# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S33
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1930. 33

helm III, through whose proclamation of 27 September 1817 the Church of the Union came into being, whereby unspeakable tyranny over consciences was perpetrated. It was indeed the consequences of this decree that drove the Saxons, the Prussians, the Wends and others from their homeland in Germany, so that then, by God's gracious providence, a Lutheran church of pure confession arose here in America.

But the unhappy, calamitous attempts at union are made again and again, and one comes forward ever more boldly in doing so. The federation known as the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, which Deissmann (*Die ökumenische Erweckung* [The Ecumenical Awakening], 19) and Athearn (*Ten Reasons for Federation*) praise so highly, pushes itself brazenly forward as the representative of the Protestant Church in America. The United Church of Canada, welded together in 1925 out of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, is a monstrosity that can scarcely still speak of a confessional basis. It is the same, however, with the merger of the Scottish state church and the United Free Church of Scotland in October 1929, with the union of the Evangelical Synod of North America, the Reformed Church in the United States and the United Brethren in Christ, and with the prospective merger of the Northern Presbyterian Church, the United Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Church of America, not to mention other similar attempts.

And how does it stand in the Lutheran camp? The National Lutheran Council has existed since 1918. It has no real confessional basis, but the name "Lutheran" suffices to obtain membership. But it has been active in a prominent way in far-reaching attempts at union. The Lutheran World Conventions of Eisenach (1923) and of Copenhagen (1929) are to a great extent the work of the National Lutheran Council. An exchange paper summarizes the result thus: [Printed in English.] "The first step toward reunion [namely of the separated Lutheran bodies] was taken at the First Lutheran World Convention, held at Eisenach, Germany, in 1923. The sessions, significantly enough, were held in the Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther four hundred years ago translated the Bible [should read "the New Testament"] into the language of the common people. . . . The movement progressed until at a meeting of the National Lutheran Council in New York the actual organization was effected, and Dr. John A. Morehead, who had resigned as executive director of the National Lutheran Council, was made president of the Lutheran World Convention. The only Lutheran body not represented is the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri [should read *Synodalkonferenz* (Synodical Conference)], which, we are told, declined to cooperate."

In the meantime, however, the attempts at union have, despite many misgivings, some of them openly expressed, gone further with giant strides. The Norwegian Lutheran Church of America arose in June 1917 out of the Norwegian Lutheran Synod of America (by majority), the United Norwegian Lutheran Church and the Hauge Synod. In November 1918 followed the United Lutheran Church of America, a union of the General Synod, the General Council and the United Synod of the Ev. Luth. Church in the South. In the next few days (11 and 12 August 1930) the American Lutheran Church is being formed, which is composed of the Ohio, the Iowa and the Buffalo Synods. The bodies represented in it then intend to join a still larger federation of Lutheran synods, namely the