# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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could not grant Prof. Schmidt a seat and vote in the Conference as a delegate of the Honorable Norwegian Synod, and that this course of action be properly justified. The secretary is then to copy this letter, sign it, and send it through the President of the Synodical Conference, who is likewise to sign it, to the President of the Hon. Norwegian Synod. By way of exception it is also to be included in the printed report.

This letter, accepted by the Conference, reads as follows:

To the Hon. Norwegian-Lutheran Synod of North America.
To the hands of the Rev. President H. A. Preus,
at Keyser, Columbia County, Wisconsin.

Beloved brethren in the Lord!

For this year's convention of the Evangelical Lutheran *Synodalkonferenz* [Synodical Conference], Prof. F. A. Schmidt of Madison, Wisconsin, was elected among other delegates from your synod. Without wishing in the least to contest the formal validity of the election, the Synodical Conference nevertheless felt constrained in conscience to refuse to recognize Prof. Schmidt as a member of the assembly. The grounds for this course of action are the following:

As is well known, a controversy over the doctrine of election of grace [*Gnadenwahl*] has broken out in the Synodical Conference. Prof. F. A. Schmidt has taken a quite prominent part in this doctrinal controversy; indeed, it was through him that it first reached the public and was thrown into our congregations. We now declare expressly that it is not Prof. Schmidt's doctrinal position in itself that has compelled us to refuse him recognition, since we have, after all, admitted without further ado President Muus, who holds the same view. It is rather the manner in which Prof. Schmidt conducted this controversy, and by which he made all brotherly negotiations impossible, that prevents us from sitting with him as brethren in the present assembly. For as soon as a difference in the doctrine of election had come to light between Prof. Schmidt and others of our theologians, an attempt was made to settle it in a brotherly way. To that end a colloquy was held as early as July 1879 at Columbus, which, alas, ended without the hoped-for result. Some time afterward Prof. Schmidt suddenly issued a paper in the German language in which he attacked the representatives of the right doctrine in the most violent manner and abused them as Calvinists, crypto-Calvinists, and so on. Prof. Schmidt does indeed declare that he was prompted to do so by certain attacks in the synodical report of the Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Western District, for the year 1879; but we ask you to consider that Prof.