# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1916. 89

are wholly churchless. For the rest the information is lacking. As regards the church affiliation of the pupils, 299 are Lutheran, 1050 of other faiths and 128 wholly churchless. Of the 2047 pupils, 928 attend the Lutheran Sunday school, 703 a false-believing one, and 250 none at all.

These data give occasion for much thought. It is striking, among other things, that only few of these 2047 pupils are really churchless, namely 128. It is further striking that 703 children of other faiths and 250 churchless children, together 953, do attend the Lutheran weekday school but keep away from the Lutheran Sunday school and church. A missionary laments this, for example, as follows: "When I entered upon my office here, I found a Sunday school attended very poorly in proportion to the weekday school. Therefore I visited with my teachers the parents of our school children. We told the parents that our school is a mission school, whose purpose is to spread the Lutheran doctrine, which is the true Word of God, among our people, and that we were glad that they sent their children to our mission school, where they learn God's Word pure and unadulterated. We told them, however, also that it is our wish to have the children in our Sunday school and church. But there we met with great resistance (but there we struck a snag); for immediately a great howl arose. The parents told us that their children already attended a Sunday school and should go there in the future too! Some even went so far as to say that they would not disgrace their children by sending them to 'that old Lutheran Sunday-school'!" [The English phrases are printed in English.] So the matter stands, that almost half of the school children are quite willing to put up with the Lutheran weekday school but want to know nothing of the Lutheran Sunday school and church.

What is to be done now? Your commission is of the opinion that the old rule, that every child of the weekday school should also attend Sunday school and church, ought to be set up again and carried out according to circumstances. This rule was introduced right at the beginning of our mission. In the first volume of the *Missionstaube* ["Mission Dove," the mission periodical] we read, namely: "The missionary therefore made it known in the whole city [Little Rock] that he would open a school for Negro children. The condition of admission was and still is that every child of the weekday school also attend Sunday school, so that the good seed which is sown among the children during the week may not be trodden down again by the false teachers in other Sunday schools. Experience also teaches that most later join the congregation where they went to Sunday school for a longer time." (p. 25.)

In the second volume it says: "Membership in the Sunday school is still the condition for admission to the weekday school. The latter could without doubt be a third larger if we did not