# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1009
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Supplement to No. 10, Volume 9, of the Lutheraner.

(Submitted by Pastor Fürbringer in Freistatt and Kirchhain, Wisc.)

Historical-Theological Contribution

toward a more complete judgment of the disputes between the Grabauians and the so-called Missourians.

Rightly do the movements of the Lutheran Church in Prussia since 1830 rank among the most important events of church history in our time, and a part not to be overlooked is formed by the emigrations of Prussian Lutherans to America. At the head of the conflict in which the confession-faithful sons of the Church of the present day are entangled with their enemies, the Prussian Lutheran Church has stood until now—this cannot be denied—already compelled thereto by its relations with the State; who then would not wish to give attentive regard also to that part of it which has emigrated to this country?

It was in the autumn of the year 1839 that the first ecclesiastically ordered company of Prussian Lutherans landed on America's free soil, under the leadership of J. Andr. A. Grabau, a man who, with laborious self-sacrifice amid manifold sufferings and persecutions, had taken up the cause of the souls sorely oppressed by the united State government in Prussia. However one may think of this zealous, conviction-faithful preacher's conduct, even at that time, toward brethren not wholly agreeing with him: the gifts which God had bestowed upon him, and the energetic activity which he displayed, deserve the full respect of everyone. Unhappily, however, already in Hamburg he came into conflict with a portion of Silesians, whose preacher was Pastor Krause, who had hurried on ahead to America, and he thrust them back from the enjoyment of the Sacrament of the Altar and from church fellowship on account of an outward matter in which they wished to maintain their Christian liberty, even women among them who were sick and near their confinement. (There are still living at present in Wisconsin heads of families who at that time had written privately from Silesia to the master tailor Schulthes, their countryman who had already been sent ahead to Hamburg, that he should only see to it and take care that they got away, no matter whither he might choose, without his having thereby, as they themselves testify, received authorization from the congregation as such, to enter into negotiations with Mr. Angas in London concerning a removal to Australia, which he nevertheless did, and upon which Grabau based his later procedure. Now, and this was the first disastrous step, with which the blessing and the peace of God departed from the church association under Grabau; for because the LORD turned His friendly countenance away from those who persisted in this sin, there followed a chain of dissensions, inner disturbances and unhappy aberrations, which, as a warning, announced to them the dying out of spiritual vital power and the sinking into an insignificant, transitory sect.) The then Territory of Wisconsin was designated as the chief place of settlement; a portion of the emigrants therefore betook themselves thither at once, and for the most part the poorer remained behind in Buffalo, because an easier livelihood was to be found there. Grabau, however, had not been content with such a division. When now the former, for the most part farmers, had settled in Wisconsin under unspeakable hardships and toils, partly in the city of Milwaukie, then just coming into being, partly farther in the bush, they requested Grabau in a letter to come to them and to serve them with Word and Sacraments. After he had answered that he could not, they asked in a second letter what they were then to do, children were lying unbaptized among them, young people wished to be married, the sick longingly desired the Holy Supper, etc. And Grabau neglected altogether to answer them. Compelled by necessity they chose, what in such a case surely cannot be counted highly against them, and what was by no means disapproved at that time by Captain von Rohr, now a pastor and member of the Buffalo Synod, who was among them—a former Pomeranian schoolteacher, by the name of Luck, who at that time was again teaching the children in Milwaukie, that he should in the meantime render them the most necessary official services with the reading of sermons and administration of the Sacraments, until they should have called a preacher more thoroughly prepared for it, in doing which they had even then, what also would not yet have been contrary to Grabau's will, directed their attention to Missouri. That at the same time here and there, through presumptuous, disorderly or also weak minds, an inclination to sectarian doings showed itself, will strike no one who knows the poor human heart, capable of nothing but wrong paths; and if the people, left to themselves and standing in the zeal of their first love, had been led from the beginning with wisdom and pastoral faithfulness and had been set right gently, in the Spirit of Christ, much that was disorderly would have been avoided and manifold evil prevented. A great part, among them not a few honest souls and earnest Christians, joined afterward, in a hasty manner, the Cand. Klügel, who came to Wisconsin as a preacher in 1843; others entered into fellowships by themselves, etc. Some among them went too far in censure, even against approved writings of the Lutheran Church, e. g. against the Dresden Catechism. A second letter from Grabau rebuked those in the city as well as those in the bush with severity, whereby they were moved to the greater indignation. In order to settle again the disturbance thus arisen and to put the whole in order, there appeared soon afterward, at the end of the year 1840, the well-known Pastoral Letter of Grabau, which, instead of healing and pacifying, rather called forth a great schism, which was all the more explicable from this, that Grabau's colleague in office, Krause, who had traveled back to Germany, had already earlier approved the choice of such a provisional substitute in the ministry and in a letter had named the congregation elder Bierosch for his Silesians to that end; for this was indeed nothing remarkable, in view of the doctrine of Dr. Scheibel on the presbyterial constitution, which was current among them, though abnormal, and in view of the distressed condition of need which the Lutherans in Prussia experience, and by von Rohr and his fellow believers in Wisconsin, among whom were especially many Pomeranians, the choice of Luck was thereupon also resolved. The people in the bush for the most part agreed with the doctrine of the Pastoral Letter; the townspeople asserted a difference of opinion, until after Krause's arrival they separated into two great parts, which from then on stood opposed to one another. In the summer of 1841, namely, he had meanwhile returned to America, and soon afterward, first called by all together, but then, misled by Grabau, merely acknowledging the call of those who agreed with the Pastoral Letter, arrived in Wisconsin, who unhappily widened the breach by following entirely in the latter's footsteps. In the summer of 1843 the Missourian critique of the Pastoral Letter appeared, and the doctrine of Luther and his successors concerning Church and Ministry was drawn more and more out of its oblivion. In vain did Grabau and Krause contend against it. Yet the relation between these and the Missouri-Saxon pastors was by no means already an unfriendly one. From the year 1844 there is still a letter of Krause and of Kindermann, who in the year 1843 emigrated from Prussia to Wisconsin with a strong company of fellow believers, in which he put off the filial congregation at Milwaukie with the prospect of a preacher from Missouri. All the less could it be surprising that the Saxon co-religionists ordained the Cand. Geyer at the request of a part of the Lutherans who had come with Kindermann and settled near Watertown, and sent him to them in Wisconsin, in the late autumn of the year 1844; for their own former leader, with whom they, judging impartially concerning the Pastoral-