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To St. Louis 1861 — to Springfield 1875 — home again 1976
The exile: Concordia Theological Seminary spent 115 of its years away from the city that founded it. In 1861, with the Civil War opening, the seminary followed its sister institution's logic in reverse: Missouri, unlike Indiana, did not draft theological students, so the seminary moved to St. Louis while Concordia College moved into the Fort Wayne campus the seminarians vacated. In 1874 the pre-seminary department went to Springfield, Illinois, and in 1875 the seminary itself followed, spending a century there as Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield.
The return: Fort Wayne got its seminary back by denominational arithmetic. When the Missouri Synod resolved to close Concordia Senior College — the Eero Saarinen–designed campus on North Clinton Street, opened in 1957 (the campus as a building is the Architecture section's; the Senior College as a school is in the Schools section) — the Synod's 1975 convention at Anaheim, by Resolution 6-08A, ordered the seminary transferred from Springfield onto the vacant Fort Wayne campus. The move was made in the summer of 1976. The seminary has since grown around Saarinen's Kramer Chapel on the 191-acre grounds at 6600 North Clinton Street, and in 2005 it also became host to the seminary of the American Association of Lutheran Churches (see the headquarters entry below). One hundred and thirty years after eleven half-orphans from Bavaria climbed to a parsonage attic, Fort Wayne is again a place where a national church trains its pastors.
Sources:
- Robert E. Smith, ed., Shepherds for Christ's Sheep (CTSFW, 2017) — the 1861 exchange, the Springfield century, Resolution 6-08A, the summer 1976 move, Kramer Chapel and the campus.
- Rudolph F. Rehmer, "Origins of Lutheranism in the Fort Wayne Area" (1967) — the Springfield removal dates (pre-seminary 1874, seminary 1875).