# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S307
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Petition of the Consistories of the Evangelical Reformed Congregations at Leipzig, etc.                                                                    307

maintained. The petition, however, is well suited to disturb this peace, in that it permits itself encroachments upon foreign territory and raises the demand that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the land, for the sake of a little band of confessionally related foreigners (and that not even from any pressing need, but for the sake of a mere principle), should strip its schools of their character as confessional schools. It is the most favorable construction we can put on the matter if we assume that the petitioners have not fully grasped the scope of their proposal — for otherwise we should have to regard it as an altogether unjustified assault on the rights of our Church, as a provocation of the gravest kind.

Of great importance, therefore, is the position which the state government has taken toward this petition, in that it declared itself, through the royal commissioner, as follows: "All permanent teachers at Evangelical Lutheran schools, including the Gymnasia, the Realschulen, and the teacher-training seminaries, have hitherto taken the religious oath, and the church government of the Evangelical Lutheran Church must claim the right, as a constitutional one, to require this same oath of all teachers henceforth as well. That all public schools in Saxony — the Roman Catholic ones excepted — are at present Evangelical Lutheran, and that they remained confessional schools of the Evangelical Lutheran confession even after the enactment of the school law of June 6, 1835, needs no proof; and since the higher educational institutions named arose out of the public schools, and the seminaries in particular were established in order to train teachers for the Evangelical Lutheran public schools, the Evangelical Lutheran confessional character of these institutions likewise cannot be disputed. The question of the religious oath is a purely internal church matter, which § 57 of the constitutional charter leaves to the particular church constitution of each confession. The state government can therefore concede to no other religious society the right to petition for changes in this regard at Evangelical Lutheran schools, or to demand concessions in the sense of the petition. — Should, however, a motion from the Estates be brought before the state government to consider a limitation of the religious oath wherever such appears admissible in the confessional interest, then the government and the church government would not be disinclined to accede to it, and in particular to allow modifications at the Gymnasia and Realschulen."

Even the deputation of the Second Chamber, although it could not bring itself into agreement with this declaration, was nevertheless unable to avoid acknowledging the religious oath of the public schools as a legally established institution, and in this regard let the petition rest; it moved instead "that the state government be requested, or rather empowered, in the obligation imposed on all teachers at Gymnasia, Realschulen, teacher-training seminaries, and public schools who are not appointed to give religious instruction at these institutions, from the performance of the religious oath