# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1954_S106
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

106 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

of doctrine and which contends for an allowable and wholesome
latitude of theological opinion on the basis of the teaching of
the Word of God.” These practices are characterized as being
unionistic, and therefore contrary to Scripture, and if persisted in,
as constituting a disruption of the unity that so far has held the
Synodical Conference together. These are the practices which, in
the book entitled Another Fraternal Endeavor issued by the Lu-
theran Church — Missouri Synod, are referred to as “a number
of alleged practices which have occurred here and there in Mis-
souri” (page 89). In this book these so-called “alleged practices”
are taken up one by one, defended, and justified. Every criticism
of them is challenged. According to the essays in this book, these
acts of the Missouri Synod are in no sense unionistic. They must
necessarily, then, be right and holy, done in obedience to the will
and Word of God. The Wisconsin Synod’s objections and warnings,
on the other hand, are referred to as “working for a separation”
(p. 61), as a “rush toward separation” (p. 90), as though all the
painstaking admonition since 1938 were a heedless rush into sepa-
ration, an unholy thing that presumes to criticize the righteous
dealings of the Missouri Synod in respect to union with other
churches, to working arrangements with Scouting, military chap-
lainey, and so on.

' In this second Fraternal Endeavor the Common Confession is
defended not only as a correct statement of Missouri doctrine
but also as a “settlement in good faith” of all the past differences
that once kept Missouri and the American Lutheran Church
separate. The Common Confession also has the complete approval
of the A.L.C. At the same time the A.L. C. approves of the
United Lutheran Church’s Pittsburgh Agreement, also of the
A. L. Conference’s Minneapolis Theses, but accepts Missouri’s
Brief Statement only in the light of the A. L. C.’s own Declaration.
The A.L.C. accepts the Pittsburgh Agreement, the Minneapolis
Theses, its own Declaration, and finds that these documents are
all in essential agreement with each other and even with Missouri’s
Brief Statement. But Missouri rejects the Pittsburgh Agreement
and the Minneapolis Theses and the A. L. C.’s Declaration and still
declares itself in agreement with A. L. C. on the basis of the Com-
mon Confession. Only one conclusion is possible. The Common
Confession is a compromise and does not speak clearly enough.
Under its cover there still can repose together the confessions of
the A.L.C., the U.L.C., and the E.L.C. In the year 1944 the
A.L.C. found it possible to agree with other member churches of
the American Lutheran Conference that all these various Lutheran
confessions were in sufficient agreement with one another. The
adoption of the Common Confession just added another document
to the motley list that A. L. C. was willing to sign its name to. Since
then Part II of the Common Confession has also received the
unanimous approval of the A.L.C.

That should be sufficient evidence that the Common Confes-
sion is really a compromise document; otherwise the A. L. C. could
hardly accept it while at the same time refusing to accept the Brief
Statement and, on the other hand, accepting confessions which
Missouri rejects.

A.L.C. says: We accept the Common Confession as it stands.
We also approve of the Pittsburgh Agreement and the Minneapolis

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