# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S327
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 113 —

Even if we had been inclined, in the interest of some possibly
greater security, to yield to the Milwaukee committee and recommend a
new incorporation of the Synod in Wisconsin, we cannot close our eyes
to the fact that such a new incorporation of the Synod in the State
of Wisconsin could secure us only for that one state against the
dangers that our other brothers on the committee now foresee. For if
we are indeed not now fully and completely under the protection of
the law, then a new incorporation under some special act of the
Wisconsin statutes would protect us and our property rights only in
the State of Wisconsin, and not in other states — which, by the
Milwaukee committee's own conviction, would have to regard such an
incorporation as unconstitutional.

If we, as a company incorporated in Missouri, are not now covered by
the law, as the Milwaukee committee thinks, then we would be even
less so, in Missouri and in all other states, if we were to place
ourselves under the protection of a "special act" of Wisconsin. Or we
would have to resign ourselves to selling all our real estate in
every other state — in New York, in Fort Wayne, in Seward, in
Addison — and, so far as our institutions are concerned, moving
entirely to Wisconsin at enormous expense.

The St. Louis committee, after repeated consultation with its
attorneys, is of the opinion that the matter can quietly be dropped,
or that the Synod should adopt the recommendation of attorneys
Ferriss and Zumbalen, which reads as follows:

St. Louis, Mo., August 14, 1908.

Rev. Chas. F. Obermeyer, Chairman,
and others of the Committee.
Gentlemen: —

In compliance with your request, we have redrafted Articles II,
III, and VI of the Articles of Association of The German Evan-
gelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, as
found on pages 54, 55, and 56 of the Synodal-Handbuch. The amend-
ments hereinafter proposed will, we believe, remove the defects in,
and objections to, said articles, and make the charter of the Synod
impervious to attack even by the State.

We propose that Article II, on page 54, be stricken out entirely
and the following substituted: —

"OBJECTS. Article II. The object of this association is to unite
in a corporate body the Synodal delegates of the German Evangelical
Lutheran Churches in Missouri and other states of the Union, which
remain true to, and acknowledge as a true exhibition of sound Chris-
tian doctrine, the Book of Concord of the year of our Lord fifteen
hundred and eighty, and who have heretofore been associated together
under the name of The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Mis-

[Signature at the foot of the page: "8" — a printer's sheet signature, not a folio.]