The first complete account in English of the American Lutheran controversy of 1849-1867 Tension between a religion's heritage and its social context forms the everpresent question of group identity. In the United States, this question has been posed in a particular way for religious traditions as the tension between "Americanization"-being assimilated into social and cultural structures of the new world-and "confessional identity"-seeking to sustain and understand a religious heritage in light of a new context and its questions. Lutherans in the mid-nineteenth century provide one illustration...