# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S216
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

Besser, op. cit., p. 199.) One will therefore have to tell the congregation without concealment that in the new church edifice the Roman pattern has merely been turned around, so that not the state may be absorbed into the church, but the church into the state. Likewise one will also have to tell the congregation the following without reserve, which for brevity's sake I will express in the indicative. "The banner of full religious freedom" flies only where, as in the North American republic, all religious bodies stand side by side in the same rank and on the same footing. A state church alongside "sects," that is, privilege alongside toleration, is the sign of a lack of religious freedom. This lack, however, can have its degrees, and really does have them. Given an equal toleration of sects, it is greatest where only one privileged church exists; less, where two such exist, as would be the case in Prussia, for example, according to Bunsen's plan, should it be carried out; less still if there were three such churches; and relatively least where four were privileged, as would also be the case in Prussia, for example, if the Union dissolved and the small religious bodies obtained equal toleration (or whatever one chose to call it). Bunsen's project stands essentially not an inch nearer to "full" religious freedom than what Stahl appears to intend; both come out at an equal number of "churches" and at toleration of the "sects." — Further, let no misunderstandings be allowed to arise about the religion of the newly shaped church; they would avenge themselves still more bitterly than those hitherto. Bunsen does indeed already say: "Above all one will quiet consciences; one will have to say credibly and unmistakably that no rule of faith and highest norm is to be imposed upon the congregation except the Word of God as it lives in the consciousness of the congregation. According to the evangelical fundamental conception there is no revealed truth for the congregation except in the Bible: there is no interpretation of this truth except through the Spirit that is given to the congregation" (II. 255.); he has already premised (II. 220 ff., 225 f.) that even "the three chief symbols," which the Union has hitherto professed to accept, are henceforth to have no validity, and he adds: "No new theological doctrinal confession as the banner of the congregation, not even the best of them, that of the Berlin General Synod of 1846!" (II. 257.) This openness is praiseworthy; but about the sense of the declaration misunderstanding and illusion are still possible. Bunsen's words mean that, apart from the name "evangelical," "Christian," which must be held fast unconditionally, every connection of the newly shaped church with the Reformation, with the ancient Christian church, and with the apostolic church has been broken off; that, the name aside, the new church has just as little to do with Christianity and Christendom as Islam has; that to the Unionist Holy Scripture is henceforth to count for no more than it does to the Turk; that, as the Turk has his Koran, so the Unionist has henceforth "the Spirit,