# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S368
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

368 The Lutheran Church in Hungary.

...taken from the periodical for Protestantism and Church of Erlangen, the May issue of this year, may cast a welcome light on ecclesiastical conditions there.

In the said periodical we read:

Under King Leopold II, from 1790 to 1792, the Lutheran Church of Hungary attained its existence under public law after a century and a half of persecutions and afflictions, in that Leopold II, at the diet of 1790–91, raised the freedom of the Lutheran Church in Hungary, on the basis of the Peace of Vienna and the Peace of Linz, to the status of imperial law. Article 26 of this diet is thus the palladium of the very existence, up to now, of our Hungarian-Lutheran church as well; on it rests its autonomous administration and development thus far.

Already in the year 1791 the representatives of the Lutheran congregations, having obtained permission from the government (there were 434 Lutheran congregations at that time), held a synod in Pest.

The canons of this synod were, at bottom, nothing but a product of the arbitrary will of the high nobility at the expense of the clergy, since the latter were made wholly dependent on the secular inspectors and nominal church patrons. Rightly, therefore, the former Lutheran superintendent Dr. Joh. Szeberényi said that this synod was "the aristocracy." And at the close of his thorough critique of those canons, this able Lutheran superintendent said: "In reliquo orandum est, ne Canones hi Synodales, uti sunt, nunquam sanctionem regiam, atque ita vim legis nanciscantur. Deus! libera nos a malo!" [For the rest, it remains to pray that these synodal canons, as they stand, may never obtain royal sanction, and thus the force of law. God! Deliver us from evil!] —

In all, four superintendencies of the Lutheran Church of Hungary had been formed, namely:

1) the Mountain Superintendency, with 9 seniorates;
2) the Theiss (Tisza) Superintendency, with 8 seniorates;
3) the Danube Superintendency, with 8 seniorates; and
4) the Superintendency beyond the Danube, with 16 seniorates.

At the head of such a seniorate stands a senior: an office corresponding, in some respects, to that of a superintendent in Germany. Alongside the senior, a seniorate inspector is appointed by the nobility. The superintendency district stands under the administration of a superintendent and a district inspector, the latter always being chosen from among the most influential nobles. But all four superintendencies have as their head a general inspector who, chosen from the circle of the magnates, is accustomed to preside at the holding of the so-called general conventions (in which all four superintendency districts take part). We see, then, that the secular presidency has gained the upper hand in the Lutheran Church of Hungary — a state of affairs which, as is easily understood, has proved, the longer the more, not very advantageous for the church. — Let this, too, be remarked, that every church congregation