# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the twenty-first convention

of our so-called guiding principles [leitende Grundsätze]: "The Synodical Conference [Synodalkonferenz] begs and adjures all pastors and congregations concerned to consider well what an abomination before God and how offensive before the Church, indeed before the world it is, that pastors and congregations who have already recognized one another as orthodox, or at least ought to recognize one another, still go on and on biting and devouring one another."

Further, the possibility is assumed that within the Synodical Conference pastors and members of one synod might be received into another synod of the Synodical Conference without a peaceful dismissal. The Synodical Conference rejects this quite decidedly, and indeed even in the case that the dismissal appears to have been refused wrongly. This we have discussed and stressed again and again: There is eo ipso a dangerous breach of the peace when, for example, the Wisconsin Synod has something against a pastor, when it declares: There is something against that man, and someone in the Missouri Synod, without troubling himself about the judgment of the officers of the Wisconsin Synod, wanted to install him. That is eo ipso a breach of the peace. And even if one can say: I have looked into the matter and recognize that the Wisconsin Synod has quite unjustly declared him ineligible for a call — even in this case one should keep one's hands off and refer the person concerned with his complaint to his own synod. This, then, according to the experiences we have had, belongs to keeping the peace within the Synodical Conference. It is also obvious that no pastor or congregation should ever be received into another synod except on the basis of a good certificate of dismissal. If we do not observe this point, the peace cannot be preserved. It is in fact every time a giving up of fellowship as brethren in the faith when a pastor is to be installed in the Missouri Synod against whom the Wisconsin Synod raises a protest, and the protest is taken no notice of at all.

Further, the possibility is assumed that one synod wants to withdraw congregations and preaching places from another. The Synodical Conference condemns this quite decidedly and gives very detailed regulations for these cases. Recall the proceedings at Milwaukee eighteen years ago (1888)! There we treated this point very fully and agreed on it with one another and fixed it in writing, that the Synodical Conference rejects it if one synod wants to withdraw even a single preaching place from the other synod. Earlier we already had this in our agreements: No synod may withdraw from the other synod congregations which are connected with it as members. But now it happened from time to time that differences of opinion arose with regard to preaching places and to congregations which had not yet affiliated. Then we agreed on this: We want preaching places and unaffiliated con-