Two of Duluth's oldest Jewish congregations—Temple Emanuel and Tifereth Israel—had little in common after they were founded in the 1890s. While Temple Emanuel was affiliated with Reform Judaism, Tifereth Israel conducted worship services in the Orthodox tradition. Tifereth Israel's 1945 shift to Conservative Judaism, however, coupled with the decline of Duluth's Jewish population, led the two congregations to unite in 1969 as Temple Israel.
Minneapolis's oldest synagogue, Temple Israel (originally named Shaarai Tov), was founded in 1878. By 2012, over two thousand member families belonged to the temple, making it one of the largest Jewish congregations in the United States.
By 1910, some of St. Paul's Eastern European Jews had moved from their original immigrant neighborhoods in Lowertown and the West Side to the Cathedral Hill district. A group of Orthodox men met that year to discuss creating a new congregation there. It would conserve traditional Jewish practices, but modernize them to appeal to the next generation.
One of nearly a dozen early Orthodox Jewish congregations in North Minneapolis, Tifereth B'nai Jacob was founded by immigrants from Bessarabia. The congregation served the community for seventy years before merging with other synagogues and moving to St. Louis Park.
Expert Essay: Doug Rossinow, Professor of History at Metropolitan State University, discusses the faith-based traditions, leaders, and organizations that have shaped the history of religion in Minnesota.
In 1862, the Valley Grove Lutheran congregation erected a church made from local quarried limestone in Wheeling Township. By 1894, it had outgrown the original building and built a wooden Gothic Revival edifice seventy-five feet away. Although the congregation disbanded in 1973, the remaining picturesque site and its structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Heinrich Voth, the first lay minister of Mennonite Brethren Church in Delft, baptized over 700 parishioners during his nearly forty years of ministry. Respected as an educator, he shared leadership with members of the congregation, freeing himself for evangelistic visits and travels to places in northern Minnesota and Canada.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Evangeline Whipple used her wealth to improve the lives of women, people of color, and the poor. She supported social justice for Native Americans in Minnesota, for African Americans in Florida, and for villagers and World War I refugees in Bagni di Lucca, Italy.
Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, is known for his missionary work among the Dakota and Ojibwe and his efforts to reform the U.S. Indian administration system. After the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, Whipple was one of the few white men to oppose the death sentences of 303 Dakota.
Jane Williamson was a schoolteacher and anti-slavery activist in Ohio before she came to the Presbyterian Dakota Mission at Lac qui Parle in 1843. She spent the remaining fifty-two years of her life working with Dakota people.