# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1920_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12 Proceedings of the twenty-seventh convention

— In a certain sense, yes. Our schools are not closed, our teachers are not dismissed. We may keep the building in repair, we may pay the teacher. Yes, we may even still make the curriculum ourselves to some extent. But all under supervision and subject to the approval of the state. We keep the shell; the kernel we have given up.
Is not the zeal of the teachers spurred on by accreditation? — A sadder certificate of poverty can hardly be issued to an evangelical teacher than that he needs the state's lash to drive him to faithful performance of his office.
Will not some parents be more ready to send their children to an accredited school? — Granted; but see what follows.
What will be the consequences of accreditation, not incidental ones, but such as lie in the nature of the case? In the way the matter comes up among us there is always evident a certain courting of recognition. Accreditation is sought as though our school lacked something without it. People see in it a distinction. In school announcements accreditation is used for advertising purposes. Where this is the case, one's own position on the education question is already inwardly shaken. The consequences do not fail to appear: cutting down the time for religious instruction in order to gain time for "prescribed" subjects; reducing religious instruction to a subject alongside others, soon to a minor subject; flattening into moral teaching, etc.
When accreditation is withdrawn from a school again, it is (outwardly) worse off than if it had never possessed it. The disgrace! Then the confidence of many friends is shaken. Therefore an accredited school must make the most frantic efforts, bring the saddest sacrifices, to prevent withdrawal.
If the state should compel us so that we can no longer conduct any but accredited schools, we suffer it without harm. Our heart's attitude toward the Savior is then not affected by it. But how can we apply for accreditation and voluntarily place our schools under the supervision of the state school depicted in Thesis II, indeed incorporate them in practice into this system!

An extended debate arose over the point of accreditation, since it seemed to many that the language of the third thesis, applied to accreditation, was too sharp. The danger connected with accreditation was readily admitted, but they were not prepared to let it count as denial; the question rather was what is wise under the prevailing circumstances, how best to hold what is to be held.

But since this is not a matter of a doctrine of Scripture but of a practical question, the discussion was broken off. At the next meeting of the *Synodalkonferenz* [Synodical Conference] the discussion is to be continued.