Religion: Piepkorn v. Merriment

One of the ablest Lutheran pastors in the U. S. is Rev. Dr. Arthur Carl Piepkorn, 29, who graduated from Concordia College in Milwaukee, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, took a Ph.D. at University of Chicago, was ordained to the ministry—all before he was 23. Last autumn Dr. Piepkorn was called to Cleveland’s substantial, suburban Faith Lutheran Church. Last week he and his 600 parishioners promulgated a set of rules based on his belief that “a church wedding is a Christian religious service.”

The rules forbade kissing at the church altar between bride and bridegroom; the throwing of confetti or rice (an ancient fertility symbol) at the church door. Banned was secular and operatic music such as the Wagner and Mendelssohn wedding marches, Oh, Promise Me, At Dawning etc. Instead, Dr. Piepkorn recommended Bach and a number of lesser church composers. And he directed that wedding rehearsals be brief, dignified non-conversational. Apparently shocked at newspaper accounts of the casual gaiety of the rehearsal of the John Roosevelt-Anne Clark wedding last month, Dr. Piepkorn said: “They must have had a merry time of it. … A family as prominent as his is bound to be imitated.”