# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Proceedings of the twentieth convention

ritual, etc., always concern only individual, less essential points. If therefore anyone wished to maintain that the lodge does not teach what is in its own publications, he would have to furnish the proof for his assertion in black and white.

In the practical treatment of the matter an error is often made in that one attacks the lodge members concerned and says: That is the essence of the lodge. It is much wiser to ask the individual: What does your lodge do? What kind of thing is it? From his own statements we can then prove to him that the lodge wants to be an institution of moral education. Thus the people reveal it themselves; but if one tells them beforehand, they deny it.

By resolution the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] thereupon declared its adherence to the second thesis and to the statements of the essayist as communicated above.

III.
The Answer to the Question Posed.

Having come to know in the preceding the Communion fellowship according to Holy Scripture and the lodge system according to its own utterances, and having also passed a judgment on the latter on the basis of Holy Scripture, the answer to the question: "May an orthodox Lutheran pastor give Holy Communion to a lodge member, or must he refuse it to him?" can no longer be difficult.

We go once more through the passages of Scripture treated in the first part of our paper and see, in the light of the facts established about the lodge system, whether these passages permit admission, forbid it, or leave it undecided. We recall that we said at the beginning that we are speaking of such cases where in a well-organized congregation a member becomes manifest as a lodge brother, or where a pastor comes into a congregation where he finds lodge members who have so far been tolerated. In so saying we do not wish to say that there could not be quite abnormal circumstances, about which to judge is not the business of a paper giving a general rule. How to act there must be left to the conscience and wisdom of the individual pastor.

In considering the institution of Holy Communion we dealt with the fact that Judas was among the guests at the table of the LORD, and made this explicable to ourselves by the fact that the betrayal by Judas was not yet manifest, the decisive step to public renunciation of Christ had not yet been taken, indeed the latter could still be prevented by a change of will.

When someone joins a lodge, he makes a covenant with the enemies of Christ, allies himself with such as renounce Christ by their confession. It is certainly not saying too much if one