# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 07 11_S91
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

threatens a falling away from all religion, which here and there has already found its heralds. The constitution of our Evangelical Lutheran Church is to be remade; in what direction this is for the most part desired lies plain to see. Attempts are being made to render the confessional writings of the Church null and void. The state shares the fate of the Church; the striving after unbounded freedom has turned against the foundations of both and seeks to shake them. Confusion increases daily. A dull rumbling, brooding over the downfall of what now exists, spreads further and further. The daily papers fan the glowing coals: "One event chases another." The Protestant, or so-called Friends of Light, come forward with ever greater boldness. In almost all the notable cities of Saxony they hold assemblies. Fiery speeches are delivered, whose theme is: light, freedom, reform, progress, the symbolical books — a paper pope, and so forth. To what unbelievable degree doctrinal license and impudence have reached among the preachers of Saxony is proven by the public, though fruitless, complaint of a member of the First Chamber: a clergyman is said to have baptized a child in the name of the world-spirit, the living spirit, and the hovering spirit; and when the child's father complained to the superintendent about it, he was turned away. Another clergyman has baptized a child in the name of the great spirit. Similar things, says the Pilgrim, could still be enumerated. The great hypocrite, Chief Court Preacher von Ammon, who in his Development of Christianity into a World Religion undermines every article of the Augsburg Confession and represents the faith of the fathers as a narrowness of their time, expressed, in the First Chamber, over this outrage — brought forward and confirmed by three members of the Chamber — nothing but his utmost surprise, and that was all. The present Diet of Saxony is being deluged with floods of petitions from the party of upheaval, to which many preachers belong, which in part openly and directly move for a sifting of the articles of faith and for the abolition of the oath of office of preachers and teachers, and in part for the introduction of a presbyterial constitution with the power to make changes even in the articles of faith. This party has especially zealous representatives in the Second Chamber of the Assembly of the Estates. The Saxon government has thus far offered measured resistance to the violent pressure of those who work toward the overthrow not merely of the Church's constitution but also of the Church's doctrine. But it is doubted whether it will continue to be able, or resolved, to do so. Since December of last year the rumor has circulated that the government intends to propose that clergymen appointed in the future be obligated to God's Word and to the principles of our Church as they are contained and attested in the symbolical books — an ambiguous formula, which would indeed grant preachers the greatest liberty of doctrine, but would deliver the congregation entirely up to the preachers' arbitrary will.

A significant event in the midst of this fateful time is the resignation from office of the consistorial councilor and superintendent at Glaucha, Dr. Rudelbach, coming precisely at the close of the past church year. He himself explains, in his printed farewell sermon, what in particular determined him to take this step. Not only are abuses crying to heaven tolerated here in our Church (what evangelical teacher's heart would not have bled to see before his eyes such unbridled licentiousness, laying hands even on the Word and the Sacraments!), but public measures are being proposed, and have in part already been pushed through, to open our Church to an antichristian party. My hand, he says, would have had to wither had I signed even the smallest letter of such measures, which will unfold with lightning speed, and by virtue of my position I would have been called upon to carry them into execution. I was bound by a holy, inviolable oath to protect the confession of our Church with word and deed, with body and life, goods and blood. Only one course remained open to me: protest; my resignation from office is that protest.

Another preacher has likewise laid down his office. Among the writings recently published in Leipzig is a "Lament of a Departing Preacher, or a Scripture- and Experience-Based Consideration of Whether an Evangelical Teacher in the Kingdom of Saxony Can at Present Undertake and Administer a Spiritual Office Without Violating His Conscience."

Such a dreadful picture did the above two papers sketch; yet they also furnish traces of a zeal for the old faith reawakening here and there in Saxony. The gruesome shape of unbelief helps many a man to open his eyes. In Saxon Lusatia, 5,000 peasants have brought a petition to the Assembly of the Estates, asking it to see to it that the swearing-in of the clergy and the binding of schoolteachers to the biblical doctrine, as it is contained in the Augsburg Confession, the Small Catechism, and the other symbolical books, continue henceforth as now, and that not the least thing be changed in the wording of the oath as it now stands. These peasant petitions are said to have caused a tremendous stir. Among the preachers, too, a not inconsiderable number are said to be rallying anew around the banner of the Lutheran confessions and to be willing and resolved to enter a struggle of suffering for its sake. Testimony to this are two sermons, the one: "Why It Behooves Us to Hold Fast to the General Confession of Our Evangelical Lutheran Church," by Wildenhahn, pastor at Bautzen; the other: "Our Confessional Writings, Precious Jewels of the Evangelical Lutheran Church," by Apelt, pastor at Cunewalde near Bautzen. The Pilgrim from Saxony, too, seems to have adopted a more decided direction. Its editor, Pastor Meurer, writes: as soon as the confessions of the Church are publicly and formally attacked, so that the official oath of the preachers is set aside and rendered null, then a great separation must take place; the faithful will stand firm with the Lord's help; the Lutheran Church will indeed cease to be an established territorial church, but that will prove a blessing, for it will then become free, and the truth will win the victory precisely where it seems to be going down to defeat.

We Saxons in America are indeed likewise convinced that such a separation must take place there, and indeed should long since have taken place; for although the swearing-in of preachers upon the symbolical books has hitherto still occurred in Saxony, and the symbolical books still held legal validity, yet — not to speak of countless other abuses — false doctrines flatly contradicting the Lutheran confession had long since been introduced into the Church, particularly through the liturgical agendas and the hymnal, which a preacher, upon entering his office, had to approve by accepting the agenda and the hymnal, or at least tacitly countenance, and only on this condition could he enter upon his office. What else did he do, then, but violate his oath to the symbolical books at the very outset of his ministry, perhaps unwittingly? It is hard to understand how this has not been recognized by the preachers now returning to Lutheranism. Far be it from us to charge them with a knowing unfaithfulness; but it seems as though their eyes were, as it were, held shut, so that they do not yet clearly perceive this contradiction in which they stand with themselves. Yet let us not be anxious; God can soon do great things. Nicodemus did not remain fearful forever, but became a hero at the very moment when all the disciples fled.

It befits us, however, not to be indifferent onlookers, but to help our brothers fight through prayer. How negligent and lukewarm this intercession for our fellow believers scattered over there may often be! Must we not all blush? May these reports be an encouragement to us all.

Th. Brohm.

(Communicated.)
Dedication of an Evangelical Lutheran Church.

On June 14 of this year, the first Sunday after Trinity, the German Evangelical Lutheran congregation on Bonhomme Road in St. Louis County, Central Township, 12 miles northwest of St. Louis, had the joy of most solemnly dedicating its newly built, though not yet fully completed, little church. For two years the congregation, which had separated from a united, so-called Evangelical congregation for the sake of its confession, had been obliged to hold its worship gatherings here and there in private houses amid manifold disturbances. On the appointed