“Dreieinigkeitskirch” was founded in 1839 by Saxon immigrants who originally intended to settle in Perry County, MO but instead found a home in St. Louis. They were abandoning the oppressive state church in the Old World for the promise of a confessional Lutheran church and community in the New World.
Fresh off the Mississippi River, the members of what would be known as Trinity, began worshiping in the basement of what is now Christ Church Cathedral (Broadway & Chestnut). By the fall of 1842, Trinity built their first church building (Lombard Street btw 2nd & 3rd Streets). In 1864, having out grown their building, Trinity moved to its current property (8th & Soulard). In the spring 1896, Trinity was hit by “The Great Cyclone” and rebuilt what is still standing proud today.
The Saxon immigrant’s Utopian vision suffered setbacks in Perry County. In 1841, with the unexpected death of Trinity’s first pastor, Otto Hermann Walther, Rev. C.F.W. Walther returned to St. Louis, to pastor those who had stayed in St Louis. Under Rev CFW Walther, Trinity began a “publishing house”, wrote the first LCMS hymnal Kirchengesangbuch, and Der Lutheraner newspaper, through which like-minded Lutheran congregations around the mid-west were brought together to form the “Joint Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States,” with Rev CFW Walther as Synod President in 1848.
Today, Trinity continues to serve the greater St Louis area. It is our mission to be “an open and caring, radically Christ-centered, deeply sacramental and sometimes eclectic ministry in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis.”