# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S1320
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 849

years hundreds of thousands of dollars were channeled to the
Free Churches for orphanages to house refugee children, for bar-
racks to replace burned or bombed-out churches, for temporary
structures for a college and seminary, and for the printing of
Christian literature.

Furthermore, in the past three years 16 barrack churches
bought by the Emergency Planning Council have ‘given new places
of worship to Free Church congregations. In September of 1949
grants were made to support refugee missions of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Alt-Preussen, to support refugee pastors, and
to assist deacons. Allocations were also made for the rehabilitation
of projects of Alsace Churches. A grant of 250,000 D.M.’s from
the Emergency Planning Council established a Church Extension
Fund, from which those congregations in fellowship with us can
borrow funds to rebuild their homeland and church buildings.

Breslau Synod

Another church body with which the Emergency Planning
Council has come in contact and to which have been contributed
emergency funds is the Breslau Free Church. Originally this
Church had about 80 pastors and 60,000 members. Its constituency
was located mostly in Silesia (Schlesien) and Russian-occupied
territory.

For many years there was little or no personal church relation-
ship between the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Germany
and the Breslau Synod. But after a series of meetings on doctrinal
discussions, originally arranged by Dr. J. W. Behnken, were held,
pulpit and altar fellowship between these two bodies was

established.
The Landeskirche

Eighty-five per cent of all Protestantism in Germany is
nominally Lutheran. Before the war there were eighteen various
Lutheran bodies in Germany. Many of these do not use the name
“Lutheran” in their official name, but call themselves “Evangelisch.”
Before the war these eighteen bodies were organized into a loose
federation called the Evangelical Lutheran -Church in Germany.

During the war there was organized a federation of both
Reformed and Lutheran churches under the name “The Confessing
Church.” The purpose of this federation was to resist the encroach-
ments of the State upon the Church. This organization was not
organized along confessional lines. Oo

However, immediately after the war a strong movement to:
make this war-born Confessing Church an organization which
would take in all Protestant church bodies was organized under
the aegis of Bishop Wurm of Wuerttemberg, backed by the World

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