 was founded in 1864, partly in response to the theology being taught at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, which had been established in 1826 about further west from the Delaware River in the south-central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.The Gettysburg seminary was thought to be too committed to American cultural accommodation rather than confessional Evangelical Lutheran orthodoxy.The Pennsylvania Ministerium had withdrawn that same year (1864) from the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America and in 1867 helped form the more conservative General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America.