# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S108
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

108 The uproar over the most recent Superior Consistory generalia in Bavaria.

to become; they step forward, indeed openly, in the name of "the Evangelical Lutheran church congregation," which is "gravely disquieted" by the decrees, they say. They thus claim still to stand by the confession of faith of the Evangelical Lutheran church, and claim that precisely the "laws of our church" have, along with the constitutional charter, been violated, and that "in them the pillars of Protestantism are shaken and threatened." Now, the Evangelical Lutheran church, as is well known, belongs to the three Christian confessions of faith existing in the kingdom which, according to § 24 of Appendix II to the constitution, are "recognized as public church societies with equal civil and political rights." In § 38 the subjects belonging to the internal affairs of the church, and which, according to the constitution of their church recognized by the state power, pertain to every public church society, are enumerated as follows:

"namely the subjects: a) of the doctrine of faith, b) of the form and celebration of worship, c) of the conduct of the ministerial office, d) of religious instruction of the people, e) of church discipline, f) of the ordination and approbation of church ministers, g) of the consecration of buildings and churchyards dedicated to worship, h) of the exercise of jurisdiction in purely spiritual matters, namely of conscience or the fulfillment of the religious and church duties of a church, according to its dogmas, symbolic books, and the constitution founded thereon.

§ 39. To the church superiors, presiding officers, or their representatives there accordingly belongs the general right of oversight, with the effects arising therefrom, so that the church laws are observed, worship is thereby maintained accordingly, the pure spirit of morality and religion is preserved, and its propagation furthered. The share which falls to each individual in this oversight is determined by his official authority.

§ 40. The church power exercises the purely spiritual right of correction according to fitting degrees.

§ 41. Every member of a church society is obligated to submit to the church discipline introduced therein.

§ 42. No church power, however, is authorized to enforce laws of faith against its members by means of external compulsion."

Against which of these constitutional provisions, then, do the Superior Consistory generalia now under discussion offend? Do they offend against the symbolically fixed faith of the Evangelical Lutheran church? We found the contrary, last time, in Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession. Or does the church authority make itself guilty of an unseemly presumption? The above-cited §§ 38, 39, and 40 give a clearly negative answer to this. Or has the Superior Consistory, in the generalia, taken it upon itself, contrary to the cited § 42,