# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S311
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 311 —

defended it. The Book of Concord, which contains our church's public
confessions of faith, was scarcely known by name to most Lutherans here, let
alone by its content. Of Luther's writings, only very few had anything in
hand at all. Most preachers still calling themselves Lutheran had adopted
the Zwinglian-Reformed false doctrines (for example, on the Holy Supper, on
holy baptism, on absolution, on original sin, etc.) and, at least many of
them, Methodist practice, or the so-called "New Measures." Most of our
congregations were therefore held together not by the one Lutheran faith,
but were mixed — that is, communities composed of Lutherans and Reformed
together. In these, agendas [liturgical orders] and hymnals had therefore in
part been introduced in which people had sought to accommodate the
unbelieving and the false-believing just as much as the believing. In
short, though the Lutheran Church in America had not fallen back into such
gross unbelief, into such open heathenism, as in almost every place in
Germany, it had nevertheless fallen away: it had thrown away the banner of
its fathers' confession, the pure doctrine entrusted to it as a jewel, had
defiled itself through spiritual whoredom with every sect, and had kept
almost nothing — except the name. Despite this dreadful condition, most
Lutherans in America still held the opinion that everything here stood
quite well — the preachers were surely no rationalists, people held plenty
of prayer meetings, revivals were surely being produced here and there, and
so on. People therefore spoke with Laodicea: "I am rich, and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing." Rev. 3:14–19. And despite the most
motley diversity in doctrine and belief found among the so-called Lutherans,
there reigned among them a peace as undisturbed (1 Thess. 5:3, cf. Ezek.
13) as among the dead of the churchyard. Each let the other be, each was
free to hold whatever views he liked; whoever merely joined in the general
tone was a dear brother."

So far "Der Lutheraner." And how faithful to the truth this description is,
everyone who lived through that time himself knows; and whoever wishes even
today to be convinced of the truth need only find the testimonies likewise
set out in "Der Lutheraner," by which the Lutheran Church of that day
believed it must hand down its own shame to posterity.

Such was the time, this in general the condition of the church, when
the foundation of our Synod was laid here in Fort Wayne. The blessing that
the Lord has laid upon it, and worked through it, will indeed only become
fully manifest on the Day of the Lord; yet even now so much already lies
plainly in view that whoever among us compares the present condition with
that of former days must cry out from the heart: Bless the Lord, and forget
not all his benefits.

Yet for one further reason I would ask the honored and dear brothers to
go back with me to the Synod's founding time, and to ask: what was it that
at that time brought together men who were in part personally unknown to
one another, in part separated from one another by great stretches of
country? What drove them to reach across the many synods lying in between,
from east and west, north and south, join hands, and come together to form
a synod of their own? What did they want — they, and all those who later
joined them, and who to this hour are bound to it not merely outwardly but
inwardly and from the heart? The first founders were