# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S127
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Affairs. 127

The Buffalo Synod. The following is written, as we read in the November issue of the "Lutheran Village Church Newspaper" of 1856, by a member of the Buffalo Synod (Pastor Grabau?) to the editor of that paper: "It seems that here the time of struggle within the church is over (!), and another is beginning, namely that of the desire for a gathering [union]. On our side a general supreme church court for the states has been proposed, which is to decide on right and wrong. Missouri, however, is silent about this, and would rather see a ""church convention"" held in Columbus to dispute over the Augsburg Confession. We will wait and see how it turns out. Through the strife that Missouri has hitherto waged against us, a general awakening has now come about" (indeed, through this strife?), "especially in the Ohio Synod. In almost all the so-called Lutheran synods there are now found three parties: one party (the smallest, as the Ohio pastors assure) goes with Missouri; the larger one with us, and one party (the largest?) are so-called Ohio men, that is, they have a verbal confession to the Symbols, but in practice (real life) remain unionistic. It will soon become apparent how far these reports are grounded in truth. Accordingly the great Ohio Synod seems to be at the point of dissolving between Missouri and Buffalo. God, however, can turn it otherwise." (And at the very least our striving and our wish is that the Ohio Synod be drawn neither to us, nor, as Pastor Grabau is pleased to put it, to Missouri, and so be split.) The Buffalo correspondent continues: "The 10 preachers from among the Missourians, who for the past 12 years have forced their way into our congregations" (a manifest untruth), "have, with their followings, for the most part arrived at the point of decline, since they are now being ground down by their own principles, namely by the principle that every local congregation is the highest court in the church (!)." The latter, concerning the "decline," is probably a "pious wish" of the writer's, but as is well known, one hopes for what one wishes. That Buffalo distorts our doctrine of church governance, most unashamedly in distant Germany, we are already accustomed to. That our principles have estranged even a single godly and sincere member of one of our congregations, and produced a "decline" of the same, of that we "Missourians" at least know nothing; rather our congregations, through God's mercy, are building up outwardly and inwardly, in the most notable blessing, in spite of all the curses repeatedly pronounced over us from Buffalo.

II. Abroad.

Baden. We learn from the "Freimund" that at present, after a sifting of the congregations of Ispringen and the surrounding area has taken place (through the withdrawal of some who had seceded into the united [unionistic] church), the total number of Lutherans in Baden amounts to 650.

Nassau. Concerning the present situation of the Lutherans in Nassau, Pastor Hein sends the following report: "As far as our relations to the state are concerned, they remain, again and again, as they were. If persecution eases off in one place, it begins again in another. So it has now changed once more. In Nordenstadt, where this very summer I had to endure a man-hunt such as never before — for there it was not a matter of arrest or the like that was intended, but rather they wished to render me harmless by physical assault on my person — there I paid a visit in broad daylight on the twenty-third [Sunday] after Trinity and held a service, as I do at every place where I can freely go in and out, and we learned that on that day the enemy's power had there been taken away. Because of this we already fell into the delusion that the rotten peace which we had now had with the authorities for some time had broken in upon all my places, and it became for us more of a burden than ever before. But thank God, it did not last long. On the twenty-fifth [Sunday] after Trinity I had to baptize a small child at a place belonging to the congregation in the district of Usingen. No one thought of any danger, and I went there with a whole crowd of members of the congregation. But scarcely had I entered the house in which the child lay, when the mayor also appeared and declared to me that I might not baptize the child, since I was not the pastor of the place. To my reply, that from duty and from right I must baptize the child, and that I therefore...