# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S375
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Few Sunbeams over Thuringia. 375

while at the first meetings of the Thuringian Church Diet rationalism still predominated, it has gradually become so discredited that at the discussions just mentioned no rationalistic utterance whatsoever was heard, but rather very strong expressions against rationalistic unbelief.

Even more actively engaging with life and casting a clearer light upon our ecclesiastical condition have been the manifold proceedings that, in the course of the past two months, were publicly carried on in the Grand Duchy of Weimar concerning the mission cause. Notices on the state of missionary work in the Saxon duchies have already been given several times before in this journal. Only here and there, scattered, were friends of missions to be found, and they carried on their work quite quietly; the world took no notice of it. Now suddenly, in Weimar, the desire is publicly voiced to unite in a territorial mission society, and the official "Weimarer Zeitung" (otherwise no friend of ecclesiastical debates) offers itself as a forum for this important matter. The impulse proceeded from the rationalistic, or at least unionistically minded, party among the territorial clergy. This party came forward with the proposal to affiliate with the Union Mission Society in Berlin, and through it with Basel. At the first assembly proceeding from this quarter, unanimous approval was accordingly declared for affiliation with Basel. Now the confessional Lutheran party raised its voice in the Weimarer Zeitung and in the Weimar Sonntagsbote, and pointed out how we, belonging to the Lutheran Church and to a Saxon land, really had no choice at all, but were in every respect directed to the near and so advantageous Leipzig. The opposing party declared the Leipzig Mission Institute to be too harshly confessional; held that one ought to bring the heathen not the Christianity of the symbolical books but a simple biblical Christianity (as if the two were not fundamentally one and the same), that a freer conception of Christianity suited the spirit of Weimar, and that one did not wish to repel unlovingly the Reformed congregations of the land who were inclined to join, and so on. To settle this dispute, an assembly was held on July 8 in the hall of the Bürgerschule at Weimar. The introductory address of Pastor Andreä had much to praise in the freer rationalist tendency that still holds the upper hand in the Weimar territorial church (alas!), yet he could not avoid confessing that today's rationalism is no longer the old kind, that it has learned much from its opponent, and that it now wishes to take up the mission to the heathen that has grown up on hostile ground as well. All votes (70–80) were for founding a mission society, but on the question, "Leipzig or Basel?" agreement could not be reached. The great majority voted, as was to be foreseen, for Basel; the minority, for conscience's sake, could not let go of Leipzig. So the proposal arose to form a joint society after all, but to leave it to each individual