# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1002
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essentially with that of Grabau, entirely and altogether. But different from both is that of P. Kindermann. He, living in the neighborhood and therefore knowing the affair best, indeed does not spare the congregation where he believes he sees sin and guilt on its side, but just as frankly exposes the transgressions of the accused pastor. In the latter he censures that in his proposal to the congregation he had not carefully avoided the appearance as though he permitted himself encroachments upon the rights of the congregation; he ought only to have seen to it that the matter of conveyance was not conducted with sinful negligence. The meeting on the 10th Sunday after Trinity was not to be called unlawful, since P. Krause had gone away on the Sunday before with the demand that they should give him a definite answer after the lapse of a week; just as little could there be any talk of overturning a resolution passed on St. James's Day, since on that day no resolution at all had been passed, and for that very reason P. Krause had demanded that answer at his departure. So also he had, in his letter of the 14th of Aug., quite uncharitably and unchristianly, contrary to the 8th Commandment, accused the congregation of esteeming twenty times three cents higher than its salvation; had in a frivolous manner given the congregation notice of his office; had made use in the sermon of an ungodly zeal; had, by his public proclamation after that sermon of rebuke, arbitrarily put the opponents of his proposal under the ban, and, as occasion arose, had also treated some of them as banned persons; he had also shown great harshness and uncharitableness in that he did not comply with the request for a congregational meeting, and the like. The congregation, on the other hand, P. Kindermann accuses, in that it had, as it seemed to him, shown in the matter of conveyance generally a great negligence, and could have prevented the whole sorrowful affair thereby, if from the beginning a definite arrangement had been made in this matter and a decent conveyance provided for. So also the congregation ought from the very outset to have asked the pastor with modesty to leave the management of this matter wholly to it, and in sending the congregation's resolution of the 10th Sunday after Trinity ought to have stated precisely the reasons why it could not agree to the pastor's proposal; but those had sinned grievously who had mocked on the public street about P. Krause's sermon of rebuke. — So Kindermann judged at that time concerning this dispute. Let the reader now compare with this the representation and judgment in the second Synodal Letter of the Buffalo Synod, and consider that Kindermann has acknowledged himself to be of this!

With such different judgments of the dispute on the part of the members of the Church Ministerium, nothing was helped in the matter. The fire of discord burned on, and now there arose also unrest in the neighboring congregation on account of a ban carried out upon a certain Martin Crüger; yes, between the two pastors Krause and Kindermann themselves discord had already arisen some time before. Then P. Grabau appeared in the spring of 1846, as Senior of the Ministerium, to settle the dispute, but betook himself at once to Freistatt, to put out the fire there first, since immediately upon his arrival a written complaint of the Freistatt people was handed to him. Having returned from there in company with Krause and Kindermann, Grabau began the investigation on Ascension Day afternoon. Although, however, in the written complaint the historical facts had already been set forth by the congregation, and this was now done again in the oral proceedings, and although P. Kindermann in his opinion, as stated above, had shown that the meeting on the 10th Sunday after Trinity had indeed been occasioned by P. Krause himself, and that the congregation could not justly be accused of the overturning of a resolution already passed with the pastor: yet P. Grabau here also proceeded again, as in his opinion, from the presupposition that a resolution had been passed and that the congregation, in a meeting held behind its pastor's back, had overturned it again. In this the congregation was to be found guilty at all costs. More than once, as is unanimously reported by eye- and ear-witnesses, P. Kindermann admonished both P. Krause to acknowledge many undeniable transgressions, and P. Grabau to a conscientious, impartial procedure toward the complainants; whereupon Grabau, indignant at such a reminder, offered Kindermann to conduct the investigation for him. In this meeting, which lasted from the afternoon until the next morning, nothing was accomplished. Dissatisfied with the whole affair, Kindermann was already sitting on the wagon the next day, to return home again; at Grabau's persuasion he got down again. So on the afternoon of the Sunday Exaudi the investigation began anew. Toward midnight it finally came to a sort of reconciliation. P. Krause had, according to the second Synodal Report, conceded, "that in the form and manner of his sermon on St. James's Day 1845, and in the proclamation attached to it, and otherwise in his sharp manner of preaching, he might have erred, but of the content of his sermons he retracted nothing, for that was the truth; also he asked all who might have taken offense at his sharp way of preaching for forgiveness; he had wished to hurt no one, but to lead and move every man to repentance." The rest the congregation had to take upon itself;* and the majority, heartily weary of Grabau's inquisitions and withal sleepy, entered into the reconciliation, with the exception of Bewersdorf, who had already left the meeting. From the complaining part, however, it had been continually set forth that in consequence of what had happened the congregation could no longer have any proper confidence in a further blessed ministry of its pastor; that it would gladly forgive him everything, but P. Grabau should effect a transfer of Krause; and in the firm opinion that this would be done, the hand of reconciliation had been extended. But when the majority perceived the next day that Grabau by no means had it in mind to do this, they revoked the reconciliation made in the night as one obtained by trickery, if it had been accepted on the part of the Church Ministerium in the opinion that the congregation had dropped its request for the transfer of Krause.

