# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S125
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

125.

(From the new Zeitblatt of Münkel in Oiste, near Verden.)
The Kirchentag at Hamburg.

This year, for the first time, it happened to the Kirchentag that it met
with a very inhospitable reception. Hamburg had been chosen for the
gathering, in part no doubt, in order to bear witness in this
spiritually decayed city and to turn a blessing toward it. Precisely for
that reason, and all the more violently, opposition stirred, which could
scarcely be so far appeased that the Kirchentag received a decent
reception at all. It had to hear said against it what the majority of
its own members never tire of reproaching the Lutherans with — that it
is too exclusive. That may serve it as a lesson, how far one must go if
one wishes to escape that reproach. Nevertheless, we see in the
hostility which it encountered in a city like Hamburg a good sign, that
there is still some salt in it, which perhaps also held back, a little,
the decay in Hamburg. Less, indeed, may the proceedings themselves have
contributed to that than the sermons, which were delivered by capable
preachers, and the bearing of the Kirchentag itself.

If the Kirchentag was this time stormy from without, it enjoyed all the
greater calm within. In this it was the opposite of the previous year's
Kirchentag at Stuttgart, where it was indeed received with great honors,
but fell into violent internal discord. It remains an open question
whether Stahl, Hengstenberg, and others were missed this time at
Hamburg as a result of that discord, so as to give the Kirchentag a
lesson through their absence. It seems, however, that it had already
given itself that lesson beforehand. The subjects for discussion were
chosen with deliberate care, so as not to give occasion for new
divisions, especially in Hamburg. On the agenda stood: the claim of
congregations to special pastoral care, the abuse of judicial oaths, the
union of ecclesiastical and civil parish offices, and the Christian's
relation to temporal goods. We cannot go further into the treatment of
these subjects; it bore witness to skillful hands, and certainly
yielded its profit. One notices only that the Kirchentag has come down
several steps from the height above the times which it wishes to
occupy. Burning church questions, questions that stir the age, it has
avoided, and has occupied itself instead with matters of the second and
third rank, so that it has drawn nearer to the ordinary ministerial
conferences. It could hardly have done otherwise, if it wished to
preserve domestic peace. Weighty church questions would also rouse the
parties and threaten the life of the Kirchentag, which already at
Stuttgart seemed on the point of expiring. But what will be the
consequence of this? The Kirchentag will have to give up its
ecclesiastical protectorate, which it has exercised these ten years not
without presumption, and the churches will be freed from its
guardianship.

It will still cost it some effort before it yields room to that
conviction. Even this year, when it condescended to move its chair
somewhat lower, it had another impulse to raise itself, for a few
minutes, back to its old height. The matter concerned giving a lesson to
stubborn Lutheran Mecklenburg, which has always shown itself so
unyielding toward the Kirchentag, so that it might feel what power it
had defied. The Kirchentag, undeterred by the many voices that rose
against it in its own midst, resolved by majority vote on a declaration
of censure against the Mecklenburg government on account of the
dismissal from office of Baumgar-