# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1851_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 181 —

Winkler through a certain Ludwig before Pastor Grabau in Buffalo, and had impetuously demanded that he join the "orthodox" [*rechtgläubige*] synod (by which, under the circumstances at the time, they could have meant none other than the Buffalo Synod); 2. that in the congregational meetings concerning this matter, the Missouri Synod was not mentioned at all.

But this claim, too, the often-mentioned brothers could not maintain, because 1. the aforesaid Ludwig did not at that time belong to the party of the complainants; 2. their appeal to the Missouri Synod for its mediation indisputably proves their confidence in it; 3. but their petition to Pastor Grabau and the Buffalo Synod for the removal of Pastor Winkler is not yet such a recognition of that church tribunal that one would have to regard it as an actual joining of the synod. It was nevertheless conceded that, for lack of evidence, it must remain undecided whether Pastor Winkler's opposing party protested against joining the Buffalo Synod or not. After these discussions, missionary Baierlein and Pastor Clöter conceded the truth of Crämer's report on this point as well.

In the fifth point of accusation they state that the three grounds for separation cited in the often-mentioned report are invalid; for:

1. Not a single case of abuse of the ban or of lust for power has been proven — rather the opposite.

2. No Christian admonition was given to Pastor Winkler by the members concerned; they only complained, demanded, and threatened.

3. Pastor Winkler had not made people wait for him to name his part of the committee; rather, after he had chosen his long before, it was the malcontents who made him wait for months, so that he often had to urge them about it; during which time they did not stop unsettling the congregation and collecting signatures for certain factional documents.

Against this, the plain facts show that Pastor Winkler at first recognized the representative of our Synod, but later, after negotiating about it with Pastor Grabau, rejected him as the representative of a synod holding false doctrine. Even if, therefore, we had no proof that Pastor Winkler acted wrongly in exercising the ban, the strongest suspicion against him already arises from the fact that, by rejecting the aforesaid committee member, he thwarted the investigation of his own case. And that Pastor Winkler acted wrongly in declaring Professor Crämer a false teacher without providing the proof so urgently demanded of him — this the brothers Baierlein and Clöter themselves conceded. But there is also evidence of how unlawfully and highhandedly Pastor Winkler proceeded in exercising the ban. As a witness there appeared the delegate of the Detroit congregation, Mr. Herbst, who gave the following account of the ban carried out against him personally: he had moved from Buffalo to Detroit because Pastor Grabau had assured him that Pastor Winkler was sound in doctrine. After he had been in Winkler's congregation for a year and a half and had spoken with Pastor Winkler several times about joining a synod, the latter had replied that he could join no synod, because he considered neither the Buffalo nor the Missouri Synod to be orthodox. Now a school association had been founded in Winkler's congregation, and toward it Mr. Herbst had committed himself with a monthly