstes von 1526". Tom. Hal. X, 279.) [“The German Mass and Order of Service”, AE 53, 51-90, ~ p. 57]  

Hereby, however, we by no means want to give the impression to those Germans who put their mother tongue so low in relation to English that they can hardly understand it anymore and even less speak it properly. If a German Lutheran is to learn English in order to be able to serve his neighbors in earthly and spiritual matters, it is of course for his own sake an even more sacred duty to preserve the jewel of the German language. For what language has the treasures of divine scholarship that German has? 

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

      Walther gives the last best answer for American Lutherans – know both languages, English and German. And make sure you do not lose the German language! — We see now how Satan worked his purpose through two World Wars – killing the German language, not only in America, but around the world.