# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1003
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

3

After the greater part of the congregation had renounced P. Krause, he was "taken into church discipline" by commission of the Church Ministerium. Three weeks after the renunciation the first written summons by P. Krause followed. The congregation rejected it in a reply, drawn up unfortunately in an irritated and therefore not commendable tone. Under date of the 17th of September the second written summons followed, by P. Kindermann, on the 6th of March of the following year the third and last. It closed with the words: "God give grace that this offer of the Christian Church be not again despised, and that the command of the LORD Jesus Christ: "'If he hear not the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican'" (Matt. 18, 17), may not befall you."

In conclusion mention must yet be made here of one matter. For the congregation here is accused by our opponents of church robbery. The state of the case, however, is this. Under P. Krause the congregation possessed a lot and a small building, which was used for divine service and school instruction. Since now at the time of the separation the schoolteacher of that time, Müller, who stood on Pastor Krause's side, let it be heard that the pastor had already taken steps with the magistrates to secure the church property to the members who had remained true to him, Bruß and Bewersdorf, who were at the same time trustees and had become sureties for the payment of the lot, on which about 340 dollars still lay as a burden, summoned the elders of the opposing party at the end of July 1846 to reckon with them and to settle the claims of both sides, but received in writing the scornful answer: the Church of God had never reckoned with its enemies about its property. Since now the opposing party, from which moreover for a year and a day very little or nothing had been contributed toward the payment of the church debt, refused this, Bruß and Bewersdorf, as it was high time, paid off 40 dollars of the church debt and demanded the church key from the schoolteacher, which they indeed did not receive until they threatened him with the magistrates. The remaining debt was paid off by and by by the congregation, which, soon after P. Keyl's arrival, also grew outwardly, and when the former place could no longer hold the hearers, a larger building* was erected two years ago, but the former church place was fitted up for school and teacher's dwelling. The congregation therefore possesses its property, first, rightfully before men. Yet in the circumstances of the country here the chief weight cannot indeed be laid upon that. The question is whether it also possesses it before God with a good conscience. And there we hear from our opponents themselves in their Synodal Report that in case of a separation the church property belongs to the orthodox part, while the false-believing part, fallen away from the pure doctrine, loses all claims. Let them therefore cry on: "Give back the stolen church!" — that perplexes us as little as our fathers at the time of the Reformation, from whom in the same manner and with the same right the papists demanded back churches, cloisters, foundations, etc.; and let them call the undersigned, as his predecessor, "factious priest" to their heart's content, that perplexes him again as little in the conviction of the divinity of his calling as those our fathers, who, preaching to formerly papistic congregations, were presented by the papists with the same titles. Whether now, however, the Lutheran Trinity Congregation here, of orthodox confession, deserves with right the name of a "faction" on account of its separation from the Buffalo Synod, the reader will know how to judge.

* After the fine spacious church the mouth of one or another of our opponents has probably watered at times. Even P. Grabau, on his visit last year in Milwaukie, could not refrain from taking a little look at the "faction temple."

Friedrich Lochner,
Milwaukie, the 10th Nov. 1852. Lutheran Pastor.

II.

(Communicated.)

They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

The reader of the "Lutheraner" knows that the Synod of Missouri, etc., bears powerful testimony against Mr. Pastor Grabau's false doctrines and the practice following therefrom, namely, of banning unjustly. Mr. P. Grabau, however, as may be seen from his "Informatorium," will neither harbor false doctrines nor have banned unjustly, and confidently challenges the Missourians to show him but one unjust ban. Although it is only too certain that Mr. P. Grabau has already unjustly banned more than one, it is nevertheless not hard to understand how he can still challenge them to give him proof, even of only one unjust ban. For in the well-known Pastoral Letter Mr. P. Grabau sets up the doctrine (not yet recalled by him to this day) that a congregation is obliged to obey its pastor "in all things which are not against God's Word." If now this doctrine is maintained without further ado as true and Scriptural, and a congregation or an individual member does not render the obedience alleged here to be Scriptural, then naturally a pastor who holds such doctrine must exclude the disobedient after admonition given by degrees and without fruit. But as this doctrine is a false one, so also a ban carried out on the ground of it is false and unjust. Mr. P. Grabau, however, defends this doctrine on the ground of the words: "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves," etc. (Heb. 13, 17.) Hence he also thinks his banning to be quite just. But the man errs greatly, and thereby loads heavy sins upon himself and his congregation silent thereto. That Mr. P. Grabau demands such obedience "in all things which are not against God's Word," not merely on paper, that is, in his Pastoral Letter, but also in fact, what follows below will clearly show; as also it will become clear to every impartial reader that Mr. P. Grabau has carried out an unjust ban upon the undersigned. To many it may sound quite innocent: "Obedience in all things which are not against God's Word." These may, however, see in what follows the terrible fruit and consequence of this doctrine when it is applied and carried through.—To build a church, a schoolhouse, to buy an organ, and the like, is all not against God's Word; but whether, when the pastor demands to do such a thing, a congregation is bound, on the ground of the divine Word, to obey him therein, might be another question. But to the matter.

I, the undersigned, immigrated here in the year 1839 with Mr. Pastor Grabau. In the first period of our being here the congregation showed toward Mr. P. Grabau on the whole such a self-sacrificing love as almost bordered on deification. Pastor Grabau's word was decisive in all things, and I myself must confess that I held him for such a man of God as there could be no more. This excessive deification of his person, and the general unconditional submissiveness on the part of the congregation toward Mr. P. Grabau, may have contributed to this, that his heart, already inclined to lordliness and inflexibility, exalted itself still more, so that it became ever more visible and palpable that the words of St. Peter: "Neither as being lords over God's heritage" (1 Pet. 5, 3.) no longer fit Mr. Pastor Grabau, but rather those of the prophet: "With force and with cruelty have ye ruled them." (Ezek. 34, 4.) So Mr. P. Grabau already at that time presumed to act at his own pleasure in external church affairs, such as buildings and the like. And when the trustees, to whom the administration of the church property had been entrusted, once called him to account for such arbitrary conduct, he was so indignant over it that, with the help of the unsuspecting congregation, he took their trusteeship away from them. We need no trustees; church fathers we will have, he said. Also from that time on, and until now, the so-called church fathers may no longer assemble without him.— This is but one example out of many of Mr. P. Grabau's lordliness, even in external things.

Another example, with which my ban-process is connected, is the following. In the year 1850 it occurred to Mr. P. Grabau that all the church and congregational property should be sold, and a new, larger church and other congregational buildings be erected in another place. This plan, however, met with great resistance from the elders; dissatisfied over it, he held a congregational meeting; but here also the desired consent did not appear, and Mr. P. Grabau, full of ill-humor, broke out among other things in the words: If the congregation would not in two years bring the offering of two thousand thalers, he would not even say that it was a Lutheran congregation; and when the