# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S345
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Ecclesiastical Movements in Bavaria.   345

Bavarian church law the Upper Consistory is indeed independent, but is immediately subordinate to the Ministry of State for the Interior for Church and School Affairs and has to receive directions from it. To be sure, there is a line beyond which a church authority may allow itself to be pressed by no considerations whatever, if it does not wish to deny its duty toward the church. But the decision of the question whether in a given case the matter has come to such an extremity that absolutely no yielding is permissible, whatever consequences may arise from it, is so earnest and difficult a one, and goes so deep into the inner sanctuary of conscience, that the greatest caution of judgment appears of itself to be required — especially over against an authority like the Bavarian Upper Consistory, and a man like Harless, who is proved by his whole past, and of whom the most conscientious weighing of his steps before the face of God must be assumed from the outset.

From what has been said it will sufficiently appear why the Upper Consistory could not prevent the renewed deliberation of the liturgical question in Nuremberg, even if it had wished to do so. But whether, granted that it had been feasible, it would even have been advisable to maintain the liturgy in all the churches of the city — this question the reporter by no means ventures to answer decidedly in the affirmative. Given the antipathy that had once been aroused, the congregation would certainly, in the majority of the churches, have taken little or no part in it; for a long time there would have been in prospect a thoroughly un-Protestant transaction merely between the liturgist and the choir. On the other hand, the arrangement made by the Upper Consistory, against the majority resolution of the plenary assembly, for the retention of the liturgy in one church answered not only the real need of the friends of the liturgy, but also left open to those who are not its friends the possibility of becoming acquainted with it and of becoming friendly toward it. The more closely one examines the matter, the more one will be convinced that what the Upper Consistory has done was the best that could be done under the prevailing circumstances.

While the liturgical movement was under way in Nuremberg, it spread also to many other congregations. Since, so far as the reporter knows, no special Most High decision was granted to the other cities upon the addresses they had submitted, the answer given to the people of Nuremberg counted as the decision for all. And as the opponents of the Upper Consistory in Nuremberg, after the decision they had received, threw themselves chiefly upon the liturgy, so they did elsewhere as well. In most of the towns, and even in many country congregations, the church boards set themselves in motion, or were set in motion by other members of the congregation, in order to bring about the abolition of the liturgy. In a couple of country congregations whose members are in frequent intercourse with Nuremberg it has happened that on a Sunday the whole male body of hearers, which had assembled in unusual