# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S378
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

378 Preliminary Report on the General Synod of the Prussian Lutheran Church.

One of the most important parts of our synod is the report on the whole activity in the administration of our church over the last four years, delivered by our right reverend Supreme Church Council. An activity under the most difficult of circumstances — toward the state, the unionist territorial church, the Lutheran associations, the neighboring Lutheran territorial churches, our own congregations, and the individual pastors, in doctrine, church discipline, administrative discipline, constitution, organization, edification, strengthening, and preservation of the smoldering wick — unfolds itself here before our eyes, such as perhaps no second church government has developed. From the statistics of our church we cite only this: in the years 1856–1860 eight new parishes arose in the comparatively small Lutheran Church of Prussia, namely Döbrück near Cottbus, Stolpe and Greifenberg in Pomerania, Lobsens in the Posen region, Sangerhausen in Thuringia, Elberfeld and Saarbrücken in the Rhineland, and Jepringen in Baden, so that the total number of parishes now amounts to 59. Five pastors passed over from the Union to the Lutheran church; in these four years fifteen candidates presented themselves, though some of these have since withdrawn again into other bonds; three pastors have died (Schöne, Düll, and Dr. Kniewel). Three assistant-pastorates have been established, five new schools were erected, though three have since closed again for want of means; in these four years thirteen new houses of God were built in our poor Lutheran church, and two are under construction. Two pastors had to be dismissed for gross moral offenses. In 111 sessions the Supreme Church Council had convened for the most important deliberations.

The burning question that occupied the synod immediately upon its convening was the constitution of our church. Through Pastor Dietrich's writings, and through counter-articles in the Ehlers church paper, the following deep-reaching opposition had come to light. On the one side, the church is regarded as the kingdom of grace, which is held together and governed solely by Word and Sacrament, so that church government lies in the pastorate, and what has hitherto been called church government serves only the administration of the church's external affairs. On the other side, the church is viewed as an organism or body into which the teaching and governing office was instituted from the beginning, so that church government takes the place of an authority, a relationship of commanders and obeyers is formed, and the church order appears as one divinely given, which may not be violated without sin. From this opposition the weightiest consequences follow. The church order of the Prussian Lutheran church consists of the so-called Synodal Resolutions, that is, the results of the deliberations of all the general synods of the Prussian Lutheran church from the year 1741 to '56, as these appeared in print in five substantial volumes. These Synodal Resolutions have for years suffered the most violent attacks, as though they had proceeded from an unevangelical spirit and were filled with it, as though