# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S219
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Agenda Controversy in Baden. 219

thought that, given such great caution, no significant resistance was to be
expected.

But things turned out quite differently. After a formerly Lutheran
congregation was the first to raise the alarm, one congregation after
another rose up. Pamphlets and newspaper articles incited the
congregations that had so far remained calm. Soon the defection was
general; one petition after another was presented by the petitioners to the
Grand Ducal government. Complaints were made of coercion of
conscience, of dangerous innovations, of injury to and stunting of
Protestantism and of the Union. People attacked the service-book as
though it were reawakening the confessional strife happily laid to rest, as
though it were a spawn of high-churchism carrying in its veins the
creeping poison of the newer Catholicizing tendencies. Poor Prelate
Ullmann! Who would have believed that he would still be burdened with
such reproaches? Even from Schenkel he had to accept similar reproaches
in the General Church Gazette. The Supreme Consistory did indeed
attempt, as is claimed, to call forth a counter-movement. But according
to Schenkel's testimony it remained confined merely to a few devoted or
Lutheran clergy, while the congregations without exception kept away
from it or set themselves against it. At last it became too much for the
Grand Duke. On December 21st of last year he issued a decree,
according to which "due consideration for the feelings and customs of
the congregations" was to be given, without any application of coercion.
The Supreme Consistory had to submit to the inevitable and append to
this decree a covering letter, in which it instructed the pastors to
negotiate with their parish councils as to what and how much of the
simple order of service they wished to adopt. This was to be reported,
and the most exalted decision obtained — though this had of course
already been made known in advance. Regarding the baptismal formula
the Supreme Consistory still reserved special instructions to itself. One
may thus regard the service-book as having pretty much failed.

This once again reveals to us the nature of the Union. For one would
be mistaken to place this course of events on the same level as the related
Bavarian one. In Bavaria the attempt was to bring purely Lutheran
character to bear as if cast from a single mold. In Baden they were far
from that. In Ullmann's intention lies a so-called positive union, that is,
the two churches are not to exist side by side as siblings, but are to be
living united into a single body, so that the one church communicates to
the other its distinctive gifts and merits. However pretty the idea looks
on paper, it turns out just as mechanical and wooden in reality. The
sacramental grace which is pushed into the corner at the Lord's Supper
comes to sit on the throne at baptism. The two churches do not fuse
together; they divide up the sacraments between them, being Lutheran at
baptism and Reformed at the Lord's Supper. One need only read the new
Baden catechism, which is put together in a wholly atomistic fashion