# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S317
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.                    317

In Baden the Supreme Church Council keeps yielding more and more to the pressure of the liberal progressive party. It has recently proven this once again by designating 70 questions and 91 verses from the new catechism — about half of the whole — as ones that need not be learned by heart. (Ibid.)

Of Dr. Sylv. Woodward, a Presbyterian minister in New Orleans, who died on June 30, it is said in his obituary that he never took his text from the Bible, but always from the newspapers, though he did not himself take part in political questions. (Ibid.)

Dr. Friedrich Strauss, the well-known author of the "Glockentöne" [Chimes], formerly a preacher in Elberfeld (since 1822 court preacher and professor in Berlin), has, as the Neue Ev. Kirchenzeitung reports under July 25, recently died.

Hannover. A friend writes from there under date of August 5, among other things, as follows: —

"This time I can add only the little that, at the instigation of the so often mentioned enemies of the church, the government continues to try to preserve peace as far as possible, and that therefore preliminary elections for a synod are presently being held everywhere. As I hear, people are electing pretty much the same men again who had sat at Celle when I last wrote to you. Fine prospects for the future! What will become of things, when even now no preacher may fully use the Lutheran liturgy any longer? To be sure, the more earnest-minded men at the Pentecost Conference in Hannover have, according to the reports circulating about it, resolved to stand firm. But even for sharp expressions in the sermon, as I recall, someone has been hauled before a court. And the bounds of the pulpit had hitherto still left the old confession, so far as it ventured to show itself here, as a narrow margin. — It seems indeed to be decreed over the truth in these days that it should forgo the protection which in earlier centuries it found with princes in the territorial church. I am only eager to learn whether later, among us, those who are evidently being driven out may yet prove the protection and shelter of Abraham."

Pastor Bollart in Clodra, who, as reported earlier, has separated from his territorial church and founded a separate Lutheran congregation called the Advent congregation, has obtained recognition for the latter — though still informal — from the government of the Principality of Reuss, younger line. He has also, for a year now, been publishing a paper which combats especially all territorial- and state-churchism. The title of the paper is: "Gideon. Church Paper for Evangelical Truth and Freedom." (Leipzig, by E. Bredt, price 11¼ Ngr. or 42 Kr.) The "Freimund" says: "If Freimund No. 32 expressed the fear that 'Gideon' might fall prey to fanaticism, the later issues unfortunately contain evidence enough to justify this fear."

Dr. Graul has, as we learn from a German periodical of July 1, already for a year and more been confined to his sickbed. May the Lord soon raise up the dear man again!

Haag and Eichhorn. The lawsuit over the church property, into which those members of Pastor Eichhorn's congregation who had gone over to Haag had forced the latter [Eichhorn], has been decided in his favor; although, namely, the church property stood recorded in the name of one of those who had departed, they nevertheless lost their case, as Eichhorn writes, "because they had demonstrably withdrawn from the church, its church government, and the congregation, and had thereby also forfeited their share in the corporate property."

Strasbourg. Here too a separation has taken place in Pastor Horning's congregation. Pastor Diedrich was the mediator in the matter. What he writes in his own justification sounds almost incredible. He writes, among other things, as follows in Ehlers' Zeitblatt of July 1:

"For about four years some people in St. had turned to me in great anguish of soul. Pastor Horning had namely made it a sin for them in his church to