# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S251
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 251

...force it to stay with us? In the idea of it, Brownson may be right; supreme power should indeed be and remain supreme power. The theory is correct, but you also know the saying:

The theory flies,
And practice gets it.

I am, by the way, no politician, and would rather be modest on such questions.

Christian: We can talk about such things quite comfortably here in our little parlor.

Andres: One thing in particular strikes me in this whole affair, and I wish all Americans would think about it.

Christian: What is it?

Andres: As you well know, people here have for years now flirted with revolution in every part of the world.

Christian: You are quite right.

Andres: How they have exalted to the skies a Ronge, a Kinkel, a Kossuth, a Hecker, and other rebellious stormy petrels! How they have puffed and paraded Garibaldi and the rebellion in Italy and in the Papal States, in every newspaper and every meeting with and without illuminations — not to speak of that Orsini procession that went through the whole land — and now that we suddenly have this rebellious devil's dung in our very midst, all at once it's "oh dear, how terrible!" To the people abroad who revolted against their own government, people here cheered and proclaimed the right of popular revolution, and now they want to drive our southern "revoluzzers" — who, strictly speaking, are no revoluzzers or rebels at all — back into the Union at the point of cannon. I simply cannot, now or ever, get that into my head."

It is remarkable how Oertel nevertheless tries to save his loyalty. He writes in one of his next articles: "But should the Black Republicans, especially the German boors among them, again step forward before the public with their black suspicion against us, insinuating that we Catholics are no proper Union men, etc., then we will prove to these slanderers that we are better and more sincere citizens of the Union than that whole black tribe of theirs has ever been or ever will be. The very name of Ignatius Loyola, whom we venerate as the founder of the Jesuit order and as a saint, ought to be guarantee enough for every thinking citizen that we are and remain loyal. We are loyal on principle, for God's sake and conscience's sake. But many of you Black Republicans are loyal only for the sake of speculation, ambition, and the purse."

Slavery. According to an open declaration circulating in the papers, a number of former members of the German Southern [Methodist] Episcopal Church have renounced their membership, because the fellowship, "instead of remaining neutral on the subject of slavery as it professes to do, rather supports and defends it under the cloak of this neutrality as an institution ordained by God."

A Methodist preacher in Ohio, who would have liked a post as chaplain with a regiment, wrote to the governor: "I am a Methodist preacher of the North Ohio Conference, 48 years old, and will preach, pray, and fight, as circumstances may require." Surely an accommodating fellow!

Mennonites. The "Christliches Volksblatt," organ of the Mennonites, says in its issue of June 26: "In our Mennonite fellowship in America there has always shown itself an unpardonable indifference and negligence. Very little concern has been shown for scattered members, or even whole congregations — especially when they were poor or weak. As the reason for such neglect one may rightly cite this: that the Mennonite people, indeed even the ministers themselves, were lulled into this culpable teaching, that it is wrong to support the preachers with money,