# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1864_S318
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

318 Church and Contemporary Affairs.

newspaper argued vigorously for and against the law. While one voice declared itself in
the sense of Pastor Harms, a second regretted the law as a questionable and dangerous
concession to unbelief, though offering obedience nonetheless, while a third, pointing to the
circumstances of the time, sought to dispel the misgivings and warned against stirring up
new confusion. The long-continued exchange of notes concerned itself chiefly with the
theological side of the matter, and brought out that the new church law is indeed an
improvement over the consistorial circular of April 21 of last year, but can by no means
be regarded as an adequate sticking-plaster for the existing wound. There are, however,
still more wounds present for which the sticking-plaster is found wanting. Abroad, the
sentiment of noted theologians is favorable to the church law insofar as they consider it
the unavoidable way out of the confusion, if the territorial church is not to be shaken
still further. A voice against it has been raised in only two papers, which favor more
free-church views. The Buffalo Informatorium points in particular to the contradiction in
the law, that in the very name of the sponsors who have declared their own unbelief, all
unbelief is to be renounced. The law, however, did not create this contradiction but
found it already present, only that otherwise the sponsors said yes with their mouths and
no with their hearts. Among the authorities on church law in Germany there is
probably not a single one who holds the resistance to the new church law to be justified.
The church government has power to change ceremonies; since the renunciation, not
being prescribed in Holy Scripture, is such a ceremony, without which baptism remains
fully valid, the church government may make changes in it. Resistance would be justified
only if someone were, by the new law, required to make a denial of the faith. But this is
so far from being required of the one being baptized that the confession is rather put
into his mouth. He, for his own person, therefore has no right to resistance, even though
he has cause to complain that matters have come to this pass. That is, in brief, the
argument from church law, against which the one objection has been raised, that at least
the church government has, with this law, committed a denial. Whoever accepts the law,
then, makes himself an accomplice in the denial. Much could be said back and forth
here, but the short answer given is that the one being baptized could only be regarded as
an accomplice if the law itself made a denial necessary. For it is no concern of the one
being baptized what the government may have thought, done, or become guilty of in
issuing the law, but only the law itself, which demands no denial from the one being
baptized. It seems, however, that there is little inclination toward resistance in the
country as well. One hears from many places that the new baptismal formula has been
taken into use, sometimes alongside and together with the old, where the old has already
become sufficiently established, sometimes without the old and displacing it, and then not
always to the full satisfaction of the congregations. Yet individual preachers are still
willing to break a lance against the new baptismal formula, it seems only where
opposition to the old baptismal formula was likewise only sporadic. Here there may be
reason to preserve uniformity and to forestall a possible confusion. For it can also be
questionable to bring a law into general application without taking the existing
circumstances into account. A real and decided refusal seems so far to have occurred in
only one case, while the few remaining refusals are really only accommodations. One has
therefore also heard nothing further this year of baptismal scandals, and peace has for
the time being again returned to our territorial church." — We must confess we did not
expect that a Münkel would be capable of viewing the matter in this way. But we must
resign ourselves to living in a time in which the old spirit of confession and of the most
delicate conscientiousness in this regard has vanished.
Baden. The "Freimund" of September 1 writes as follows: "The often-discussed
petition — signed at first by 54, but latterly by 117 (!) — Baden clergy for the removal
of Dr. Schenkel from his position as director of the Evangelical Protestant preachers'
seminary at Heidelberg has, as was to be expected, been rejected by the Evangelical
Supreme Church Council, through