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Welcoming Strangers: Race, Religion, And Ethnicity In German Lutheran Ontario And Missouri, 1939-1970, Elliot Worsfold

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines how German-American and German-Canadian Lutherans in St. Louis, Missouri, and Waterloo County, Ontario, constructed their ethnic identities from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to 1970. Did German Lutherans understand their ethnicity as an identity to overcome, or as an identity worth preserving? What role did religion and race play in how they constructed their ethnic identities? It argues that German Lutherans in the Missouri and Canada Synods constructed a hybrid identity that sought to balance their competing ethnic, religious, racial, and national identities. It charts their experiences negotiating discrimination during the Second World …