# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S214
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

214 On Bunsen's Idea of Freedom of Conscience, of Religion, and of the Church.

...structing such a free representation of the church, to begin with the organization of the local congregations." (II, 250.) But into what a caricature these precious thoughts have sunk under Bunsen's shaping hand! Instead of advising what "was the king's declared and constitutional intention, namely, congregational churches that are independent and capable of governing themselves" — an intention of which he himself admits: "this goal is the true one" — he abandons entirely the natural plan of letting the building rise from below, from the organization of the individual congregations "into independent, well-articulated wholes," and, building hastily from above downward as a rescuing man of action, he demands, in open contradiction with himself, the immediate division of the six eastern provinces of Prussia into twenty bishoprics. That is supposed to be the apostolic form of the church; — but which does this constitution resemble more, the Roman, the Anglican, etc., with their great dioceses, or the apostolic, in which every local congregation had its own bishop? Bunsen's proposal has the state church as its all-too-visible background; where have such enormous dioceses under a single bishop ever existed except in the church-state or in the state church? At the same time the Privy Councillor bristles mightily against the independence of smaller church bodies; his reason shows anew how often language serves only to express the direct opposite of what is meant. "If one wished," it runs at II. 253, "to divide the territorial church into district congregations, small associations like our present nearly 400 superintendencies, then one either does not really intend the independence of the church, or one at least incurs the appearance of not seriously willing it. For such an association cannot come of age: it needs guidance from above. This guidance would then presumably have to come from the cabinet, or from the Supreme Church Council? Synods can neither govern nor administer." — What does he say to this who sees the apostolic local bishoprics, the North American congregations, even the small European religious associations, fully of age and independent, while the great bishoprics and patriarchates are dependent to the point of total tutelage upon imperial or papal Rome, upon Constantinople, or upon some other territorial metropolis? No, it is not because they cannot become independent, but on the contrary precisely because they can become so and are not meant to, that independent congregations do not fit into Bunsen's church edifice; just as he expressly excludes from it, for example, the "free congregations" as well, ostensibly because they do not "call themselves Christian" (does so much depend upon a name in a church of "full religious freedom"?), but in truth because they, true to their name, insist upon the independence of the congregation. The "Signs of the Times" are in great error if they expect among the people in the "lowlands" enthusiasm, or even mere approval, for their Anglicized plan of church-building. What lies nearest to the "people" is its local congregational circumstances