# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S192
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

192 Church and Contemporary Notes.

...sister churches to their very foundations, scarcely reach us here even
as distant echoes. When our dear neighboring church in Bavaria was so
severely afflicted in the matter of church discipline, etc., the
corresponding voices here too began to raise an outcry, especially
since the church government had laid questions about church discipline
before the diocesan synods of the year 1856. But at the reassuring
article in the country's most widely read newspaper, everything settled
down again. Those district assemblies, made up of all the ordained
clergy in office (excluding the vicars) and an exactly corresponding
number of "church elders" from the various congregations, are therefore
not without significance for our ecclesiastical life, because they are
called upon annually by the church government to express themselves on
whatever churchly questions happen to be under particular discussion.
So last year, as already noted, on the remnants of churchly discipline
and custom still present in the individual districts, as well as on the
means for their gradual revival. In general these efforts had to remain
fruitless here too, since people insisted on loudly denouncing them as
"police-like." We need not say quite the same of the individual
efforts. Thus, for instance, the report of the diocese of Künzelsau
shows also for this year a voluntary association for the maintaining
and reawakening of various churchly customs. The questions laid before
the diocesan synod this year concerned confirmation. Alongside less
significant matters, it concerned the question whether, as elsewhere
(also in Saxony, so far as we know), so also in Württemberg a more
thorough examination of the children as to the state of their faith
should precede the confession and the blessing. So far as can be
discerned from the public reports up to now, however, this was
generally rejected, and the retention of the previous form was moved
instead.

With this, what the official church life of Württemberg has offered of
any significance of late would be pretty much exhausted. For now we
still have to direct our attention to the preludes and echoes of
certain general church movements among us in Württemberg. Here we may
rightly mention the "Evangelical Alliance." It is well known that a
large part of Württemberg Pietism has taken part in it, partly in
person, partly through lively interest from afar. To another, not
insignificant, party of our believing clergy, which stands under the
predominant influence of Dr. Beck in Tübingen, this "assembly of
evangelical Christians" has likewise given offense, as something
"manufactured," as "man's work." But even within the circles of
Pietism itself, considerable opposition showed itself, so far as one
learned, at the "Brethren's Conference" usually held in May. The fruit
of that opposition is a small pamphlet: "The Evangelical Alliance, etc.,
by D. Hermann, Evangelical Lutheran pastor at Freudenthal in
Württemberg," which, even though its immediate reference is only to
last December's assembly, seems to us to speak, in general, golden
words on the dangers of such "unions." That the Württemberg clergy took
a very strong part at the Kirchentag has been reported by the papers.
Stahl's appearance was everywhere designated as the high point, and we
believe we are not mistaken in saying that what he said, both about the
relation of the confession to missions and about evangelical
catholicity, found an echo among many that the speaker himself did not
anticipate, and is still being further worked out in many a quiet
village.

In the course of last summer there appeared in the "Church and School
Gazette for Württemberg" an invitation from certain clergymen to all
who could unite on the following three propositions: 1) Those who hold
unwaveringly to the doctrine of the Gospel according to the Lutheran
confessions wish to draw nearer to one another for mutual brotherly
communication, counsel, and strengthening, as well as, according to the
requirements of circumstances, for bearing a common testimony.
2) By this emphasis on the objectivity of the confession they do not
intend to diminish the individual's well-founded Protestant freedom,
and they reject equally a repellent stance toward other confessions and
a unionistic blending. 3) In churchly questions not decided by the
Lutheran confessions, they hold the old Lutheran church orders to be
foundational.

At the assembly itself, according to the reports that have become
known, there also seem to have appeared some who disputed the very
propositions on the basis of which the invitation had gone out, so that
the proceedings broke up without accomplishing anything, and nothing
more has been publicly heard of it since. That the fear of "Old" and
"New" Lutheranism, and so forth, as it was expressed in part in the
paper mentioned above, was not very well founded, will best appear from
what has just been said.

Errata to be corrected in the previous issue.

Page 150, line 3 from the top, write instead of 6 — b.
" 151 " 2 " from the bottom " " C — c.