# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 25

...boten" of Nov. 20, among other things, the following: In Granville, Milwaukee Co., Wisconsin, a certain Bühren presented himself as pastor of a nominally Lutheran congregation which had, however, also taken Reformed people into its bosom. He had formerly been a merchant and then a Methodist preacher, and now set out, with the help of the Reformed members, to turn the congregation into a Presbyterian one. To this end he first brought it about that the congregation severed itself from the Wisconsin Synod, to which it belonged. Once this separation had been accomplished, he had the following paragraph inserted into the congregation's constitution: "This congregation shall henceforth have the right to retain a preacher from any synod or church denomination whatsoever, and, as soon as it becomes vacant, to choose itself a new one, from wherever it pleases. All articles, especially § 3, that conflict with this provision are hereby annulled." (§ 3 had provided that only a Lutheran pastor, belonging to a recognized Lutheran synod, could be the preacher of this congregation.) Once this had been done, it soon became evident that the goal toward which Mr. Bühren was steering was the Presbyterian church. This naturally met with little or no objection among the Reformed members of the congregation. But among those who wanted to be and remain Lutheran, he met resistance. He resigned and is now a Presbyterian preacher in Iowa. After another Presbyterian preacher won over a number of members of the congregation for himself, the majority rejoined the Wisconsin Synod. May the latter let this experience serve as a warning to it.

The General Synod. In "The Lutheran and Missionary" of Nov. 19 of last year it is mentioned as a "painful fact" that the General Synod is losing more and more its function of publishing books for general church use. Indeed, it says there, "we now have the monstrous anomaly that the General Synod can publish a book which not a single synod, in its whole connection, cares to use." It seems to us that this fact is anything but "painful." It shows that the General Synod has outlived itself and, if it does not let itself be reformed on the basis of God's divine Word and the Lutheran confession, is heading toward a sure dissolution — not to mention that it should then have retained the hope of gradually taking into itself all the synods of this land that call themselves Lutheran. Within the General Synod, by God's grace, a by no means insignificant number of men have arisen who now protest just as decidedly against a representation of the General Synod by Zwinglian-Methodistic products, as the die-hard so-called American-Lutheran members protest against a representation of it by genuinely Lutheran publications. A common course of action, where doctrine is concerned, is already almost no longer feasible. More and more the "Lutheran General Synod" is being driven into the dilemma of either giving up its Lutheran pretensions and perishing as such, or becoming truly Lutheran. Tertium non datur [there is no third option]. How gladly would we, and how would all Lutherans, rejoice from the heart if the second case should come to pass! Thus far, unfortunately, nothing is less to be expected than this.

Dr. Reynolds has published, in "The North-Western Church," an organ of the Episcopal Church appearing in Chicago, the reasons for his conversion from the Lutheran to the Episcopal church. With visible relish the "Observer" of Nov. 27 of last year quotes from it the passage in which the convert declares that he was moved to leave in part by the far-reaching divisions and heated controversies within our church, referring in particular to the alleged "bitter sectarianism" and to the denunciations by the "Lutheran and Missionary," with which the latter pursues the men of the Observer party. Oddly enough, the Observer thus itself announces, with evident satisfaction, that it is precisely the spirit of its own party that lives in Dr. Reynolds and that drove him out of the Lutheran church — and not some so-called Lutheran high-churchism.

"The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Southern States and Its General Synod." Under this heading the "Lutheran and Missionary" of November 12 of last year communicates excerpts from a letter that reached it by way of England, ad-