# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S882
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

382 MISSIONS °

figure goes down as low as 0.1 times a year. If the members of
the church do not attend services nor participate in the celebration
of the Lord’s Supper, one can hardly look for much activity in the
way of Christ-centered work,

Although the crass Liberalism of pre-war years has been to
a large extent overcome, yet the testimony of the churches in mat-
ters of doctrine and confessions is not strong. One often has the
impression that even where the church is Lutheran in its con-
fession it contents itself in stating the truth without exposing the
error. Furthermore, the churches seem to feel content with their
confessional basis as long as the pastor has rendered lip service
to the ordination vow, subscribing to the Lutheran Confessions;
no effort is made to enforce doctrinal discipline. Thus we arrive
at a situation where the one Landeskirche maybe strictly Lutheran
in its confessional standards, but actually show very little of that
Lutheranism in its congregational life. On the other hand, another
provincial Church may be lax in its doctrinal standards but show
evidences of Christian faith among its membership. One cannot
judge a provincial Church by the formal profession of its church
government nor by the piety of its individual members. There is
nothing comparable to an American Lutheran congregation in the
provincial churches of Germany.

Another phase of German church life which needs to be touched
upon is the position of the theological faculties in the life of the
Church. In the first place it must be emphasized that the theo-
logical faculty, like all other faculties of a German university, is
still state-supported and state-controlled. That means that the
churches as such have no control over the institutions which train
their future clergy. Although the members of some of these
faculties are pledged to the Lutheran Confessions, the idea of
academic freedom has practically destroyed the value of such
subscription. Furthermore, each professor, in order to prove
that he has reached his conclusions by independent research, seems
to present a slight variation in his theology. Thus theological
faculties are by no means a unit, but a competitive group of private
teachers of theology. Nevertheless, in circles of the Lutheran
Church which wish to be truly Lutheran a pre-eminently adverse
influence is exercised by the theological faculties, because they
are the only accredited agency for the training of the future clergy
in most provincial churches.

THE Free CHurcHES
The provincial churches (Landeskirchen) are fortunately not

the only Lutheran church organizations in Germany. Since 1817,
when the effort of the Prussian king to amalgamate the Lutheran