# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

State Interference in Church Matters. The following we read in the
Reformed "Evangelist" of May 16: "Rev. Hager, an Episcopal preacher in
Jolliet, Ill., was placed under indictment by his church authority on
account of adulterous conduct. Before the investigation began, he
appealed to the civil court, and this ordered the church authority to
drop the investigation. Now, however, the church authority has obtained
a ruling from a higher court that it may continue the investigation
undisturbed. It would indeed have been very strange and unjust if the
civil authority of our country had a right to hinder ecclesiastical
bodies in the exercise of their order and discipline within their own
circles."

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." How fundamentally perverse
this sum of the second table of the Law is understood by many so-called
theologians is reported by the "Evangelist" of May 16 of this year: that
the Episcopal preacher Dr. Tyng in New York said in a sermon that his
congregation had adopted the principle of giving as much for missions as
for their own congregational needs, and that the reverend doctor grounded
the correctness of this principle on the words of Scripture: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. Whether Dr. Tyng and the members of his
congregation also practice this interpretation in their own economic
affairs — we very much doubt it. For in this case or that, such an
application of the law can well be carried out in practice without one
seeing its absurdity in it, but with a consistent, determined
carrying-through, the folly of it would soon leap before the good
people's eyes.

"Philadelphia" is a small new periodical, published by Pastor L. W.
Habel of Kirchhayn, Wisc. — It is said to contain: "the confession of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church on the controversies now burning, essays
against the love of domination in the church, and some other
communications for Christians." The first number deals chiefly with the
Buffalo party's — properly Grabau's — "arbitrariness, deception, lies,
and hypocrisy." It is very distressing that the Senior [Grabau] continues
steadfastly not only in false doctrine but also in a wicked life. But
without repentance, of course, no improvement was to be hoped for. The
reverend Senior had already, some time ago, slandered through untruths:
that a deposed schoolmaster was superintendent in the Missouri Synod,
that the Missouri Synod had taken in the excommunicated Krause, that the
"Missourian Society at Milwaukee has a great temple with the inscription
'orthodox church of the unaltered Augsburg Confession,'" and a hundred
other things of the kind. These manifest untruths Grabau has made; they
have been proven to him as such, but he has never retracted them. What
improvement is to be hoped for there! We are quite glad to have been
spared, for a good while now, from occupying ourselves with Grabau,
apart from small occasional historical remarks. B.

Methodism. The Episcopal Methodist Church in the United States — which
in particular is the one that has drawn many Germans into its net —
comprised, according to the "New York Methodist," in the year 1862 a
membership of 942,906, in which, however, the so-called Mission
Conference in Germany and the Liberia Conference are included. During
this year it had suffered a decrease of 45,617 members. The so-called
"Southern Methodist Church," separated from it, numbers about 700,000
members. This body, however, was severely shattered, particularly in
some border states, since a considerable number of its members came
forward as decided opponents of the secession doctrines, which were
advocated by almost all the ecclesiastical organs, and many members in
Missouri and West Virginia united with the body simply called the
Episcopal Methodist Church. Of the latter, the Baltimore Conference
resolved, on account of the abolitionist resolutions which, in the year