# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S64
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

64 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

communication on them. Although neither President Böhner nor a representation of "that part of the Synod of Michigan which holds with him" had appeared, the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*], since the complainants present declared themselves ready to substantiate their accusation by numerous documents at hand, especially also by letters in President Böhner's own hand, took up the complaint case first in such a way that it handed it over to a committee with the charge to hear the complainants further and to inspect the documentary evidence at hand. After the numerous and in part extensive documents had been distributed among the individual members for preliminary review of the matter, the committee devoted three evening sessions to it. From the communications which were made in these proceedings of the committee and documented in all points, the committee recognized that President Böhner and his synod ought indeed to be called upon by the Synodical Conference to give their brethren in the Synodical Conference closer information about the conduct and management of the president of the Michigan Synod, and either to demonstrate that President Böhner and those who stand at his side had not made themselves guilty of practice contrary to Scripture, or else to acknowledge wrong committed as such, to put it away, and to bring about thorough change in the synodical administration. The committee was convinced that one or the other must happen, lest the Synodical Conference run the danger of exposing itself to the justified reproach that in its midst, within a synod belonging to it, unLutheran practice goes on openly, and so that individual congregations belonging to the Synodical Conference could also gain full clarity as to whether they may, as before, recognize neighboring congregations of the Michigan Synod as sister congregations and practice or permit altar or pulpit fellowship with them. The assembly, after hearing the committee's report and some of the supporting documents from the written evidence, unanimously concurred in this conviction. As grounds for the Synodical Conference as such having right and duty to take up the matter, it was pointed out that according to the constitution of the Synodical Conference, § 3, the purposes and aims of this association include also "the furtherance of unity in doctrine and practice and the removal of occurring, threatening disturbances of the same"; that essentially the same accusation had already been laid before the Joint Synod [*Allgemeine Synode*] of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan and had been judged by it, likewise after a preceding investigation by a committee; and that, moreover, the relation of the individual synods in the Joint Synod of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan is not the same as that between the districts of the Missouri Synod, but the district synods, even after their union into a larger body, have remained synods existing in their own right,