# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S191
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 191

The people who come to a synod must have travel money and so-called per-diems, that is,
board money, on which they live during the synod. But they do not draw these travel and
board moneys out of their own pocket; rather, the rest of us have to pay them. Second, a peck
of intriguing; for the people have to be elected out of the congregations that are to send
someone to the synod, and there is the finest opportunity for intriguing and for carousing.
Perhaps, too, the brandy bottle and the cudgel can still be put to use in the electing and
intriguing — both are very popular in electing and intriguing. Third, a peck of new church laws,
for the synod must after all accomplish something, and when new laws come, then it stands
there in black and white that the synod really has accomplished something. Whether the new
laws are then good for anything, time will later tell. I heard recently of a new law that would
now be in force, namely, that if a quantity of objects were found in a man's house that were
apparently stolen, no one — not even the authorities — would be allowed to ask the man where
he got the things. That law would obviously be very good for scoundrels. Fourth, a wretched
strife and discord at the synod itself. In the matter of the new catechism it has become evident
that most of the congregations have abandoned the old Lutheran faith — otherwise they could
not have rejected the new Lutheran catechism, in which only the old Lutheran faith is taught
pure and unadulterated. So most of the congregations will elect unbelieving delegates to the
synod. But there will also be a few believing delegates present. That there can be no agreement
between believers and unbelievers is obvious, and if they do come to terms, their coming to
terms is sin. So if God does not intervene, the end of the whole business of synods will be that
all decidedly believing people are driven out of the state church; for the unbelievers will form
the majority. And that is in fact the intention of the unbelievers — that is precisely why they
press so hard for a synod. Well, if it is to be so for our sins' sake, so be it; the Lutheran church
will surely remain, the gates of hell cannot overpower her, and even as a church driven out she
remains the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with the twelve
stars about her head. But the state church will be a thing to pity, for once she has driven out the
believers, she becomes a church without faith, that is, a body without a soul.

Baden Tolerance. The Freimund reports the following: Ispringen, Pforzheim
district, Feb. 16. At the burial of the gallery director Frommel, who died here recently, an act
of intolerance took place on the part of the Evangelical-Union church council that well
deserves a public rebuke. The man — who had served four grand dukes faithfully for 40 years
and had been honored by them with rare favor, whose personal faith and Christian love were
known in wide circles — was refused the tolling of the grave-bell, on the ground that he was a
Lutheran. The worthy Evangelical-Union clergyman of the place, Pastor Specht, pressed in vain
with the members of the congregational church council to desist from this. The attempt, in the
church assembly, to obtain a reversal of the resolution ended with only 5 votes for and 22
against granting the tolling of the bell. It was a curious contrast: behind the coffin walked nine
active Evangelical clergymen, among them the grand duke's aide-de-camp, whom he had sent to
render, in his stead, the last honor to his departed teacher; yet the bells were silent for the
Lutheran, though they have been rung for every Catholic still buried in Ispringen.

Hanover. In order rightly to judge the catechism controversy now burning in Hanover, one
must not overlook what the Staber Sunday Paper of Feb. 22 recalls: "Very many who have
shouted loudest of all for the old (misbelieving) territorial catechism have done so out of gross
ignorance, because they (truly) supposed that thereby the Lutheran faith was being attacked.
Who has not encountered such lack of understanding: the old territorial catechism, which people
are accustomed to call the great