# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1005
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Supplement to No. 9, Volume 9, of the Lutheraner.

II.

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

(Conclusion.)

Having now written this, I can assure the reader that it was not done out of hatred or revenge against Pastor Grabau; I would much rather have kept silent. I also know very well that Pastor Grabau, so long as he remains so perverse, will denounce all my words as gross lies and slanders, as he is accustomed to do; and he will, who knows what, write forth into the world against me in the way of lies and slanders. We of Buffalo, however, are already accustomed to that, and it shall trouble me little. Pastor Grabau will be able to persuade the congregation in Buffalo of little; it is only "at a distance that lying is easy." Enough, that I can testify before God that I have written the truth; and to do this I have felt constrained in my conscience, since the "Informatorium" asserts that not a single unjust ban has occurred, and demands that other Lutheran Christians honor and acknowledge the so-called "Christian" church discipline of Grabau.

The dear reader and my cause I commend to God, and I hold to the word of my Lord Christ: "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy; for, behold, your reward is great in heaven." (Luke 6:22, 23.)

J. P. Schulze.

Buffalo, N. Y., the 1st of Nov., 1852.

III.

"The New Faction in Eden."

In July, 1848, the Prussian pastors, at whose head stands Pastor Grabau, held a synod at Buffalo. The report of the proceedings, however, did not appear until July, 1850. In this "Synodalbrief" there is found, p. 59, a "Report concerning the Origin of a New Faction at Eden." The undersigned were at first undecided what they should do: whether to defend themselves, or to keep wholly silent. The former would not concern them much, if they knew that the latter would serve to greater benefit. But complete silence might, with many a one who comes to read that report, arouse the suspicion that the undersigned were really such factionists as Pastor Grabau describes them. As such they could of course lay claim no longer to the name of a Christian congregation. It is therefore to be shown by this that the accused are no "faction," but that Pastor Grabau merely stamps them as such, and that he himself is to blame that our congregation had to suffer the sad lot of division.—

We cannot undertake to set the whole false and distorted report of Pastor Grabau in the right light; it would become too long and tedious. Besides many distortions and untruths, the "Ministerium and the six synodal deputies" have concealed much of what Pastor Grabau did among us, and how. We wish to confine ourselves merely to the 8 grounds of excommunication which Pastor Grabau has given, page 66 in his book, for which we were supposed to have deserved the ban. Thereupon we ourselves shall come to speak further of much else in the report that is untrue.

First ground of the ban pronounced upon us:

I. Because they stubbornly asserted, contrary to the 15th Article of the Augsburg Confession, that the Christian order is sin, a cause and means to sin.

Answer: This "Christian order" consisted in this, that every member of our congregation able to work had to pay one shilling monthly into the church treasury. (See in Grabau's report p. 59.) This order was set up in the year 1845 by pastor and congregation. But already at the first meeting that was held on account of it there was dissension. This order was to apply to all, without exception of the poor. Pastor Grabau says the contrary! (See p. 59.) Therefore the man of small means, Sigmaier, rose and said: As a poor man he could not be held equal to the rich, and several times offered a smaller gift. But Pastor Grabau insisted upon this: Either he should give a shilling, or he should say he could give nothing. Sigmaier held to his offer and Pastor Grabau to his demand. Thereupon Sigmaier, alas! fell into his natural heat and gave Pastor Grabau to understand that he sought not the sheep, but only the wool. Pastor Grabau, however, gave two elders the order to lead Sigmaier out through the door, which also happened. (Why, then, did Pastor Grabau not report this also?) Such conduct on the part of Pastor Grabau made other members attentive, and another man, by the name of Wander, excused himself regarding the shilling with similar reasons as Sigmaier. He received for answer: "Land or no land, debts or no debts, a shilling must be paid." Since it would now come to no peaceable agreement, Pastor Grabau asked whether we had not bound ourselves to the old Saxon or Pomeranian church order, to let ourselves be governed accordingly? We answered, Yes! Pastor Grabau now read an article from it, in which it was said that of the goods of the church nothing may be given as a gift to the poor. If he who collects the money wished to give it away, he must pay it out of his own pocket.— Sutter, a man not poor, intimated to Pastor Gr. that here the discussion was of such goods as were already the church's own, which perhaps a poor man had bought at auction; but with them a church fund was only now to be established, and therefore that provision of the church order was not applicable. To this Pastor Grabau answered not a word, took the Holy Scripture and opened to Exodus 30:13-15, where the Israelites, rich or poor, also had to give an equal tax to the temple.——

The kind reader may imagine for himself how "firm" this order stood, which from the beginning was set up amid so much strife, and how it was set up at all. The manner and way fill us with indignation when we call it back to memory. Pastor Grabau seems to have forgotten it, since he is silent about all this, and naturally the others in the Ministerium cannot know it, as also the "6 synodal deputies" cannot. Therefore it is folly that people draw up a report of which they can know nothing, because they dwell in places far distant. Or does Pastor Grabau wish to give us the lie and to trouble the water before the people? Then let him judge himself what we must hold him to be in our conscience. That this order "stood firm" for a whole year and longer is not true. Set up it was; but amid much reluctance, and amid this it was also kept for a time—and not kept. Therefore even the church fathers came upon the reasonable thought of rather abolishing this order. (See p. 60.)

Since now the minds were ceaselessly disquieted by this order, Pastor Grabau believed he must work by the sermons toward making people more favorably inclined to this order. But this produced the opposite. Pastor Grabau is right when he says on p. 66 that people became averse to the penitential sermons and to confession, for the so-called "Christian order" was everywhere the In-