# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1856_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 29

unswervingly. On the whole, moreover, our authorities keep to the old way: they let us
go on quietly and undisturbed. A sharp accusation against me on account of a funeral
has come to nothing at all. Yet the old prohibitions still stand, and it therefore
depends largely on the will of the subordinate officials whether they choose to observe
them or not. Thus Hein preached four weeks ago here in Steeden; by chance our local
church members had just then had a falling-out with the local mayor, and the very next
day the gendarme already came to ask after Hein, who, however, had fortunately gone
away again. But these are only petty vexations. In the main we live fairly
unmolested. So it seems, then, to be the Lord's will and counsel for us, for the present
still to let us go a more quiet and hidden way in patience, until the time is ripe for
more decisive things. In this we may rejoice that the Lord governs us so very graciously
and with such constant forbearance, letting us come through with so light a burden,
while our dear brethren in Baden must fight their way through such heavy struggle and
suffering, until the time comes that will bring them room and a path to fully free
development.

Baden. A truce now appears to have set in in the church struggle in Baden; but it
only appears so — a real peace will not yet come about, for it would now rest only on
false compromises, on united (unionistic) essence in another form and manner than
before. — Much is being said of "leniency, which is to be exercised," of the suspension
of the harshest police measures which have so long been carried out against the
Lutheran clergy; a few sentences of punishment for official acts of the latter appear
really to have been withdrawn; a police sergeant received a reprimand for having
forcibly dispersed some women who had gathered to hear a sermon read; here and there
Lutheran baptisms and services are also being permitted, provided they are not held
quite publicly, and so forth. But this happens for the most part evidently only
because, on the side of the Union and the authorities, one lives in the hope that the
united General Synod, which closed a few weeks ago, will also have this result: that
the separated Lutherans, surprised and satisfied by the resolutions of this General
Synod, will unite again with the united Church. These resolutions have not yet been
published at all; the main report on the synod is not to appear until the month of
October; we could therefore not yet report on it; — but what has become known of it,
and on which the hope of a reunion is grounded, are the following points: 1. The new
catechism contains substantial portions from the small Lutheran catechism alongside
smaller portions from the Heidelberg Reformed one, and alongside united (unionistic)
doctrine of the sacraments; 2. the question of confession has been resolved in such a
way that no longer unconditionally free, but believing scriptural inquiry is to be
permitted, bound by the Augsburg Confession and by the Lutheran and Reformed
catechisms, which are to have equal normative authority as confessional writings;
3. the new order of worship, which has appropriated pretty much the liturgy of our
beautiful Lutheran services, so that the service begins with the confession of sins,
and the reading of the epistle and gospel pericopes and the closing prayer take place
at the altar, is, because it has met with widespread resistance, to be introduced only
gradually, following thorough instruction of the congregations and only with the full
consent of the latter. These are the principal results of the united General Synod, as
they have been summarized by the Baden newspapers. — In addition one hears that these
results came about in part through fear, not through free, joyful consent. — For an
enormous expectation had indeed preceded this synod. For years already people had
known how to quiet uneasy consciences and troubled minds with it. Wherever a leaning
toward the Lutheran Church was suspected (and, unfortunately, also feared!), people
would call out to them: "Wait, only wait! the coming General Synod will remove all
your scruples, will make everything as Lutheran as possible!" — In the General Synod
itself, those who resisted — for example, the gentlemen of the theological faculty at
Heidelberg, who would "not be constrained," who did not wish to force free scriptural
inquiry into a