# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1862_S318
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

318 Church and Contemporary Affairs.

the active soul of the united Kirchenverein, assures us that, living in the midst of the Missourians, he has not yet lost a single member to them, (? !) even though his congregation consisted entirely of Lutherans who came from the region of Bremen and from Hanover — and that was certainly not due solely to the winning personality of the man. Lutheran strictness of doctrine must first fight its way to a footing before it can master this ground; but modern enlightenment and American air are not very favorable to that."

"Another danger, too, grows for the Lutheran church out of the Americanization of the Germans, for the German character has a hard stand in America. It is the peculiarity of the German that, abroad, he accommodates himself to the foreign and gives up his own peculiarity. Only where Germans live together in larger masses is German character preserved longer, as for instance even in the midst of New York, where there are 150,000 Germans. In other large cities too there are purely German quarters, and the further west one goes, the more broadly the German population comes to the fore. Just as the Missourians are the most faithful keepers of Lutheran doctrine, so one must also give them the testimony that they hold most tenaciously to German character. How much they will achieve depends in part on what dominance and extension they gain among the Germans. For, understandably, a small community cannot withstand the ruling current of national life. To be sure, the Missourians are not alone in this struggle. The freethinkers just mentioned among the Germans, too, who fight the church in their societies, newspapers, and gymnastic brotherhoods, are animated by an inward hatred of Americanism and contend for German custom and language as much as for their political fantasies. But this crude struggle can only bring defeats to the cause, since it makes it contemptible. Despite these efforts, and despite the fact that emigration is constantly bringing the Germans new reinforcements, it cannot be denied that German character is in the process of dissolving."

"But what harm is there in that? one might ask. If the Germans will not or cannot remain Germans, then let them become Americans. They can remain Lutheran even with an English tongue; they can even use the English tongue to bring the Lutheran church to the Americans. Let no one claim that Lutheranism is bound to the German language and character and is given up along with it, or else one denies the Lutheran church its universality or catholicity. That is not without reason, yet one must also look at the matter practically. Languages are not only dividers of peoples, they have also become dividers of churches. The English and German languages actually still divide the Lutheran and the Reformed church to this day. In the English linguistic sphere only the Reformed character is at home, which has stamped itself upon views and customs, upon theology and literature. If the Germans are now cut off from the German language and transplanted with the English language into a wholly foreign air, how shall it be possible for them to remain Lutheran, especially in America, whose churchly doings and life are as un-Lutheran as possible? Thus a real danger truly threatens from this side."

"Now if, in the long run, the Americanization of the Germans is not to be resisted, then it would indeed be necessary for the Lutherans to keep this circumstance in view in good time, and to provide not only for English worship services but also for English religious writings, which would supply English-speaking Lutherans with the essentials needed to be kept within the fellowship of the church, until perhaps God in his grace should grant that a fruitful activity develop out of them themselves, one that could have further-reaching consequences. For not much is to be hoped for, in the meantime, from the activity of the Lutheran General Synod, since it is itself still too diffuse and too dominated by American character. It would, however, be necessary that alongside this, German character be held fast wherever and as long as it can be held fast. For as long as there is not yet an independent, vigorous Lutheran-English church, the beginnings of a foothold and support in the German church cannot be dispensed with, without dissolving. With this task, the Lutherans are at the same time assigned the other work: to acclimatize the theological and ecclesiastical material, so to speak, or to make it palatable to the American, without sacrificing anything of its truth. For in the