le new races and languages were beginning to
reinforce our ranks. Even the English contingent, which had so long
maintained an unequal fight, was securely entrenched in four boroughs
with seventeen congregations on its roll.
At this writing, in May, 1918, we number in Greater New York 160
churches with an enrollment of sixty thousand communicant members. At
the close of the nineteenth century, in 1898, we had 90 churches with
43,691 communicants. The rate of increase in twenty years was 35 per
cent., not very large but sufficiently so to awaken favorable comment
from Dr. Laidlaw, an expert observer of church conditions in this city.
In 1904, in an article in "Federation," on "Oldest New York," he wrote
as follows:
"There are now over fifty Christian bodies in this city, and "Oldest
New York's" history shows the fatuity of expecting that the
heterogeneous population of the present city will all worship in the
same way within the lifetime of its youngest religious worker. Man's
thoughts have not been God's thoughts, nor man's ways God's ways, in the
mingling of races and religions on this island. The Lutheranism that so
sorely struggled for a foothold in the early days is now the second
Protestant communion in numbers, and its recent increment throughout
Greater New York, contributed to by German, Scandinavian, Finnish and
many English Lutheran churches, has exceeded that of any other
Protestant body."
The causes which contributed to our progress in the latter part of the
nineteenth century were still effective. The consolidation of Greater
New York, bringing together into one metropolis the scattered boroughs,
marked the advent of a Greater Lutheran Church in New York. The bridges
and the subways, the telephone and the Catskill Aqueduct, public works
of unprecedented magnitude, were among the material foundations of the
new growth of our churches.
We were beginning to reap in the second and third generations the fruits
of the vast immigration of the nineteenth century.
A new era began for the use of the English language. There had been a
demand for English services as early as 1750, but in the eighteenth and
the greater part of the nineteenth centuries it had not been met. Fifty
years ago, with its two churches, and even twenty-five years ago with
four churches, English was a forlorn hope. The advance began in the last
decade of the 19th century when twelve English churches were organized.
In 1900 there were s
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