# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S218
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

218    Church News of the Day.

the most of it (we wish we could write all of it) could not have been done worse. If its results did not correspond to the hopes of the sanguine, they were yet much better than the fainthearted feared. Indeed, in the midst of the most discouraging appearances we think we can trace signs of progress, and even in the innermost ground of Radicalism (sic!) we notice some stirrings of that better life which is still to transform our beloved church." — Truly a more wretched certificate of poverty could hardly have been issued anew to the reverend General Synod. It is surpassed only by what is found in another article in the same issue, headed "Tendencies, Our Future." To be sure, it begins with the lofty, ever-growing self-satisfaction that "the General Synod is an important motive force of our church life," but must at once note that it needs "great changes" for its full effectiveness, and that indeed its hopes hang on the probable occurrence of these "for the future of this body and of our church, insofar as the latter may determine the General Synod." At present, it says, the synods within the General Synod are only loosely bound to one another, but the time is surely coming when mere alliances will everywhere be displaced by real union. In the course of it he then says: "We have scarcely anything holding us together beside our name and our history; and if we loosen ourselves from that doctrinal bond of union which conditions our life — as to a great extent we have done — we have exposed ourselves to the fate of division and dissolution." And further on: "We predict that in important respects our most recent General Synod [illegible] of its kind will have been." God grant it! But the General Synod may thank its prophet for the prognostication he has given it. We must say it: we are doubly disgusted, at such voices from within its own camp, by the lofty pretensions and ridiculous boastings with which this bankrupt synod continually carries on in a truly American fashion. C.

At its convention in Lancaster, the General Synod had resolved to adopt so-called "patriotic resolutions," in which, among other things, it endorsed the President's policy regarding emancipation, despite objections raised against such action by some, and had those resolutions personally presented to the President by a committee. On this the Reformed Church paper of Chambersburg, Penn., makes the following altogether correct remarks in its issue of June 5: "These resolutions read, one and all, quite patriotic, but they are, after all, a very cheap commodity in our free states. Who indeed doubts our patriotism? But the most important point is that we cannot see why ecclesiastical bodies should concern themselves with such matters. They never do any good by it, and they open the door for the inroad of political agitation into the churches and into the pulpits. The 'Kirchenzeitung' has in former years, and up to now, taken a decided stand against political agitation (abolitionism included, along with other reforms encroaching on the field of politics), and we are more and more convinced of the correctness of our position. In times when men's minds are as generally excited as is now the case, the danger lies very near for preachers of being swept into the whirlpool. Not a few, too, find it flattering that they and their church will in this way reap the world's favor in still greater measure, and how much this alone may have to do with it in the case of many!" "Political newspapers take notice of it," a young preacher recently said to us quite naively, "and that too is not to be despised" (!).

Comedy-Playing in the Churches. A short while ago an atheistic political journal reported with evident relish: "Dr. Solger, the teacher of the Negroes in North Carolina, preached on Sunday, June 8, at New York in St. George's Church amid loud applause. Applauding has now become so fashionable in churches that before long a preacher will feel quite unhappy if he is not called out at least twice."

Buffalo Synod. It was already reported in the March number of this journal that a dispute has broken out in this synod. Some of its members accuse