# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S146
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

146 Something about the Lutheran Church at Frankfurt am Main.

unheard-of, horrible confusion, so that it may seem almost unbelievable to many a reader when he hears that in Frankfurt Reformed people run over to Lutheran churches for the Lord's Supper and Lutherans run over to Reformed ones, and no one is there to check such mischief, that in the Lutheran churches the union formula of distribution is used almost throughout: "Our Lord Christ says," etc. — yes, and what is worse still to hear, that there is an altar in a Lutheran church where the one pastor, partly given over to the Lutheran faith, distributes the bread with the Lutheran formula, while the other, a rationalist, distributes the cup with the union formula. This is of course no offense to the latter, for he himself stands on such ground in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper that he declares plainly to anyone who cares to hear it that he is indeed Lutheran, but no Old Lutheran, and can quite well partake of the Sacrament with a believing Reformed Christian. — How, under such conditions, there can be any talk at all of the exercise of any churchly and sacramental discipline is plain to see. It goes so far that last year men who are a scandal to anyone of even the slightest Christian conviction — open blasphemers — and German Catholics were elected members of a presbytery — even on the recommendation of the pastors — under the pretext of thereby drawing them into church attendance and church interests. In addition the city lacks any division into parishes; no pastor knows whom he is to regard as belonging to his congregation, and depending on whose ears are itching, the members of the congregation run now to this pastor, now to that one, for the sermon, now into a Lutheran, now into the Reformed church. There is a wholly unionistic spirit; the awareness of the fathers' faith has vanished entirely; and no wonder that this is almost universally so among the people, for it happened, when the rich Jew Rothschild recently died, that the preachers elected one from among their number, Consistorial Councilor Dr. Friederich, to attend his funeral, who then made no scruple of delivering an address at the house, beside the corpse. We have not heard this address, but we do not believe that he preached what is written in John 3:18: "But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." This course of events is all the more galling when one considers what is being said among the people, namely that this Rothschild had settled a yearly sum for life on several Jews who had thought of having themselves baptized, which they are to draw for as long as neither they themselves nor any of their kin become a Christian.

How all faith is thus violently torn down, and every confessional consciousness utterly rooted out! And so indeed it stands, when one considers the bright side of Frankfurt from a religious point of view. This rests on its many societies and endowments. Of the former we will speak just once. There is an Evangelical Society, a book society, a people's library, a young men's society, a mission society, a journeymen's asylum, three missionaries to the Jews, etc.; but it is the Evangelical Society that unites all Christian forces within itself. It gathers every Thursday for a Bible hour,