Tell It Like It Was - Rev. Nancy Nollau Mack and Ebenezer UCC

Louis Edward Nollau_King of Prussia_tired of all this religious fighting_Evangelical meant something very different_Friedrich Muench_Emmaus Home_Eden Seminary

Well, this is different, gentle readers. I’ve started this story a couple times already, only to start over.

Let me try again. I’m writing about the Ebenezer UCC Church in Augusta. I was delayed by a couple of other stories and events which popped up after I had set my sights on this local church. And I had some difficulty setting up an interview with my interviewee, former Pastor Nancy Nollau Mack. Well, delays are to be expected, especially when the writer and interviewee work for free…and I doubt that anyone is holding their breath as they await my stories.

But another thing delayed me. You see, Dr. Mack sent me advance material and historical outlines that caused me to look more closely at the religious landscape of Europe and America which lead up to today. Whew! Life is messy, and so are all religions…and as a smalltown writer I try to not step into too many puddles. But my compulsive writing habit pushes me forward. So, I’m writing about UCC, or United Church of Christ, and I guess it’s about time.

A sign on Hwy. 94 which I recently encountered walking with Nancy’s husband, Dr. Paul Mack.

Some of you may know that I once wrote a 4-part story that was largely devoted to the nearest Catholic Church, Immaculate Conception. Here’s the first in the Thomas Rueschhoff at IC series: https://www.augustamomuseum.com/post/tiliw-thomas-rueschhoff-at-immaculate-conception-elementary-1935  I also did a recent story regarding the 150^th anniversary of the St. Vincent de Paul Church building in Dutzow. https://www.augustamomuseum.com/post/tell-it-like-it-was-150th-anniversary-of-st-vincent-de-paul-church-bldg

And then there’s Christ Lutheran in Augusta. I almost feel like I’ve written about it…what with all the Nadlers, Kamphoefners, Hopens, Fuhrs, Stelzers, and Knoernschilds that have found their way into my writing. Maybe someday I’ll dive deeper into its history, but not now. Today, it’s UCC.

My first phone conversation with Pastor Mack on April 18, 2025, started off with my typical stammering in which I asked her about E&R, UCC, her own background and all that stuff…

Nancy Mack: All that stuff? …in terms of how Ebenezer developed into UCC? Well, I have lots of information…probably way more than you want.

paulO: Yeah, there’s that, I’m sure.

NM: I suppose you can cut it. One of the things I’ve been doing lately…going through my own files…deciding what to keep. One of the things I found is a talk I gave about Louis Nollau…Nollau happens to be my maiden name. (Nollau is Nancy’s great-great grandfather, and we’ll get to him shortly.)

NM: But let me just backtrack a little bit. In 1817, when the King of Prussia decided that he was tired of all this religious fighting…and he was going to unite the Lutheran and the reformed strands of Protestantism into one church…and it was going to be called the German Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union. It was considered an amazing thing at the time because…there were all these years of fighting.         

Wow, gentle readers, the King of Prussia decides to unite all strands into one church! Bold move! It makes me think of Constantine the Great deciding to make Christianity the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. And how about Henry VIII creating the Church of England so he can divorce his wife. Amazing! Man, if I were President…  I’d better stop.

So, Pastor Mack emailed me the script of a talk she gave about the Evangelical Church, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and UCC.  I found it quite interesting. Here it is, and I hope nobody minds if I insert a few photos for visual stimulation:

Ebenezer United Church of Christ was founded in the 1850’s by the Evangelische  Kirchenverein des Westes -the Evangelical Church Society of the West.

Former Pastor Nancy Mack in front of Ebenezer UCC on Walnut St. in Augusta. (Built 1861)

First, I need to tell you that the word “Evangelical” meant something very different than it does now. When it began, it basically just meant “protestant.” It began in the early 1800’s when one of the kings of Prussia, tired of the constant religious antagonism, decided to merge the Lutheran and Reformed branches of German Protestantism into the German Evangelical Church of the Union.

Equestrian portrait of Frederick William III by Franz Krüger (1831). He was the King of Prussia from 1797 to 1840.

In the mid-1800’s there was a major German migration to the United States due to great political unrest in their homeland, and many thousands settled in and around St. Louis, MO and the Missouri Valley. A number of clergy also came to minister to these settlers. One of these pastors was my great-great grandfather, Rev. Louis Edward Nollau.

The German pastors were widely scattered on the frontier and suffered physical and social isolation. In addition to the opposition from the “Free Thinkers” or rationalists among the German immigrants, the Evangelical pastors suffered from attacks by groups of ultra conservative Lutherans who developed a militant, antagonistic attitude toward the unionistic groups. They considered it a sin to serve a united church because they believed the Reformed were “children of the devil.”

Friedrich Muench (1799-1881) is an example of a German-American rationalist. He was also a winemaker and a Missouri State Senator. He lived in Dutzow.

In 1840, Rev. Nollau sent a letter to a number of Evangelical pastors inviting them to meet at his parsonage to establish fellowship and mutual support. At that first meeting, the pastors decided that they needed to organize into a church society- the German Evangelical Church Society of the West. This small society accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. They organized a committee to prepare a draft of a catechism. In describing prayer, the Evangelical Catechism said: “prayer is the conversation of the heart with God.” They recognized that due to the unique conditions of life on the frontier, they needed a change in the forms of worship and another committee was formed to draw up a new book of worship that was much more open than the stricter structures of Europe.

