# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S348
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

348 Miscellaneous Church News.

against Reformed and unionistic tendencies at the conference at Stade in the
year 1853, gave rise to the dispute with the Göttingen faculty. — The
consistory at Osnabrück likewise has church government to exercise over
Reformed congregations, namely those in the lower county of Lingen, which,
together with the Lutheran congregation at Lingen, stand under the Reformed
superintendent there. In one of these congregations in the Lingen district,
namely Freren, there even exists a kind of union by right.

It certainly did not belong among the impossibilities to bring about a
remedy for such abuses — even though such things are always easier to
recognize and to wish for than actually to carry out; but here there is not
even, in all circles, the insight yet present that truly great evils exist. It
might well be feasible for the Reformed congregations in the territory of
Plesse near Göttingen to join the Reformed confederation that exercises its
own independent church government, to which, within the Kingdom, the
congregations at Celle, Göttingen, Hanover, and Münden belong, and, outside
the country, also those at Bückeburg and Braunschweig. Why should the few
and mostly very small congregations of the Lingen district not likewise be
placed under the Reformed church council of the county of Bentheim, where
the Reformed confession is dominant? All that would be needed would be
for the matter to be recognized as necessary in the highest quarters, and then
for the will to be present to carry it out. —

There has long been talk of introducing a supreme consistory among us.
We should welcome the same, on the condition that capable men be placed in
it — not merely learned, but also Christian and ecclesiastically decided men
— and that the position of the highest church authority be, not subordinate
to the ministry, but coordinate with it, as is the case in Mecklenburg and,
more or less, in Prussia as well. The princely "church government" may be
closely bound up with the Lutheran church from its very birth; but the fact
that the church authorities do not stand directly under the sovereign, but
instead remain wholly dependent on the ministry of ecclesiastical and
educational affairs, is of quite recent date.

May the Lord provide for this and all else among us. His will be done!
To Him alone be the glory!

Miscellaneous Church News.

The general conference to which repeated calls have been issued in earlier
numbers of "Lehre und Wehre" took place on the days of October 1 to 7 of
this year. There took part in it 54 preachers and 19 laymen, representing
four synods, namely those of Ohio, of Pennsylvania, of New York, and of
Missouri. A considerable number of letters, which had come in from
preachers and laymen of the synods named, as well as from those of
Tennessee, Wisconsin (Scandinavian), and Iowa (English), likewise assured
the conference that many dear brothers, who