# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 19_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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be seized by a world-church that is forming, — all that is not to be taken into account at all in comparison with the oppressive conditions such as we had, where the Church, precisely because it was regarded from above as a state institution, and because it was hampered from below by the mass of those who had fallen away from its principle, indeed did not even know it, could not move freely in its own laws given it by God, except in preaching and in the pastoral care of individuals. I will only tell you how the conditions among us in Hanover will, to all appearance, take shape. A few days ago the great pastoral conference was assembled here, this time more numerously than ever before, since all earnest men feel that at this moment it is a matter of something weighty, of a question of life. There Pastor Petri presented his view as follows: as soon as the State, even formally, has rejected Christianity as the fundamental condition of its existence — as soon as the right of the government to conduct the church government lapses; but for the present, he thought, so far as I still remember, the measures from above, invalid in themselves, were to be legalized by acceptance on our part, provided they did not touch the unimpaired standing of the Confession: he seemed to mean that the preliminaries to a synod to be convened, which the government is arranging, would have to be accepted on our part, in order that in this way a transition from the previous government to a new, purely churchly one might be prepared. And that seemed also to be the prevailing opinion of all those assembled, at least I recall no voice against it. Petri was authorized, as soon as measures became known to him (who sits at the nearest source) which made quick action necessary, to give notice of them at once, and to call together a similar assembly like the Whitsuntide conference. The intention of our Ministry of Worship (the former Cabinet Councillor Braun stands at its head) is this: a commission, which has already met, is to deliberate on the preliminaries to a preliminary synod to be convened shortly; this preliminary synod will consist of about as many clergymen as laymen; so far as I still remember, every clergyman and one member of the congregation were to vote for such a synod (?). This preliminary synod will then deliberate on the synodical and presbyterial constitution to be adopted. A similar course seems to be taken also in Prussia; in Prussia the confusion on account of the Union is, to be sure, more hopeless than with us. Twenty to thirty pastors at the conference at Gnadau are said to have requested the Minister to dissolve the Union. Also in Breslau a Lutheran secession is said to be preparing through Oehler; but I know nothing more exact about that. At any rate the Union in Prussia, this artificial structure, as it seems to me, will collapse under the present conditions. By our Hanoverian Ministry of Worship, meanwhile, rather drastic churchly measures have already been taken, namely: from now on the Consistory is to propose to the congregations three candidates each, for them to choose from at pleasure; the Ministry did not consult the Consistory at all in this, ostensibly because it is not a purely churchly matter, at least not one that would require churchly consent.

If our Lutheran Church is only soon released from its present bond with the State, then without question an organic connection with the Lutheran Church of all lands will also be established, and I think, too, it cannot be otherwise than that all hitherto existing Christian private societies for the purposes of missions, charity, etc., will be organically incorporated into the Church. — Prof. Dorner, now at Bonn, has in this time published a pamphlet in which he sketches the outlines of a German Evangelical national church to be formed, but at bottom he wants nothing other than a grand Union of all existing Protestant Confessions and of all those yet arising, as he says, uniting them in the evangelical principle with the existing one, even if he does not strive for this goal with conscious intention. All Confessions are to retain their special form, yet nevertheless to join together in a common Confession which contains merely the consensus, and in a common central representation and central government, so that in his opinion distinctiveness and community are beautifully joined together. That no honest Lutheran will agree to such proposals goes without saying. We shall in no way allow ourselves to be pressed by the distress of the times, in order to be quantitatively more considerable, to give up anything of our Confession, even only indirectly. Let all harshness be far from us in this time of common distress; but it seems to me that the love which we owe also to the Reformed as Christians can then only be pure and undisturbed if we do not unite ourselves with them in church fellowship against God. Such proposals as Dorner's rest in the end upon this, that the so-called consensus, or rather lifeless extract from the divergent Confessions, is the more general and therefore higher, in which the particular must gradually be equalized, in order that it may attain the so-called higher unity.

Petri is at this time of great importance through his so considerable cybernetic talent (gift of government); he is at present also, as it seems, the point of mediation through which we Hanoverian Lutherans are chiefly in connection with those of all other Lutheran lands of Germany. Our Consistory is now counselless and helpless, as it seems to me; "it is too late" — this fateful word seems to apply also to it; God grant that some persons from it may, through the distress of the times, come to a decisive act of faith.

(Sent in by P. Brohm.)

How Should a Christian Regard the Well-known Events in Europe, Especially in Germany?

(Continuation.)

We have sought in the foregoing to show why a Christian cannot rejoice with the so-called strivings for freedom in Germany, namely, already on account of their revolutionary character; we now add, also for this reason, because they are the ripened fruit of an evil tree, unbelief. That is not hard to prove. Revolution can in itself never be a fruit of faith; for a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit; but that revolution is no good fruit we have proved above.

A people that humbly bows under God's Word will never rebel, even if it stands under a harsh government; but if faith has vanished, it is natural that the lusts of pride, of self-will, of caprice break out in rebellion. This spirit of unbelief now also makes itself known in all public acts in Germany. Nothing but ideas of reason pervade the intellectual atmosphere, all the leading men who are working at the reshaping of Germany are decided "friends of light"; in the debates of the Diet no word gives God the honor, nor is God invoked for His blessing; the old venerable ceremonies of homage have been abolished, and perhaps a "long live N. N.!" or a "Hurrah!" takes the place of solemn oaths; all worldly affairs are conducted as though they were the highest good; the German Diet, in its strivings for progress, has abolished the death penalty; in the same assembly the most scandalous quarrels and abuses and even challenges to duels occurred; beardless boys, students and gymnasium pupils, instead of being subject to the elders, as Peter exhorts, behave as the lords and saviors of Germany. Hand in hand with the political upheavals goes a complete annihilation of all that was still left in the Church of the faith of the fathers; they demand the abolition of the churchly symbols where they still existed in name; even the demand for the separation of Church and State, desirable as it may be under present circumstances, has its ground not in the conviction of the unscriptural mixing of the spiritual and temporal government, or of the incapacity of unbelieving magistrates to be foster-fathers and nursing-mothers of the Church, but rather in the striving for unbounded caprice in matters of faith. The friends of light have won for themselves a right to speak in the Church. One sees the axes looking in from above, as one hews in a forest, and they hew down all its carved work with hatchet and axes. They will not rest, if the LORD permit, until they have made Jerusalem into a heap of stones