# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S33
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 33 —

it would help me nothing. For the essence of the Word is its sense, not the sound. Therefore stay where you understand everything. You shall not let your soul starve in order to help a German congregation along. Let such a German congregation take care not to interpret this as selfishness, lovelessness and the like. Precisely because formerly many German congregations stood and acted so, so many of our Lutheran countrymen, to whom English had become more familiar, have fallen into the hands of the American sectarian churches. One thought often thus: even if through the English language some members are lost to us, that is not so bad as if we let an English Lutheran congregation arise among us; then we shall perhaps have to give up members by the whole crowd. That is dreadful! The result is that we now see so many German names in the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist and other church communions. God would require it of us if, out of narrow-heartedness, we let souls pass over to the sects rather than concede that an English congregation of our faith and confession should arise. One should rather do too much than too little here. For those who wish to pass over into such an English Lutheran congregation, one should build a golden bridge. Those who speak one language as well as the other, one should leave entirely to themselves where they wish to join.

Since this matter is of such importance, the wish was expressed that a member of the Conference be assigned, for next year's sessions, a paper [Arbeit] on the question: In what relation should the Lutheran congregations of English, Norwegian and German tongues stand to one another?

The cause why formerly and still now so many of our German Lutheran Christians pass over to the sects lies, to be sure, without doubt not in what has been said above alone. Even if we now no longer narrow-heartedly hinder the rise of English Lutheran congregations but rather further them wherever we can, the falling away to the sects will still continue, indeed grow ever greater, if we do not, first, provide for good weekday schools, tend them faithfully and seek to improve them, and likewise keep our children from the Sunday schools of the sects and above all from the public state schools; and over all this, if the pure doctrine of the divine Word is not rightly pursued in churches and schools and, along with it, the distinguishing doctrines [Unterſcheidungslehren] also diligently treated. For only then shall we keep our young people if they are so instructed that they cannot possibly bring themselves, against their conscience, to leave God's pure Word and to pass over into a false church. Experience has taught that in such a case, even if one also set up English Lutheran services, such young people, although they were otherwise completely Americanized, did not wish to leave their German congregations. They preferred the German service because they there heard the language of their heart.