# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52 On the History of the Hanoverian Catechism Controversy.

they otherwise do not hold fast to from this catechism. Or is perhaps this
"holding fast" meant the same way as the "we stand upon the one foundation"
above? Is it a turn of phrase whose sense, validity, and use each of
them reserves to himself?

After this comes the constitution, without doubt their chief concern. They
wish to strive for a congregational order corresponding to the nature of
the evangelical Church. Whether they have engaged with the concepts of
church, evangelical church, the nature of the church, a corresponding
presbyterial order, and have become clear and agreed among themselves
about these trifles, we do not learn here. They also wish to strive for a
synodal constitution, without saying what they understand by it. If it is
true that they sent a telegraphic greeting to Schenkel, then one does them
no wrong in drawing a conclusion from it about their aspirations; it will be
called "from the principle of the congregation," that is, of popular sovereignty.

To further these fine purposes they have now elected a committee, whose
first task will be to prepare, convene, and lead a public assembly of such
clergy and laity as agree with them. For one knows, from the experience of
the Palatinate and Baden, that consistories, synods (where these already
exist, but do not do well), governments, and princes tend to succumb to the
tremendous atmospheric pressure of such assemblies of thousands. One
knows from 1848 what can be forced through by such assemblies, especially
when they are systematically prepared and led, and have in their
committee a governing head and, at the same time, a projecting point for
effective wall-breaching. And these clergy here are indeed fully within
their rights and covered, for the law guarantees free rights of association
and assembly — even should it come to the declared breach of the existing
lawful constitution? Would the king's own officials likewise be permitted
to assemble, to band together with the subjects of their districts, to
organize themselves in a directing committee, and to approach the king
for an alteration of the territorial constitution? We must wait and see.

But what does the conference at Celle mean when it says of the Church of
our narrower fatherland that "it has presently come, in its constitution and
in its standing over against the world, into a deplorable condition, which
urgently calls for thorough remedy"? It is true, the present condition is
deplorable; the constitution is dissolving into arbitrariness, and the world
has the loud word in the Church and threatens it with total violation. Is
this the conference's "deep pain"? Or what else gnaws at their heart? From
the remedial propositions one can recognize that this cry of pain has quite
other causes than the Church's present real distress and danger. In these
very waters they themselves swim, and they have not a word against the
frivolous mischief that is being carried on, and is carried on with daily
spying, slandering, agitating, and inciting; they do not disown it, they do
not rebuke it, they steer