# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S156
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

156 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

Schenkel, the celebrated union-agitator, has published a work, "Portrait of
the Character of Jesus," in which he has now brought to light so clearly
what actually lurks in his heart that even the "Neue Ev. Kz." of February 27
writes the following: "One really imagines here and there that one is
reading the expectorations of the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist or of a Strauss,
when one sees with what wild destructive urge Dr. Schenkel labors to bring
the evangelical accounts of Christ's resurrection into irreconcilable
conflict with one another. .... It is sufficiently plain that this
'''Portrait of the Character of Jesus''' can in no way be regarded as a
counter-writing, but only as a sad counterpart to Renan's '''Life of
Jesus''' — one that does the present state of our German theology no
particular honor. Its practical tendency, aimed at winning the masses for a
certain philosophically sublimated and yet at the same time naturalistically
flattened Christianity, is in any case almost exactly the same as with the
Parisian Renan, as with the Heidelberg professor and church councilor,
whose agitation for the establishment of a democratic people's- and
everyman's-church seems more and more to be degenerating into the common
demagogic and decidedly unchurchly."

Switzerland. A short time ago a preacher was to be elected at Uster, a
factory town on the railway east of Zurich. As candidate a young man, until
then a curate, was put forward, against whose election about 100 members
lodged a kind of protest with the church council. They based their protest
on the ground that the candidate had publicly declared, as his belief, in
sermons and in catechism instruction: 1. that the Bible is full of fables
from beginning to end and that most of the writings of the apostles are
spurious; 2. that Jesus is not what the New Testament says of Him, but was
a natural and a sinful man like all of us; 3. that He died and did not
rise, nor does He go on living in glory, for no one knows whether there is
a continuance after death; 4. that Jesus was an enthusiast and a fantast,
etc. Those protesting further appealed to the fact that Article 4 of the
state constitution declares the Christian religion, according to the
Reformed doctrinal system, to be "the national religion recognized by the
state." The answer of the church council was the unanimous declaration
that there was no legal ground for intervening; it had heard both bad and
good of the man. So the election came about with a hurrah "at which the
church windows trembled" — as one newspaper triumphantly reports. Out of
1,010 votes the man received 865. Credible ear-witnesses further report
concerning the one elected that in an Easter sermon he drew a parallel
between Judas and Christ that gave the impression he placed the former
above the latter, because Judas voluntarily sacrificed his life for his
conviction, while Christ did not do so, since He was after all violently
put to death by others and suffered voluntarily only insofar as He
undertook nothing for His own deliverance. Zwingli, he said, had brought a
greater sacrifice than Christ, because the former left behind a wife and
child, while the latter had only a mother to leave. The three parts of an
Ascension sermon were said to have been: he wished to prove, 1. that Jesus
did not rise, 2. did not ascend into heaven, 3. and will also not come
again from there. All this is reported by the Neue Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung.

Grand Duchy of Hesse. A correspondent of the Ev. Kz. accordingly writes
in the numbers of December 5 and 12, among other things, the following: Our
last reports from our country told of the strife that had broken out over
the new ordination formula. The year 1863 has brought new struggles to the
churchmen of the country. We give here a brief report of it, especially in
order thereby to awaken the sympathy of our dear fellow believers in
counsel and prayer. — First of all, it is the question of church polity
that at present moves our church most deeply. The events in Baden and in
the Palatinate could not fail to exert an influence on our Hesse. With the
political movements of our time, the old ecclesiastical wishes from the
years 1848 and 1849 also resurfaced, and, following a familiar tactic,
democracy seized hold of this matter and exploited it for its own purposes.
Two liberal deputies of the progressively minded second chamber felt
themselves called upon to bring in a motion regarding the constitution of
the evangelical church