# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S242
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

242 The Union and the Lutheran Church in Bremerhaven.

known, only about 30 years old and may now number 6,000 to 7,000 inhabitants, among
whom there are certainly not 1,000 Reformed. When Bremen purchased the territory
from Hanover, the new district was by treaty provisionally
attached to the parish of Lehe, so that the Lutherans were assigned to the Lutheran congregation there,
the Reformed to the Reformed congregation there. So it remained
for many years. Then, about eight years ago, Burgomaster Smidt suddenly appeared
in Bremerhaven, summoned some half a dozen of the more respected
citizens, Lutherans and Reformed, to the magistracy, and informed
them that from now on Bremerhaven was to form a united evangelical congregation,
asking them at the same time whether they had anything to object.
When these declared that they had nothing against this constituting of such
a congregation, they thereupon also learned that they were henceforth to form the board of the
congregation. So the thing was settled; because the burgomaster willed it
and those six had nothing against it, the Union was proclaimed
for Bremerhaven — naturally as agreeable to the great mass as it was
in itself a matter of indifference to them. Thereupon a free, irregular assembly was
called together, to which anyone who wished might come, and this crowd elected some further people
to join those six, who now all at once belonged to the church board
as well.

This church board now set to work to draft a church order,
soon completed it, and laid it before the
senate for confirmation with the request that it then be granted to the congregation of Bremerhaven
as its churchly constitution. And so, under date of July 8,
1854, Bremerhaven was by senate resolution furnished with a united church
order.

Before we go on with the account, we must first say a word about this church order.
It proclaims in dry, plain words the most utterly
complete union, even far more radical than the Prussian. Section 1 says:
"The congregation of Bremerhaven consists of all inhabitants of Bremerhaven
who confess one of the Protestant confessions. To these
are also reckoned those foreigners who are permitted to reside there,
insofar as the same requirement holds of them." And section 29,
which treats of the preacher, provides: "The preacher must belong to the Reformed
or the Lutheran confession, or have been a member of an evangelical
congregation, and is obligated to teach according to the principles of the Bremen
church, insofar as such principles do not belong exclusively to the Reformed or the Lutheran
confession." — That is all in the church order
that indicates the confessional standing of the congregation. The congregation
is therefore not Lutheran, because it also consists of Reformed and may have a
Reformed preacher; for the same reasons it is not
Reformed either; it is "Bremen"; — but what that means, hardly
anyone would be able to explain. All Protestants in Bremerhaven are to belong to the
congregation, foreigners included; so that as soon as a Lutheran or a
Reformed man, but just as much a Methodist, a Baptist and so on, crosses the boundary