# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S74
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

76 THE CONVENTION ESSAY

too, would emulate their spirit of service and sacrifice
and give also all in His service!
Remembering them we join in the words of St. Paul
to Philemon in verses 4-7:
I’m always thanking my God when I mention you in
my prayers, because I hear how you believe in the Lord
Jesus and love Him and all the holy people, so that, know-
ing every good thing you have in Christ, you vigorously
share your faith. Your love delighted and encouraged

me very much because you, my fellow Christian, have
refreshed the hearts of our holy people.

Today we thank God for His love to those who went
before us and vigorously shared their faith with us,
making this assembly possible. Amen.

II

Missouri’s Founding

“How quaint.” “How sweet!” we say as we look at
the faded wedding photographs of our great-grandpar-
ents! But how often do we take the time to go beyond
the photograph and look at the lives and loves of our
antecedents? Too often this is the mistake we make
when we look at our church organization, The Lutheran
Church — Missouri Synod. As we do with an aged
photograph, we give our church a passing glance and
immediately go back to the business at hand. We
naively assume that four or five generations ago the
church had no problems and that nothing really ever
happened. This attitude reminds one of the timid old
bachelor who was encouraged to seek a wife. He
glanced at his parents and innocently replied: “Papa
married Mama, and now you want me to get married
to a total stranger!”

Let us now look at some of the steps of the “court-
ship” necessary before The Lutheran Church — Missouri
Synod could be organized 126 years ago.

Back in Europe, there were three theological pres-
sures which affected the founders:

1, Orthodoxy —a soundness of doctrine as revealed
in the Word of God and as enunciated in the
Lutheran Confessions;

2. Pietism — with a deep concern for the develop-
ment of the spiritual life, less emphasis of the
intellectual and more of the emotional aspects —
a religion of feeling rather than belief or confes-
sion;

3. Rationalism — which challenged both orthodoxy
and pietism, emphasizing that neither the emotion
nor Scriptures, but reason ought to be the final
authority in all religion. Common sense must
dictate belief and morality, they held. Under ra-
tionalism the Bible was studied as any other lit-
erature.

Orthodoxy had been fairly dominant in the church
up to about 1675, when pietism was on the increase.
But rationalism soon challenged both so that an ob-
server commented that by 1819 four fifths of the edu-
cated class, one fifth of the middle class and one third
of the peasants had been converted to rationalism. (Ru-

dolf Herrmann, Thuringische Kirchengeschichte [Wei-
mar; Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1947] 2, p. 388)

The rationalism, then active, was considered to be
an emancipation from the authority of Scripture and the
Confessions. This stance was typically expressed by
G. J. Planck (1751—1833), a professor at Géttingen:

Not only the forms, but also the basic ideas of the older
theologians have been almost universally abandoned. We
are aware that we have departed from them. And no one
any longer fears that the spirit of our theology could on
its own ever return to or even be forced back to them.
For this reason these ideas are regarded as entirely in-
consequential antiquities. [G. J. Planck, Geschichte der
Entstehung ... unsers protestantischen Lehrbegriffs,
1796, IV, p. vii, quoted in Emanuel Hirsch, Lutherstudien
(Giitersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1954), II, p. 123]

When the officialdom of the state churches of some
of the German provinces joined hands in supporting
rationalism, and attempted to force the Lutherans and
the Reformed churches into a union in 1817, at first
criticisms, and subsequently violent reactions, set in.
Parish pastors, laymen, and university professors op-
posed the rationalism and dictation from the state. The
new movement was variously called “The Awakening,”
“Old Lutheranism,” and “Confessionalism.”

On the eve of the Reformation in 1817, Klaus Harms,
(1778—1855) one of the foremost Lutheran theologians
in the early part of the 19th century, spoke out forcefully
with his own new set of 95 theses. He described the
conditions in the church:

Reason is running wildly through the Lutheran church;
it tears Christ from the altar, flings God’s Word out of
the pulpit, throws slime into the water of Baptism... .
[Klaus Harms, Lebensbeschreibung (Kiel: Akademischer
Buchhandling, 1851), p. 237)

The number of clergy and laymen returning to the
study of the Lutheran Confessions, declaring their ad-
herence to the old faith and rising in opposition to the
church and state, was constantly growing. Most of the
worship services and schools were conducted by ration-
alistic clergymen and teachers. As the only possible
escape from the rationalistic pressure, confessional Lu-
therans began to conduct services in private homes.
Laymen frequently were called on to conduct worship
services because of a shortage of orthodox clergymen.
Pressures began to mount, and the governing authori-
ties did not hesitate to suspend orthodox clergymen
from their pastoral offices, and even to send troops into
the services, disrupting the worship and arresting the
worshipers.

May I share with you just one example of rationalis-
tic preaching? In his Christmas sermon on the familiar
Gospel: “And they came in haste and found Mary and
Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger,” one of the
rationalistic pastors exhorted his farmers to exercise
greater care in feeding their cattle! (Max von Boehn:
Biedermeier Deutschland 1815—57 [Berlin: Bruno Ca-
sirer, 1911], pp. 211—214)

At the same time, pietistic, evangelically minded stu-
dents gathered for personal devotion at the universities.
Such a “holy club” existed at the University of Leipzig
which included students Walther, Fuerbringer, Brohm,
Keyl, Buerger, Buenger, and others. With deeply dis-

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