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George Samuel Klug offered his services as a pastor, and, after his ordination at Danzig, August 30, 1736, proceeded to Virginia with one of the laymen. After completing his collections, Stoever returned, in 1838, but died at sea. Muhlenberg, Sr., wrote: "It is said to be a profitable plantation, and owns several slaves to till the land."
He answered, 'God forfend! He would not side with the Ministerium, to which men belonged like Valentine Kraft, Andrew Stoever, Wagner, and the like, though they had requested him to join them; that, on the other hand, he would not be in our way either, but rather go elsewhere and begin a school at some place or another." Constitution of 1792.
These efforts terminated when Schulz was arrested in Germany for disorderly conduct. Before leaving Pennsylvania, Schulz had ordained John Caspar Stoever, a relative of Pastor J. C. Stoever, Sr., in Spottsylvania, Va., and placed him in charge of his congregations.
Ziegenhagen in London, dated October, 1739, in which they state: "There is not one German Lutheran preacher in the whole land, except Caspar Stoever, now sixty miles distant from Philadelphia." New Hanover, Philadelphia, Providence. It was a motley crowd of Germans that gathered in the land of the Quakers.
The relation of Muehlenberg to the confessions was in his own lifetime openly questioned by some of his co-laborers in Pennsylvania, like Stoever and Wagner, who affirmed that the Halle Pietists were not sound Lutherans; the same hue and cry was raised in New York by Berkenmeyer and Sommer, who were representatives here of the orthodoxy, which in Germany contended against Pietism; other good men, like Gerock and Bager, who had not been sent from Halle, sympathized with this feeling, and finally, with some encouragement from Gerock, Lucas Raus, in whom personal enmity toward Muehlenberg had been rankling for years, brought direct charges of want of fidelity to the confessions against him before the ministerium and offered to support them with evidence in writing.
It was 1763, fifteen years after its organization, before he became a member of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. Concerning Stoever and the Agenda of 1748, Muhlenberg relates the following: "We were minded to employ the very words of our Lord Jesus: Take and eat; this is the body of Jesus Christ, etc. Take and drink, this cup is the New Testament in the blood of Christ, etc.
Those pastors who remained faithful to the Lutheran Confessions, six in number, now united and organized the so-called Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod." G. Henkel, Stoever, Klug at Spottsylvania.
Stoever, Jr., had studied theology in Germany, and after his arrival in America, 1728, had been active in mission-work among the Lutherans in Pennsylvania, a labor which he zealously continued till his sudden death in 1779, while confirming a class at Lebanon. Stoever's aversion to Pietism at first kept him from uniting with Muhlenberg.
Stoever, toward the close of the year 1734, . . . undertook a voyage to Europe to collect a fund for the continuance of their service, the building of a church and school, and the endowment of the ministry." Besides a large amount of money, they procured a library of theological books.
The failure was caused by various discouragements: the deaths of Heintzelman and Brunnholtz; the troubles in the congregations of Handschuh at Lancaster, Germantown, and Philadelphia; the opposition of Stoever and other anti-Pietists, whom the synod in 1748 marked as undesirables; charges against Muhlenberg and his colaborers, that they were but secret agents of Zinzendorf, etc.; and above all the entirely insufficient support in men and moneys from Halle.
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