# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S77
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 77 —

the circumstances prevailing, we would have to let him separate
himself from the synod. Writing to him was entrusted to Pastor
Bünger.

3. The synod was likewise informed of a dispute, already burning for
years, between Pastors Riemenſchneider and Baumgart, which had lit a
considerable fire in the hearts of their congregation members; it
could not, however, settle the matter, since the persons concerned
were not present — Pastor Riemenſchneider in particular not having
complied with an invitation he had received to this year's sessions.
It was therefore resolved that the matter be investigated on the spot
by a commission of three immediately after the close of the synod,
and settled if possible. Professor Walther, President Wyneken, and
President Schwan were appointed to this commission.

4. Through Pastor Bartling, the congregation at Pittsburgh, Pa.,
asked for the synod's opinion on the following: whether a certain
congregation in that city was rightly to be recognized as bearing
the name of a Protestant Evangelical Church of the Unaltered
Augsburg Confession, or not. The synod's opinion, which by resolution
was sent through the secretary to the congregation at Pittsburgh,
reads as follows:

"Since the congregation in question calls itself, in its charter, a
German Evangelical-Protestant Church without the addition 'of the
Unaltered Augsburg Confession'; since it further calls itself, in its
church order of the year 1851, the 'United Evangelical-Protestant
Church of Pittsburgh,' and there too not only likewise omits the
provision of being a church of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, but
also expressly confesses, in all its members, a so-called united
evangelical doctrine (see I, Art. 3), and requires of all its
members that they belong to no other church fellowship than this one
founded on the united evangelical doctrine (see Sect. IX, Art. 1, 1
and 5), and expressly declares that under it no distinction between
the Lutheran and Reformed confessions is to be observed (see I, Art.
3) — the said congregation is therefore not a 'German
Protestant-Evangelical [Church] of the Unaltered Augsburg
Confession,' but a united [Uniert] Evangelical-Protestant one."

5. A petition from 15 members of the congregation at Freiſtatt, Wisc.,
concerning the confession dispute [Beichtſtreit] already dealt with
earlier before the Northern District synod, had come in and been
referred to a committee, which reported on it as follows:

The content of the petition is as follows:

1. The undersigned had petitioned their pastors and the Northern
District synod for the introduction of general confession alongside
private confession, and had been refused.

2. They state that they had been led, by an earlier experienced abuse
of private confession under the Buffalo Synod, to vote against giving
private confession preference.

3. They accuse President Fürbringer of having taught falsely about
the meaning of private confession, and likewise Pastor Wagner.