The story
Background
In 1849, the LCMS created a publication society to provide "the most inexpensive and most general distribution of orthodox evangelical Lutheran books for education and edification". The society was to sell bonds to congregations, pastors, teachers, and lay members of the synod, who would then be repaid with the published material. However, few wanted to pay in advance for goods that might never be received, so by 1850, the society had failed. In April 1853, C. F. W. Walther and his congregation, Trinity Lutheran Church, started a separate Evangelical Lutheran Bible Society which initially imported German Bibles and later printed its own editions.
In 1857, the LCMS began using the firm of August Wiebusch und Sohn as its printer and appointed a publishing committee to negotiate prices and oversee the selection of goods to be sold. In return, Wiebusch agreed not to print anything other than the synod's publications. This again proved to be unworkable because Wiebusch did not want his presses to sit idle when no synodical work was available. Therefore, in late 1867 or 1868, the publishing committee installed a small printing press for $3,000 on the grounds of Concordia Seminary, which at that time was on South Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis.
Early years
On September 11, 1869, the LCMS convention resolved to create a synodical typesetting facility and to fund a publishing facility by selling $25 bonds, redeemable in five years at 0 percent interest. The response was immediate and very successful, enabling construction of the first buildings of the physical plant on Miami Street between Jefferson and Indiana avenues, which remains the current site of CPH. The first CPH building was dedicated on February 28, 1870.
Martin C. Barthel, who had run a bookstore near Trinity Church that served as a retail outlet for LCMS publications starting in the 1850s, became general manager of the wholesale operations of CPH in 1869. The retail and wholesale sides were combined in 1874, when the second building of CPH opened at the corner of Indiana Avenue and Miami Street. By 1888, two additions to the second building had been built. In 1893, a third building was opened on Jefferson Avenue at Miami Street (the current 3558 South Jefferson Avenue address of CPH), with additions in 1911, 1925, and 1941.
Neither CPH nor the LCMS were incorporated during their early years. The 1870s saw attacks on church rights and parish schools as states began adding versions of the Blaine Amendment to their constitutions; this led CPH to take shelter under Concordia Seminary, which had been incorporated since 1853 and therefore had the legal right to hold real estate and bequests in trust for the LCMS, but the publishing house continued to operate independently.
In 1878, the synodical convention officially established the name of CPH as Lutherischer Concordia-Verlag (Lutheran Concordia Publishing House). The English name "Concordia Publishing House" was used as early as 1882. In 1887, the Bible society founded by Walther was merged into CPH, bringing with it the society's $17,407.73 in assets. The 1887 convention noted that CPH had been supplementing the synod's general fund since 1881, providing $97,700 in 1887.
CPH work made up a large part of the Proceedings of the 1887 convention, and grew even larger in 1890 as delegates had to deal with debt collection resolutions. Therefore, the 1890 convention authorized CPH to incorporate, which it did on May 27, 1891, as a stock company with 196 shares at $1,000 each, held in good faith by seven members of the board of directors, 28 shares each. This structure remained in place until World War II, when the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration filed suits for income taxes against church-related organizations that were not incorporated in a compatible manner. CPH lost the case in court and reincorporated as a not-for-profit soon thereafter.
On August 14, 1891, a scandal erupted when the assistant general manager, Martin S. Tirmenstein, detected an unauthorized $50 check made out to M. C. Barthel, the general manager. An audit found irregularities involving both Barthel and his son, M. R. Barthel Jr. The younger Barthel fled, and his father was initially declared mentally unfit for trial. However, a grand jury indicted the elder Barthel on May 23, 1892. Found competent for trial, he confessed to the synod on July 23, 1892, and to the court on August 1, 1892, that he had embezzled $50,000 over the years. The events were covered in the national trade publication, The Publishers Weekly. As a result of the report on the incident to the 1893 synodical convention, the LCMS incorporated on June 2, 1894.
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Tirmenstein became the general manager on November 17, 1891, and held that position until March 10, 1907, when he resigned to take a similar position at a printing firm in Germany. Under his leadership, CPH presented a display at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis that won the grand prize for excellence of workmanship and materials for the books shown, after having similar displays at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. CPH installed its first Linotype hot-metal press in 1905, and had seven by 1922. The publishing plant was electrified in 1908.
Notable German-language publications
The LCMS was originally an exclusively German-language synod. Even after the English language ultimately became predominant therein, some German works were still being published until the 1970s.
In September 1844, Walther began publishing Der Lutheraner, using the printing firm of Weber and Olhausen, who also published the German-language newspaper Anzeiger des Westens. The arrangement ended in 1850 due to differences in philosophical outlook between the LCMS and the firm. Moritz Niedner was the printer from 1850 to 1857 and Wiebusch from 1857 to 1869, at which point CPH was established. In 1853, the synod established Lehre und Wehre as a theological journal for the clergy, allowing Der Lutheraner to be aimed at the laity. Lehre und Wehre eventually was merged with other theological periodicals of the synod to form the Concordia Theological Monthly, predecessor to today's Concordia Journal.