The group drew up a “peace promoting” statement of faith which acknowledged both the Bible and other sacred writings as important, but where they disagreed, the Evangelicals of America allowed liberty of conscience to prevail. It was grounded in the dictum “In essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things love.” How a person lived their life was considered much more than what they believed theologically.

Ten years later, the Church Society founded a seminary on a farm  near Marthasville,  which eventually became Eden Seminary.  The original seminary partially supported itself by having the seminarians do the farm work. They had one commercial enterprise- a printing press. When the seminary refused to print posters advertising the sale of slaves or posters about runaway slaves, they were threatened with burning down the seminary. However, they did not bow to pressure and continued refusing to support slavery in any way.

The church at Emmaus Home, which was previously Eden Seminary. (Photo by Chris Naffziger.)

In 1852 Rev. Louis Nollau was called to serve a church in St. Louis. It soon became apparent that he was a prophet, a political activist and an organizer who worked tirelessly to meet the needs of the poor, the orphaned and the sick.

As early as 1853, the feasibility of establishing a hospital in St. Louis had been discussed among  four large Evangelical churches. After some early fundraising, Rev. Nollau was able to rent a building of seven rooms and in 1857, the Evangelical Hospital in St. Louis was born. In Nollau’s first report to the Board of Directors, the principle was accepted that “no distinction of creed, race, nationality or color would be made in the acceptance or treatment of patients. Nor was the hospital conceived as a proselytizing agency, but as a place of refuge for the needy, where poor patients were treated without charge and where everyone was assured of expert medical attention and friendly care.”

This was 1857, before the American Civil War, when “people of color” were considered by some to be less than human. However, the founding principle of the Evangelical Hospital was that all who needed help would be treated without distinction of race or color. It is also significant that the hospital was not founded with the goal of “saving souls.” Many faith-based “mission” organizations at the time had conversion as their focus, where “right belief” was a prerequisite for receiving services. Not so with the Evangelical Hospital.

The hospital had phenomenal growth. By the end of 1858 it had served 300 patients and had to turn away 200 for lack of space. A hospital corporation was organized, a charter procured from the state and work was begun on building a modern building to house what was to become Good Samaritan Hospital. While receiving strong support from the Evangelical Churches, it became a public/private partnership, so it was able to survive with public fundraising outside the churches.

Just as in our own day, there were concerns about whether those receiving help were truly worthy. In one of Rev. Nollau’s annual reports to the Board of the hospital, he addressed those issues.

The person who is poor and sick has a just claim to our compassion and support whether his need results from his own doing or not, and, as important as it is to exercise discretion in distributing charity, still it is better to give to two people who are unworthy of charity than it is to reject one single person who is in need of our help… in every season there are sick people without help, and if we recognize health and other earthly blessings as the undeserved gifts of God…we would express thankfulness to the giver of all gifts and do more to care for our poor fellow citizens.

Would that we could convince people of that today.

Between 1830 and 1850 in St. Louis, there were three cholera epidemics and two fires killing 20 percent of the immigrant population. There were many orphans roaming the streets with no one to care for them. Pastors would take children into their own homes. Pastor Nollau had four children of his own at that time plus two that he adopted after finding them in a quarantined house hiding behind their mother’s skirts. She had been dead for two days.

The story is told that when Pastor Nollau began his campaign to build an  orphanage, he went to his Church Council about this project. They said, “Pastor, we haven’t a thing with which to start an orphan’s home.” “Oh yes we have, replied Pastor Nollau, “we have orphans.”

On the property that had been acquired for the building of the new hospital, there was a small four room house. The first orphans were moved into the house in 1858 and the German Protestant Orphan’s Home, which later became the Evangelical Children’s Home was born. Eventually, in 1866, a 65 acre farm was purchased and in the fall of that year the first 60 children took possession of their new home.

This illustration was found at the website of History and Genealogy in Saint Louis https://stlouis.genealogyvillage.com › hospitals.htm

Over time and responding to changing needs, the Evangelical Children’s Home changed its focus to one of providing care for troubled children and became a residential treatment center, which still operates today. In the last few years it changed its name to Every Child’s Hope because of the increasingly negative connotations of the word Evangelical. However, it remains a faith-based institution and is part of the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries.

We, as part of the current United Church of Christ, are rooted in the work of our ancestors in faith. They certainly made mistakes, but they were committed to many of the same things that we care about today: justice, caring for the poor and the immigrants, homeless children, health care, creative worship that dares to experiment with the new, while holding onto those things that have continued to sustain us, nurturing spirituality and our relationships with the Divine in all its various forms.

Learning about my great-great grandfather inspired me to go to seminary in my mid 50’s and become a pastor. I served Ebenezer United Church of Christ and fell in love with the town and the people there.

Rev. Nancy Nollau Mack

Gentle readers, I think I already have a better understanding of Ebenezer UCC. In the next installment of this story, I’ll look at what Dr. Anita Mallinckrodt wrote about Ebenezer, and I’ll give you the highlights of my interviews with Rev. Nancy Nollau Mack.

Stay curious,

paulO