# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1859_S381
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical Contemporary Affairs. 381

Pastor Stölting points out that it is not the empirical congregation but the true congregation
of believers that holds this right.

Candidate Dedekind: Not many are required for the exercise of this congregational right;
even if there were only a single believing member, that member would have the duty
to exercise this right, for it concerns the salvation of souls, and there every individual has
the duty to bear witness.

Cathedral Preacher Dr. Thiele: Before a member makes use of this right, he must
seriously reflect. Every member has one right: prayer, in which he brings the matter before
the highest authority. In the faith of the word, "Where two or three agree together as
touching that which they shall ask, it shall be done for them," love hopes all things, and
before such a prayer a preacher of unbelief will not be able to hold out long.

Pastor Dr. Arndt cites several examples of believing congregations praying for their
preachers, and of rationalist pastors being converted through the power of the congregation's
intercession. The people of Elberfeld in particular do both: they pray for unbelieving
pastors and then go to them at home, Bible in hand, to entreat and admonish them."

Truly a curious mixture of truth and error!

Our Hoyer, as we learn from Münkel's Zeitblatt, has been transferred from the garrison
preacher's post at Celle to the newly established parish of Christ Church in Hanover.
On the crown prince's fifteenth birthday, namely September 20, the laying of the cornerstone
took place in Hanover for the new "Christuskirche," to be built with the king's private
funds. From now on all missionaries from the Hanoverian lands are to receive ordination in
this church, so that the church will be both things at once — the house of God for a local
congregation and a mother church for the mission to the heathen. —

Vienna, August 31. The "Ostdeutsche Post" gives the following report on the spread of
Protestantism: "In discussing Protestantism in Austria," the "Ostdeutsche Post" remarks,
"it is customary to look chiefly to Hungary, and since by far the majority of Austrian
Protestants do indeed live there, this leads many, at home and abroad, to assume that the
Protestant element in the other crown lands is so insignificant as to deserve no particular
attention. It should therefore not be superfluous, at the present moment, to set before the
public some statistics on Protestant Austria. In the Kingdom of Hungary proper there live
2,196,816 Protestants, namely 1,450,090 Reformed and 743,726 Lutherans. The Protestants
thus form nearly a fourth of the population of this kingdom. Here they constitute a church
organism guaranteed by older and newer laws, with independent superintendencies and
seniorates, and at the present moment await only full equality of rights with the Catholic
church. In Transylvania, out of a population of 2,073,737 souls, 543,634 are Protestants,
namely 297,419 Reformed, 199,943 Lutherans, and 46,272 Unitarians. Each of these three
confessions has its own provincial superintendent. In the Voivodeship of Serbia, out of a
total population of 1,574,428 individuals, 78,345 are Protestants of both confessions. In the
Military Frontier there live 15,381, whereas in Croatia and Slavonia there are only 4,831
Protestants. Among the crown lands belonging to the German Confederation, little Silesia
has proportionally the largest number of Protestants, namely 60,783. Then comes Bohemia
with 90,000, Moravia with 52,140, Upper Austria with 18,511, Carinthia with 17,900, Lower
Austria with 20,000; Styria counts only 5,800, the Coastland 1,500 Protestants. In Carniola
only 139 live, in Tyrol about 122 Evangelicals. In Salzburg 176 are resident. Of the
remaining crown lands, Galicia has a Protestant population of 24,580 souls. In the Bukovina
there live 7,280, in Venetia about 400, in Dalmatia only 15."

Berlin, September 5. The Minister of Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Medical