# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S345
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Church Life in the Kingdom of Hanover. 345

a direction which does indeed have its own right, ought to be avoided. — Pietism
and Reformed character are, to be sure, interchangeable notions that nevertheless
do not entirely coincide. In Osnabrück people do wish to be Lutheran; but
they are of the opinion that the neighboring Prussians, notwithstanding their
Union, whose nature they do not understand, are so as well. They say, along
with them, that the main thing is only to believe in the Lord Jesus and to be
converted, without considering that the confession of the church is an organism
from which not even the smallest member can be sacrificed without harm to
the church itself and to the faith of individuals. In particular, two points are
all too often made by the "awakened" people in the Osnabrück region into the
criterion of Christianity and true conversion: first, attendance at "meetings,"
at which, on Sundays after services have ended, a sermon is still read and a free
prayer is spoken kneeling by one person or another, and second, the strict
observance of Sunday, in which everything and anything that might so much as
look like work — for example, carrying a letter written to someone else to its
addressee — is held to be sinful.

In East Frisia, as has already been suggested, the Lutheran church is in
danger of seeing its distinctive character greatly blurred by Reformed elements
and influences. The congregations toward Holland are predominantly
Reformed, those toward the north and east more Lutheran. But even in the
Lutheran churches there is no altar to be found, only the Reformed table; and
among the Lutherans, until quite recently, confession and absolution before
the celebration of the Holy Supper have threatened to dwindle into a mere
preparatory sermon, godparents at Holy Baptism and funeral sermons at deaths
are almost unheard-of things, and the church order in force has fallen into
complete oblivion. Even though the Lutherans still insist on taking the
sacrament only in Lutheran churches, it nevertheless frequently happens that
Reformed people also present themselves for the Holy Supper at Lutheran
altars. Indeed, in the district of Aurich there is said to be a congregation,
Bedekaspel, in which the majority of the people are Lutheran while the pastor
and schoolmaster are Reformed. The mission, for which considerable
contributions (7,000 to 8,000 thalers annually) are raised, is carried on jointly
by Lutherans and Reformed, and down to the most recent times Lutheran
mission institutions (Leipzig and Hermannsburg) have not been supported at
all. Much the same holds for the Bible society as for the mission society. The
consistory at Aurich consists of two lay and four clerical assessors, some
Lutheran and some Reformed, and indeed in such a way that the Reformed
general superintendent examines the Lutheran candidates in certain subjects,
without the same relationship applying for the Reformed candidates as well.
For these, the theological examination is held exclusively before the
ecclesiastical body that exists for their confession outside the consistory, the
"Coetus," whose founder was already Johannes a Lasco (†1560), and which is
now formed by all the Reformed clergy of East Frisia, with the