# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1860_S160
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

160 Church News of the Times.

...such places where only a Lutheran and not also a Reformed congregation exists are to be designated in special report forms as "Evangelical" authorities, a lively resistance arose on the part of the pastors, who persistently kept writing "Lutheran," corrected it into the printed forms, and willingly let themselves be fined, until it was made clear to them that this applied merely to the heading of the reports, and that thereby neither the congregations' name nor their confessional standing was meant to be altered. Thereupon the pastors rendered obedience and regarded the matter as an adiaphoron, that is, as a matter of indifference which, according to the teaching of our church in the Formula of Concord, may be allowed to stand if such a declaration is given by the authorities. One may also, if one wishes, write under the reports "N. N., Lutheran pastor." That is left free. Also in the minutes, and above the minutes, the name "Lutheran" appears among us and is to appear. And in the official church law of Köhler all Lutheran congregations are expressly designated as such.

Just as we still find the pure Word among us, so we also still find pure altars and the Sacrament according to Christ's institution. Holy Baptism is performed everywhere with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with the use of the Apostles' Creed, after the devil and all his works and ways have first been renounced. At the Sacrament of the Altar, in the old-Hessian lands, the old-Hessian, soundly Lutheran liturgy is to be used. Alongside it the Württemberg liturgy may also be used, which at least contains nothing that would overturn or defile the Sacrament of the Altar. If, besides these, still other formularies are employed that are not consonant with the faith, this is a wrong and is forbidden. Only one case has become known to us in which, in an otherwise soundly Lutheran congregation, a rationalist liturgy was declared to be rightfully in force. There one of the pastors uses it. But the second pastor, together with the patron of the church and the believing members of the congregation, avoid the altar thus profaned. The matter therefore still lies in dispute, and the Lord Christ will surely stand by His own. But the altar at which the present writer communes is pure. Only Lutherans may approach it. The Reformed and the Unionists must first formally go over to the Lutheran Church before they are admitted. If a non-Lutheran delegate of a church government were to come and wish to commune among us, he too would first have to renounce his errors and go over to us before he would be admitted.

If such a person wished to visit us officially, we would indeed have to allow it, though with a heavy heart. This has not yet occurred among us. But he would certainly be permitted to hear the sermon, inspect the books, take minutes of whatever occurred, even perhaps lodge a protest against his own person, but to the Sacrament he would not be admitted without a prior conversion, so that the altar might not be defiled.

From the Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung of February 25 we add, in supplement to the above: that, "after lengthy negotiations had been conducted in the higher and highest church authorities, an order was finally issued that an ordination formulary drafted on the basis of the old-Hessian liturgy should be submitted. The draft was prepared in such a way that the received formula, which was indeed very lengthy and certainly too lengthy, was suitably abridged; expressions that had become antiquated and liable to misunderstanding were exchanged for more suitable ones (though not modernized ones), and references to church or civil institutions no longer in existence were omitted. In general, however, care was taken to retain the essential content and spirit, in particular also the believing and edifying tone, harmonizing with Scripture, of the formulary found in the liturgy. Without wishing to go into detail, we believe we should confine ourselves to reprinting the passage which contains the obligation to be undertaken at ordination. This obligation has been framed in the following manner: 'Whoever is ordained to be a pastor shall, first, uphold and set forth, purely and unfalsified, the whole doctrine of the Christian religion, which is contained in the books of the Old and New Testament, the writings of the prophets and the apostles, and is testified to in the general symbols of the Christian Church as well as in the reformational confessions of our Church, chiefly the Augsburg Confession.' After this revised formulary has now received the highest episcopal sanction, it has recently been made known by official gazette to all Evangelical clergy." To this the A. K. Z. adds the following remark: "Unprejudiced friends of a positive Christianity will admit that the obligation here in question sets a dam against unbounded freedom of teaching and makes it a matter of conscience for Evangelical clergymen to hold fast, in their preaching and teaching, to the substance of the faith of the Evangelical Church, to its essential doctrines and core teachings, so that, if they can no longer do this and still wish to be honest men, nothing remains for them but to renounce their office. But they will not be able to raise the reproach that in the formula the confessions have been made into a straitjacket; rather, they are set up only as the bounds within which free movement is permitted and must be permitted."