Martin Stephan
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Martin Stephan was pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Dresden, in what is now the modern nation-state of Germany during the early 19th century. He organized the Saxon immigration to the United States in the early 1800s in order to gain the freedom to practice his religious beliefs. He soon became embroiled in charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, and was expelled from the settlement, leaving C.F.W. Walther as the senior clergyman. The Lutheran Saxon immigrants made up a significant fraction of the founders of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.