# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S138
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

138 Proceedings of the 28th General or

...Mich., a committee established by resolution submitted to a Reverend Synod, which met from May 13 to May 23, 1908, at Fort Wayne, a detailed report on its activity.

This report was referred back to the committee by resolution of the Reverend Synod. The Reverend Synod further appointed an additional committee from St. Louis, which, in conjunction with the existing committee from Milwaukee, was to investigate the status of the Synod's incorporation and report on it after three years.

During the past triennium, this matter was discussed with the committee from St. Louis, most recently on February 15, 1909, in St. Louis. Present were the members of the St. Louis committee and their two attorneys, three members representing the Milwaukee committee and their attorney, and in addition the general agent, Mr. E. Seuel.

We regret to have to report to the Reverend Synod that it has become apparent that unified further work on this so important matter was not possible, and that for this reason the task entrusted to us by the Reverend Synod could not be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

The positions of the two committees differed in principle, in that the members diverged widely in their views concerning the principles established by a Reverend General Synod.

The members of the St. Louis committee proceed from the principle that the Reverend General Synod is not a union of congregations, but consists of individual members, and in this view the members were reinforced by their two attorneys, who moreover sought to prove that the Reverend General Synod is not a religious corporation.

The members of the Milwaukee committee took a firmly opposed stance against such statements, and maintained instead the position taken by the fathers at the Synod's founding in 1847 and laid down in the adopted constitution.

Your committee from Milwaukee ventures to submit its position to a Reverend Synod for consideration in the following brief propositions:

1. The constitution of 1847 is still today the constitution of the Synod.

2. The Reverend General Synod is today the very same exclusive religious union that it was at its founding in 1847.

3. The Reverend General Synod is a union of congregations, and not a union of representatives or delegates.

4. The Delegate Synod of 1872 remained the very same General Synod of 1847; only in the representation at the conventions was a change made, but the essential nature remained the same.

5. Through the incorporation in 1894 the essential nature of the Synod of 1847 was not to be changed, and no congregation has