# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1848_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 35 —

...to step in their place, and therefore to set up a church government
through representatives to whom they devolve their rights — as has been the
case, among other places, in our German fatherland.

As undeniable, then, as it is that our congregations had the freedom to
clothe our Synod — which assembles in their name — with some power beyond
that of the Word, following this precedent, it is nevertheless a different
question whether it would have been wise for them to do so. And I think
not — because, under our present circumstances, it is precisely by relying
solely on the power of the Word that we can confidently hope for a joyful
flourishing of our work, or rather of God's work, which we carry on. And
this is the second reason why we should and can carry on our work here with
joy, even though we possess no power but the power of the Word.

It may be that there are times and circumstances in which it benefits
the church to place the highest deliberative and regulating power in the
hands of individuals, in the hands of representatives. Who, for instance,
would want to deny that the consistories [Consistorien] in our German
fatherland were, in their time, an inexpressible blessing to the church —
especially while the prophecy of Isaiah was still being fulfilled even for
the German Lutheran church: "Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their
queens your nursing mothers" (Isaiah 49:23)? Who, further, with even a
little familiarity with history, would deny that the Swedish church, too,
built itself up gloriously under its episcopal constitution — especially as
long as men like Laurentius Petri, the famous Swedish Bible translator and
student of Luther, held the episcopal dignity, and as long as men like the
two Gustavs wore Sweden's royal crown? But if we look at the situation the
church finds itself in here, we can hardly recognize any constitution as
more wholesome than one in which the congregations govern themselves
freely, yet enter into a synodical association — as ours, by God's help,
exists among us — for mutual brotherly counsel, oversight, and assistance,
and for the united spread of the kingdom of God and the furthering of the
church's purposes generally.

It is true that, had our congregations given us full power to resolve
and ordain in their name, it might seem that it would then have been easy
for us to give all the congregations of our district the shape of genuinely
Lutheran congregations in short order, whereas under our existing
constitution our hands are, as it were, entirely tied. But it only seems
so. There may well be congregations that make use of the freedom they have
to reject our proposals, even when these are wholesome; by doing so they
certainly deprive themselves of a blessing. But what would be the
consequence if such congregations had, by joining our association,
obligated themselves to comply with all our ordinances? The exercise of our
power would lay, among them, the foundation for constant discontent, for an
ever-renewed fear of hierarchical ambitions, and so for endless friction.
In a republic such as the United States of America, where the sense of
freedom and independence is nourished so strongly in people from youth
onward, it could not fail to happen that even a well-intentioned
restriction of that freedom, going beyond the bounds God himself has set,
would provoke in many a resistance even to such ordinances as they would,
if free to accept or reject them, have...