# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S189
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The present state and prospects of the Evangelical Lutheran territorial churches in Germany. 189

was formerly different from what it is now. In the old, absolute state, the government of the state and the government of the church coincided in one; and as it held in general, cujus regio, ejus religio (the lord of the land is also lord over the faith), so the sovereign's command held good in churchly as in political matters, and as it was decreed, so it had to be done. Hence church discipline too was nothing else than secular police work in churchly matters. In the modern state it is quite otherwise. There the government of the state and that of the church are half separated; but only half, and all halfness is of evil. The modern state must go with the majority, or at least the majority must go with it; therein lies its strength. The church, however, never has her strength in the majority, but in the unanimity and concord of faith and confession. Whatever does not hold to the confession and agree with the confession does not belong to her; that she puts away from herself (after attempts at amendment have proved vain), even were such a great mass of them; such a purging does not weaken her, but strengthens her. But the state, because it still holds the government of the church at least half in its hands, grows anxious over this; its striving is to hold everything together and to establish outward peace, cost what it may. Therefore it restricts and hampers the church's movement toward purifying herself, and suppresses the crisis, and thereby weakens the church; while it thus means to strengthen itself, it undermines by that very act one of its own chief supports. But where it granted the church free movement to purify herself within and, from within outward, also to build herself up externally and to shape herself freely according to her needs, she would thereby become ever more vigorous and united in herself, and precisely thereby an all the more vigorous support for the state. If it is already an old experience with all other earthly orders and institutions that everything depends on the persons who are appointed to administer and direct them, and on the confidence they enjoy — if even the best plans are not to remain fruitless — then this is far more the case with the church, where everything rests upon faith and confidence, from below to above and from above to below. Therefore everything depends on the church's having freedom of movement inwardly as well: freedom to fill the offices, the lower as well as the higher, according to the manifold gifts on the one hand and the manifold needs on the other, and not according to a kind of numbers-lottery. But for that there is needed an exact acquaintance with the needs of the individual congregations, as well as an exact acquaintance with the gifts and characters of those who are to be called; and for that in turn there is needed a constant and personal interchange between those who sit in the government and the congregations themselves. By a bureaucratic route this can never be attained; how and whether it is still to be obtained in the territorial churches, God knows. May He, the Merciful One, graciously help toward it; for as things are and stand, this cannot last much longer — of that I am certain.