# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 06 29_S119
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never, ever pass away."

[illegible]

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 3.

St. Louis, Mo., June 29, 1847.

No. 22.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for 5 cents.

(Submitted.)
Conversation of Two Lutherans on Church Polity.

I.

It was in the first days of May of this year; already the primeval forests and prairies were clothing themselves in their first tender green, and the sky shone in deep blue, as a steamship traveled down one of those lovely rivers that adorn the American West. Among the other travelers it carried also a delegate who had attended, at Chicago, the first sessions of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other states, and who was now hastening toward his home, but wished first to visit his friend Erich. Before long, a pleasant settlement came into view on the left bank, one that German industry had founded in a short time. The pilot's bell rang, the wheels fell silent, and the ship drifted slowly toward the shore. The gangplanks were laid out and several went ashore, among them our delegate, who walked toward a house that lay on a hill.

"Now, God greet you, my Siegfried," his friend welcomed him, and the two celebrated the hour of reunion, which ranks among the most beautiful in this life.

"Where do you come from, then, my dear fellow?" asked Erich, as afterward the two sat companionably under the summer arbor of the little country house.

Siegfried. From our synod, which held its first session in Chicago.

Erich. A synod?! asked Erich in astonishment.

S. Yes, why not?

E. I would never have thought that of you.

S. What is so evil about a synod, then?

E. What else but a German consistory?

S. Certainly not.

E. Woe is me, that I must live to see my friend helping to rob our Lutheran congregations of their precious rights and freedoms.

S. Erich!

E. How Christ's enemies, how the anti-clerics will jeer when they learn of this. Already they mock the "synodal sack" into which the congregations would be stuffed, which the priestlings would then open only now and then, just to let them have a look.

S. Let it —

E. Do you no longer remember, my brother, that beautiful time when, freed from German coercion, we came here in our new fatherland, by God's grace, to a knowledge of the church and of true ecclesiastical freedom? Daily we read together in God's Word and found recorded there, in clear outline, a fellowship so heartfelt, so brotherly and free, as we had never imagined, but had only longed for in the deepest ground of our hearts. How blessed we were in those days! However poor our new homeland at first seemed to us in learning, art, and refinement, it now seemed rich to us, for we saw its mountains, primeval forests, and prairies gleaming in the light of freedom, and a holy zeal filled our breast to build here upon the free church of the Lord. You sang then, full of joy, of the loveliness of free, brotherly fellowship:

There is no priest nor layman here,
No priestly caste at all,
No! Only brothers, only free men,
And only the bond of love, etc.

and now, I must say it to you openly, however much it grieves me, you are working once more into the hands of the priestlings.

S. Then I thank God in heaven that he led me to you, so that we might speak at length about church polity. I only ask you, remain just as open, speak out all your misgivings freely, and I have no doubt we will come to understand and agree with one another. For as before, so will I continue to fight for the freedom of the church, and if it must be, die for it, so help me God. You called our synod a German consistory?

E. That is exactly why I hate both, because they are tyrants. German consistories take from the congregations the right to choose and call their own preachers and to govern themselves. Instead they often force upon them avowed unbelievers, rationalists, and other false teachers as preachers, and, armed with worldly power, at the same time forbid them to depose such godless clerics. German consistories have robbed our people of the old, beautiful, core Lutheran hymns by watering them down with rationalist nonsense, and have introduced falsely-believing catechisms, textbooks, and liturgies. Indeed, how contemptuously they treat orthodox preachers and congregations! I even know of one consistory that made it a rule, whenever a congregation requested someone as preacher, to routinely refuse the request, so that no one should get the idea that the congregation had a right to call its own preacher. The consistory left enemies of Christ, slanderers of his holy Gospel, in their offices, and when such men were finally charged on account of their disgraceful conduct, it ruled in their favor. In short! Our Lutheran congregations in Germany have only the right to obey and to pay. And should I, as a Lutheran, not hate such outrages unto death?

S. It is true, some of today's consistories in Germany are like that, but they were not always so, and not all of them are so even now.

E. Did God, through Luther's service, deliver us from the tyranny of the pope only to sell us into the tyranny of worldly consistories? Christ has called us to freedom.

S. However painfully I too, along with you, acknowledge the shortcomings of our church in Germany, it is nonetheless an abomination to me when so many Germans, no sooner have they set foot on American soil, fall upon our old fatherland with venomous slanders and allow nothing good to remain of it.

E. That is indeed shameful. For whatever good we have here, we have it from God and from Germany.

S. You know how faithfully and splendidly our brothers in the faith in Germany take up the cause of the forsaken Lutherans in America.

E. God bless them for it!

S. So when we expose the ecclesiastical harms of Germany, let us do so with that same love which feels the sufferings of our brothers who suffer under them just as intimately as if they were our own. The Lutheran church of America and of Germany is but one, for the body of the Lord is but one in the whole world, and when one member suffers, the others suffer with it.

E. God grant that he heal them! However intimately we too lament the bondage of the congregations in Germany