# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 8 —

Thesis 9.

This contradiction further takes place when, now as before, members of their congregations are also members of the secret societies, and the pastors concerned neither raise a thorough public testimony in the sermon against these societies and set their contrariness to Scripture and to the faith in a clear light, nor take the individual lodge brothers into special pastoral instruction and care.

Thesis 10,
which now came up for discussion, reads in its original wording:

No less is this contradiction present when a Lutheran synod or a composite synodical body tolerates that individual pastors of its own, who also call themselves Lutheran, continually serve congregations that are in fact Unionist [*unirt*, i.e. of the Prussian Union type].

In the detailed discussion of this thesis it was first dealt with when one can say of a congregation that it is "in fact Unionist." This is the case not only when a congregation, as the Unionists today gladly do, calls itself evangelical or Protestant, for these are altogether stolen names, which do not rightfully belong to the Unionists, but also when a congregation, according to its constitution and its practice, grants equal rights even to such members as profess a faith other than the Lutheran, who do not wish to cease being Unionists, Reformed or Methodists, but who, perhaps because they find no other congregation near them, wish to be received into a Lutheran congregation, since one must belong to some Christian congregation; and these find entry all the more easily when the pastor of such congregations himself cares nothing about the doctrinal differences of the various churches, but only insists that his congregation be enlarged as much as possible.

Further, a congregation is in fact Unionist when it does not reject the doctrine of the heterodox who are in its midst, or when, for the sake of the heterodox, it does not hold fast the confessional ceremonies of the Lutheran Church; for example, when a congregation introduces the breaking of bread at the Holy Communion. Here the discussion is not of those who regard this out of ignorance as an indifferent matter and therefore have it in use, but of cases where it is introduced for the sake of those who are Reformed or Unionist from the outset, and who therefore wish that it be kept so here too in the Lutheran congregation, because they regard this as the only right thing.

It is well known how the so-called Lutheran General Synod permits this and serves such congregations. Indeed, the same happens demonstrably within the General Council, which professedly, for the sake of the false doctrine and