Johann Christian Friedrich Heyer

Johann Christian Friedrich Heyer

Johann Christian Friedrich Heyer (born July 10, 1793 in Helmstedt ; † November 7, 1873 in Friedens , Pennsylvania ), called John Christian Frederick Heyer in the English-speaking world , was the first missionary sent abroad by Lutherans in the United States of America has been. He founded the Guntur Mission in Andhra Pradesh , India . “ Father Heyer ” will be remembered on November 7th in the calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America , together with Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen .

childhood

Johann Christian Friedrich Heyer was born in Helmstedt , then the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (today Lower Saxony ), as the son of Johann Heinrich Gottlieb Heyer, a wealthy furrier in Helmstedt and his wife, Fredericke Sophie Johanne Wagener. After his confirmation in the Stephanskirche in Helmstedt in 1807, his parents sent him from Napoleonic Europe to America to live with a maternal uncle (Wagener), a furrier and hat maker in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania who specializes in the popular beaver fur hat would have.

education

CF Heyer, as it is often abbreviated, studied theology in Philadelphia with JHC Helmuth and FD Schaeffer. In 1815 he traveled back to Germany and studied theology with his brother Heinrich at the University of Göttingen . He received his medical doctorate from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1847. (He did not attend Johns Hopkins University , as is often claimed.)

Marriage and children

In 1819 he married Mary (Webb) Gash, a widow with two children, Caroline Gash (* around 1809) and Basil Gash (* around 1813). Six more children were born to the couple:

• Sophia M. Heyer (born January 7, 1818 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † November 18, 1875 in Shelby , Richland County , Ohio ). She married George Washington Houpt.
• Carl Henry Heyer (born December 5, 1820, Cumberland County , Pennsylvania)
• Mary Ann Heyer (born April 13, 1822, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, † October 1823 from malaria )
• Henriette Heyer (born December 17, 1823 in Somerset County , Pennsylvania) married to 1.) George Snyder and 2.) George Steyer.
• Julia Eliza Heyer (born September 25, 1825, † January 1, 1826 in Friedens, Somerset County, Pennsylvania)
• Theophilus Heyer (born November 30, 1827 in Friedens, Somerset County, Pennsylvania)

Career

Gettysburg College

Teacher and preacher

He was a teacher at the Zion School, Southwark, Philadelphia from September 1813 to March 1815 when he returned to Germany for a visit. After returning to the United States in 1816, he was admitted to the post of lay preacher. Heyer served as a preacher for three years until he was ordained in 1820 . For the next 20 years, he held services and established churches and Sunday schools in Pennsylvania, Maryland , New York , the Midwestern states, and west to Missouri .

From October 1829 to November 1831 he served as an agent of the "Sunday School of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States". In this capacity, he traveled about 5,000 km, visited about 300 churches, distributed Sunday school hymns and tracts, and helped pastors set up Sunday schools.

In 1829, together with 22 other shareholders (all of them Lutheran clergy), he used his private fortune to buy the former Adams County Academy and to found the Gettysburg Gymnasium, which was converted into Gettysburg College in 1832 , as Heyer and his fellow shareholders their private partnership became patrons of Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg. Heyer was also elected to the first board of trustees and also worked as a substitute teacher at the grammar school.

He was the first pastor of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Pittsburgh , founded in 1837; the first English-speaking Lutheran congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains . He founded the First German Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Pittsburgh, a German-speaking congregation, a week later, on January 22, 1837.

missionary

His wife and children remained in peace in Somerset County, Pennsylvania , where Mary Heyer died in 1839. The following year, Heyer was asked to join the foreign mission. Heyer was hired by the Pennsylvania Department as the first foreign minister of the American Lutheran churches in 1841. He studied Sanskrit and medicine in Baltimore and left Boston for India in 1841 on the ship Brenda , commanded by Captain Ward .

When he returned to the United States in 1845, he continued his missionary work and founded St. John's Church in Baltimore. At the same time, he continued to study medicine, earning his doctorate from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1847.

In 1847 he made a second trip to India and spent a decade there, mainly in the Guntur District in the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, where he held services and rendered useful services to the people there. After receiving sponsorship first from his church's Pennsylvania Department and later from the General Synod's Foreign Missions Committee, Heyer was also encouraged and supported by British government officials. He built a number of hospitals and a network of schools in the Guntur region.

Later trips

He returned to the United States for health reasons in 1857 and spent the next decade organizing churches, particularly in the new state of Minnesota . He traveled to Germany from 1867 to 1868. In 1869, at the age of 77, he made his third trip to India to reorganize the Rajahmundry Mission.