Der Lutheraner was published semi-monthly until World War II; it was published bi-monthly thereafter as the number of German speakers in the synod declined. The final issue was November–December 1974, with a run of 2,400 copies, many of which were sent to members of the Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church (SELK) in Germany and to subscribers in Brazil and Finland. Its largest circulation had been 40,000 in 1922.
The first hymnal of the LCMS, Kirchen-Gesangbuch für Evangelish-Lutherische Gemeinden (Church Hymn Book for Evangelical Lutheran Congregations), was initially published by Walther's congregation in 1847. The LCMS assumed publication in 1861, using Wiebusch as the printer. After CPH took over publication, the hymnal was revised and enlarged several times.
The largest project in the German language undertaken by CPH was the 22-volume Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften (Dr. Martin Luther's Complete Writings). Published between 1880 and 1910 and known as the "St. Louis Edition", it is arguably the largest German-language work ever printed in the United States. The project was initiated by a proposal at the 1879 convention of the synod's Western District, and was financed by subscription orders by the synod's pastors, who pledged themselves to pay for each volume as it was issued despite not knowing in advance what that price would be. Three levels of binding were offered: cloth, cloth/leather combination, and leather with gilding on the page edges and cover. The St. Louis Edition was a revision of Johann Georg Walch's 18th-century edition, with Luther's Latin writings translated in German.
Adoption of English
Already by the 1870s, CPH's catalog offered a number of English-language resources. However, many of them were written by non-Lutherans, including Charles Spurgeon. It has been suggested it was a case of "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" — that is, since so few of the pastors and theologians of the LCMS were conversant in English, CPH had to take what was available.
By 1900, increasing numbers of members of the LCMS were using English as a second or even first language. In 1911, the English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri and Other States merged into the LCMS. Among the assets brought in with the merger was the American Lutheran Publication Board (ALPB) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The ALPB had published a second edition of the Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-Book in 1909 (the first edition having been published in Baltimore, Maryland), which CPH reissued, with music, in 1912. The ALPB had also published English translations of some of CPH's German works. Perhaps the most important publication acquired with the ALPB was The Lutheran Witness magazine, which is still published today. By 1916, its circulation equaled that of Der Lutheraner, and in 1922, its 400,000 subscriptions far exceeded the latter's.
The number of German works in the CPH catalog decreased while the number of English ones increased during the first half of the 20th century. The 1919–20 catalog had 512 pages of English resources but only 204 of German. By 1933, the catalog had grown to 1,100 pages, only 200 of which were in German. In 1948, only 100 of about 700 pages were in German, signaling that the German era of both CPH and the LCMS had just about ended.
The 1948 catalog also demonstrated an increasing reliance on conservative Protestant, especially Presbyterian, writings because many of the standard German Lutheran works had not yet been translated into English. Thus, the catalog had a number of apologetic books written against Roman Catholicism and the papacy, but few such books against Calvinism or American Protestantism in general. Notably, only one edition of the Lutheran Confessions, Book of Concord, was offered, namely, the English translation from the Concordia Triglotta that had been published in 1926, and it was "tucked away" on the last page of the "symbolics, confessions, history of dogma" section.
From 1946 into the 1950s was a boom time for CPH. By 1948, the company had over 800 employees and was adding office space at its headquarters. In 1948, the pressroom and bindery were enlarged, and in 1951, another large building was erected. A fourth floor was added in 1955 to the building constructed in 1925, and the original 1874 building was replaced with a 5-story one in 1962–63.
A working group was established in the 1950s to encourage the funding and production of scholarly works, including English translations of Luther's Works, Johann Gerhard's Loci Theologici, and Martin Chemnitz's Examination of the Council of Trent.
Theological controversy and resolution
After World War II, LCMS theologians entered into conversation with their counterparts in Germany, leading to the use of historical criticism of the Bible in the synod's institutions such as CPH and Concordia Seminary. As a result, the types of works offered in the CPH catalog changed. The 1971 catalog featured a number of works by liberal mainline Protestants that embraced the historical critical method, the social gospel, and ecumenical movements. The catalog also announced a new curriculum for Lutheran schools and Sunday schools entitled Mission:Life furthering those initiatives that had developed by the LCMS Board of Parish Education. The synod in convention reacted negatively to these trends, resulting in the Seminex crisis, and subsequently replaced the Mission:Life material. In 1992, CPH became responsible for developing the parish education material instead of merely printing it.
Even before the Seminex crisis, CPH had produced J. A. O. Preus's translation of Chemnitz's The Two Natures in Christ and Robert Preus's The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism. Since then it has released (and plans to release in the future) translations of a number of additional works by Chemnitz, Gerhard, and Walther in an effort to bridge the gap between the German-speaking of the early synod and the English-speaking one of today.
In 1974, CPH installed its first IBM computer, one of only three companies in St. Louis to have done so at that time.
By the late 1990s, CPH realized that it was having operational and financial difficulties, so it embraced a quality improvement project. As a result, In 2009, CPH won the Missouri Quality Award for its business performance and in 2011, it received a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the first publisher of any type to receive the award.
From Wikipedia’s article on Concordia Publishing House, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4