The Lonely Lutheran Monk

The worship-filled day of the Rev. Arthur Carl Kreinheder begins at 6 with the recitation of lauds. Afterward he celebrates Mass, and until the Great Silence that follows the night prayer of compline, his daily routine at St. Augustine's House, near Oxford, Mich., is marked by observance of the traditional hours of the divine office. It is a life much like that of any Benedictine priest in the Roman Catholic Church--but Father Kreinheder is not a Catholic. He is the first and only Lutheran monk in U.S. history.

Despite his Romish ways, Father Kreinheder, 57, has a deeply rooted Lutheran faith; his father was a Missouri Synod pastor, and his mother's family founded a Lutheran congregation near Waynesboro, Va., before the American Revolution. After serving as the skipper of a subchaser during World War II, Kreinheder increasingly felt a vocation to the church, but found the opportunities within U.S. Lutheranism too restricted. Then he read (in TIME, Aug. 2, 1948) about the famed French Protestant religious community at Taize.

One-Man Monastery. "I found what I had been looking for," he recalls, "a place where a Lutheran could become a monk." After briefly testing his vocation at Taize, Kreinheder gave up his job as a merchandise manager for Detroit's J. L. Hudson department store to study in Sweden for the ministry, and after his ordination in 1956 decided to try organizing a Taize-style community in the U.S.

So far, Kreinheder has been more hermit than monk, since the three companions who helped him found his Congregation of the Servants of Christ soon gave up. His major support comes from the 300 Lutherans who belong to his Fellowship of St. Augustine, occasionally visit the monastery to make retreats and join him in prayer. Kreinheder has no pastorate, supports himself by raising sheep, gets advice and a helping hand in the fields from the sympathetic Catholic monks of nearby St. Benedict of Montefano Monastery.

Group Conversions. Kreinheder has a passionate interest in Christian unity. He is the U.S. secretary of the League for Evangelical-Catholic Reunion, founded by members of Die Sammlung (The Gathering), a German Lutheran group that prays and works for the union of their church with Rome. This ecumenicism keeps Kreinheder from joining the Roman Catholic Church, which many Lutherans think he might as well do. "Individual conversions are not going to be the answer to unity," he says. ''When the move is made by a group, then we will have true unity, and that is what we are working toward."

Luther himself was not opposed to monasteries, Kreinheder argues, and church tradition clearly authorizes marriage and celibacy as valid Christian vocations. Today, however, the Lutheran called to celibacy "has the choice of living his life out in solitude and loneliness as a bachelor, or becoming a Catholic or Anglican monk." Kreinheder blames "my own inexperience and my own inadequacy" for St. Augustine's slow start. "I don't say that I'm the perfect man to start this, but who else? Someone has to begin," he argues.

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