* It may indeed sometimes go quite strangely with the acknowledgment of sin among members of congregations. A member of the congregation of P. Tür[illegible]'s here testified before our synod held here in 1851, after he had asked for the floor, how much he too desired that an understanding and union of his synod and ours might be made possible. The "Kirchl. Informatorium" now brought, in its 3rd number of the 2nd volume, in a note the news that Otto, so the man was called, had now testified "that he was heartily sorry to have become involved with the Missourian foxes." Nevertheless the same man testified to his two brothers, members of my congregation, who called his attention to this passage in the Informatorium, that his utterance before our synod had never yet been a grief to him, and that he also could not see in what respect that was sin and how he was to do penance for it.

So there followed soon after Grabau's departure a decided break: the greater part of the congregation renounced in writing on the 1st of June the pastoral care of P. Krause, and at the same time presented to P. Kindermann a request to be served with Word and Sacrament. As a member of the Church Ministerium Kindermann naturally did not accede to it. He therefore referred the petitioners to remain with P. Krause, and admonished them to seek, as long as ever possible, relief for their troubled consciences within the church order. To that end he showed them two ways: they could either obtain an opinion from other Lutheran pastors outside the synodical connection, or they could commit the decision to a synod. The congregation, on the ground of experiences had, despairing of a just decision of its cause by the Ministerium of its synod, chose the former way. With a part of the Freistatt congregation, in which a separation had also taken place, it therefore turned, as is known, to the Saxon pastors in Missouri, and thereupon received from our synod, then assembled at Chicago in 1847, a written opinion,* which was drawn up for the most part on the basis of the documents at hand, and, with the exception of some grave accusations, as for instance that of perjury, was acknowledged as correct by P. Krause at his reconciliation with the congregation in the year 1850. The congregation, now perceiving also the other errors of its pastors, therefore soon afterward called one of the Saxon pastors, P. Keyl of Frohna in Missouri, who also entered upon his office on the 19th Sunday after Trinity of the same year and settled in this city.**

** See the first Synodal Report of the Synod of Missouri, etc. Since P. Krause did not come at the invitation of the Synod, the Synod had indeed no other way than to draw up the opinion chiefly on the basis of the documents.

* How well founded and truthful the Grabau reports about the so-called "factious priests" are, is testified also by what he writes in his second Synodal Letter, p. 37, about P. Keyl's entering upon his office in Milwaukie. According to the revised Statutes of the State of Wisconsin every minister must namely be authorized by the State to solemnize marriages by submitting a copy of his "Credentials of Ordination" (certificate of ordination). Since now P. Keyl could not submit his Latin certificate of ordination, an English certificate was drawn up in the name of the congregation, in which it declared before the magistrate that P. Keyl was its ordained and called minister, and which it had signed by the elder Bruß and the schoolteacher A. Lemke, as its secretary. This is now represented by Grabau thus: "When Keyl had arrived in Wisconsin, he had himself ordained once more by the deposed schoolteacher Lemke and the shipwright Bruß, who both then issued to him the certificate of ordination before the magistrate!"— Is the Senior of the Ministerium then not ashamed at all to write such little tales into the world as sure facts, which he, if he still has some sound common sense, can scarcely himself believe in earnest? And yet he accuses us continually of lying and slander! Of a deposition of Lemke, by the way, nothing at all is known. He did indeed formerly once lay down his office, in that for lack of support he had to take up another calling, but was not deposed, but rather was admonished by P. Krause in the presence of P. Kindermann and several other persons, for the sake of the salary not yet to give up his school office.