# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S323
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 109 —

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

The members of the Milwaukee committee took a quite decided stand
against such statements and instead maintained the position that the
fathers had taken at the Synod's founding in 1847 and had set down in
the constitution then adopted.

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

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

2. The Reverend General Synod is today the same exclusively religious
association that it was at its founding in 1847.

3. The Reverend General Synod is an association of congregations, and
not an association of representatives or delegates.

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

5. The incorporation of 1894 was not meant to change the nature of
the Synod of 1847, and, to our knowledge, no congregation has ever
given a declaration or consent to that effect.

The members of the Milwaukee committee hold inviolably to the
principles contained in the five points above; for it is their firm
conviction that these form the foundation of our Reverend Synod. If
the Reverend Synod acknowledges these principles, and if these are the
same principles under which the Reverend Synod had itself incorporated
in 1894, then these principles were made the foundation of the act of
incorporation by the resolution of the Reverend Synod recorded on page
127 of the report of the 22nd General Synod of 1893: "that the Synod
also have itself incorporated as such."

It is a recognized legal principle that persons who organize
themselves under the law must conform to the law of the state under
which they wish to organize. In the incorporation of the General Synod
this principle was completely disregarded.

Religious corporations are forbidden by the constitution of Missouri.
Article 2, Section 8 of the constitution of the State of Missouri
reads, word for word:

"That no religious corporation can be established in this state,
except such as may be created under a general law for the purpose