Heyer returned to the USA in 1871. In January 1872 he was appointed chaplain and first "householder" of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Despite his short time with the students, he earned great respect and affection from the faculty and students.

He died in 1873 at the age of 80 and was buried next to his wife in Friedens Lutheran Church cemetery, Friedens, Pennsylvania. His net worth was approximately $ 7,000. He had earmarked $ 500 of that for his final expenses, a tombstone and an iron fence around his and his wife's grave. He bequeathed $ 2,500 to his children and grandchildren, provided that his grandchildren would remain members of the Lutheran Church and stay away from alcohol and tobacco , and bequeathed the remaining $ 4,000 to the Somerset Lutheran Congregation, the Philadelphia Lutheran Theological Seminary, the Pennsylvania Ministry for the foreign mission in India and the Passavant orphanages in Zelienople and Germantown , Pennsylvania.

legacy

When a missionary society was founded in 1880 by the students of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mount Airy, a borough of Philadelphia, it was named the Father Heyer Missionary Society.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Andhra (AELC) grew out of the missionary work that Heyer began in Guntur in 1842 and that of the Rajahmundry Mission, which was founded by Pastor Luis P. Manno Valett of the North German Mission Society in 1845 which was founded in 1927. By 2009 the AELC had grown to be one of the largest Lutheran churches in India and the third largest Lutheran church in Asia, with approximately 2.5 million people in approximately 5,000 congregations. The President of the AELC, Rev. Dr. B. Suneel said, “The strong building missionaries built for the growth of education is still being built by the AELC. It also focuses on diaconal tasks such as the establishment of hospitals, the emancipation of women, rural development projects and a mother and child health program. "

CF Heyer's name is also remembered by the Father Heyer Junior College and vocational schools in Deenapur and Phirangipuram in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Remembrance day prayer

This prayer is said in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on November 7th, the anniversary of Heyer's death.

English (traditional)

God of grace and might, we praise thee for thy servant John Christian Frederick Heyer, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel in the United States and in India. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land, heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that the world may know the immeasurable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

German translation

Almighty and gracious God, we praise you for your servant Johann Christian Friedrich Heyer, whom you were called to preach the gospel in the United States and India. We ask you: awaken heralds and evangelists of your kingdom in this, as in all other countries, so that the world may recognize the immeasurable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives in a throne with you and the Holy Spirit and rules from eternity to eternity.

swell

The article was originally translated from the English Wikipedia, whose sources are:

• William Allen Lambert: Life of Rev. JFC Heyer, MD (Prepared for the Father Heyer Missionary Society of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Mount Airy, Philadelphia. 1903)
• George Drach and Calvin F. Kuder: The Telugu Mission: of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America: Containing a biography of the Rev. Christian Frederick Heyer, MD (Philadelphia: General Council Publ. House. 1914, ISBN 9781177718325 )
• JFC Heyer: Father Heyer's Own Story, Travel Letters of the Rev. CF Heyer, Founder of the Guntur Mission (Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Pennsylvania. Lancaster, Pa. 1861)
• AR Wentz: Father Heyer Planted a Church (The Lutheran Church Quarterly, XVI, pages 39–49. 1943)
• George Drach: Father Heyer, the Pioneer (The Lutheran Church Quarterly, XI, pages 187–193. 1938)
• Clarence Hess Swavely: The Life and Letters of the Rev. JCF Heyer, MD (1941)
• George Drach: Father Heyer: Pioneer Foreign Missionary (n. D. 1941)
• George Drach: Kingdom Pathfinders: Biographical Sketches of Foreign Missionaries (1942)
• E. Theodore Bachman: They Called him Father, the Life Story of John Christian Frederick Heyer (1942)

Web links

• Biography of Johann CF Heyer
• The pluralism project
• Heyer, Johann Christian Friedrich, entry in the Christian Cyclopedia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jansen, Rev. Ronald A .: "John Christian Frederick Heyer", The Lutheran Review , November 6, 2009 ( Memento from April 16, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
2. ^ "Heyer, John Christian Frederick", Christian Cyclopedia , The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
3. ↑ "John Christian Frederick Heyer - Nov 7th" ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Princeton Junction, New Jersey  
4. ↑ Kiefer, James E., "John CF Heyer, Missionary", Biographical sketches of memorable Christians of the past
5. ↑ ^{a b} Drach, George and Kuder, Calvin F., The Telugu mission: of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America: containing a biography of the Rev. Christian Frederick Heyer, MD (Philadelphia: General Council Publ. House . 1914)
6. ^ ^{A b} "John Christian Frederick Heyer", Lutheran Historical Society of the Mid Atlantic
7. ↑ Website of the United Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India ( Memento from April 16, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )