Showcase: interesting finds

Entwurf der Synodal-Verfassung — the draft constitution of the Missouri Synod

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-09-05, p. 2 EN

Nine months before the Synod was founded in Chicago in April 1847, Der Lutheraner printed the draft synodical constitution for public discussion — introduction and paragraphs in full, with the editors' supplementary explanations following in the next issue. The founding document of the LCMS, in the form its first readers saw, searchable in English.

How the constitution came to be: the conference report

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-09-19, p. 11 EN

The same September 1846 number reports the deliberations — congregations and pastors proceeding toward a constitution binding them to all the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The first issue: Walther launches Der Lutheraner (September 1844)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 1, 1844-09-01, p. 1 EN

The opening number, with the masthead motto that would stand for a century: Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr' vergehet nun und nimmermehr.

A typesetter's slip: Gnade printed as Guade (1845)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 1, 1845-04-19, p. 68 EN

The compositor set the n of Gnade (grace) upside down, making it Guade — a classic turned-letter error of hand-set type, confirmed by the same word set correctly one line below. Found by the AI correction pass, and preserved exactly as printed: the archive records what the page says. Read the full story of this find — and how pages were set in 1845 — on the blog.

Wilhelm Löhe, "Registering for Confession" — First Dialogue (December 1846)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-12-08, p. 43 EN

Löhe's pastoral dialogues on private confession, serialized for German readers in America — with its footnote on the "sketch from life" method.

The Baltimore congregation vindicates Pastor Wyneken

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 3, 1846-11-17, p. 32 EN

A congregational resolution defending F. C. D. Wyneken — missionary organizer and later the Synod's second president — against his critics.

Into the woods of Michigan: the Chippewa mission (September 1847)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1847-09-20, p. 14 EN

A missionary's report from the mission to the Chippewa in northern Michigan — after months without an interpreter, "we hurried into the woods."

The Methodists and slavery (January 1848)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1848-01-25, p. 82 EN

A survey of American church bodies notes which Methodists rejected slaveholding outright — the slavery debate as German immigrant readers encountered it, thirteen years before the war.

Cholera crosses the Atlantic (February 1849)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-02-02, p. 88 EN

A ship from Le Havre lands cholera cases in New York harbor — the paper tracks the epidemic's approach issue by issue, from London in November to the American coast in winter. By summer it would devastate St. Louis.

The Great Fire of St. Louis (May 17, 1849)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-05-29, p. 157 EN

The Ascension Day fire that destroyed the riverfront, reported amid the cholera epidemic that killed nearly a tenth of the city — "Irret euch nicht, Gott läßt sich nicht spotten" — with the congregations' common day of repentance, and the newspapers that mocked it, at the center of the story.

The revolutions of 1848–49, reported (May 1849)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 5, 1849-05-11, p. 124 EN

Robert Blum executed, "fire at all ends of Germany," the pope driven from Rome, Tuscany declared a republic — the European revolutions as German immigrant readers in Missouri followed them, in the same columns as their church news.

The Prussian Lutherans' cry for help (December 1849)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 73 EN

The "Nothruf" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia — the appeal of the Old Lutherans under the Prussian Union, printed for the American congregations that had left for the same reason.

A congregation fights over private confession (Wapakonetta, Ohio)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 78 EN

Parish-level controversy in full view: a dispute over auricular confession and interdict in one Ohio congregation — the young synod's discipline working itself out on the ground.

Before the Roman Inquisition: Reising's own account (1700, reprinted 1848)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 4, 1848-05-24, p. 172 EN

Franz Leopold von Reising read Chemnitz's forbidden Examen of the Council of Trent, disputed with a Jesuit, and was excommunicated, confined, and sent to Rome for trial — his first-person narrative of the Inquisition, serialized for German readers in Missouri a century and a half later.

August Crämer, "A Conversation about California" (January 1850)

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 6, 1850-01-08, p. 152 EN

A dialogue on the gold rush: may a Christian join it? "What is not of faith is sin" — the forty-niners examined from a Missouri pulpit.

Albert Friedrich Hoppe (1828–1911): the man who finished the St. Louis Luther

Der Lutheraner, Jahrgang 67, 1911-06-13, p. 190 EN

Der Lutheraner's two-part obituary of A. F. Hoppe, editor of the St. Louis Edition of Luther's works from 1886 until its index appeared in 1910. Most of it is Hoppe's own memoir, written for his only daughter. He was a surgeon's son from Rostock and a student of Delitzsch. He spent thirty years in New Orleans, first as a pastor, then as a schoolmaster, through the yellow-fever years. From 1886 he carried the edition to its end, and for its index he read “the entire Luther once more, the large, thick 22 volumes, carefully, pen in hand.” The obituary is signed L. F. (Ludwig Fuerbringer). Pages 196–200 and 213–216 of these two issues are missing from the only available scan; the obituary itself is complete. Read the essay: The Luther Missouri Read →

1. 13 June 1911, p. 190 · the death notice, and the memoir begins: “Ich bin am 24. Juli 1828 in Rostock geboren.”
2. 27 June 1911, p. 206 · the call to the Luther edition, 1885–86.
3. 27 June 1911, p. 207 · “Hoppes Lebenswerk war nun vollendet”: the index, and the unfinished life of Luther.

Zur Lehre vom heiligen Predigtamt — the first issue opens on church and ministry (Januar 1855)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 1, Januar 1855, p. 1 EN

Lehre und Wehre began where the Missouri Synod's hardest quarrel was — "The question of church and office is unquestionably a question of the times. It moves not only the Lutheran church but also communions standing outside her." The opening article of the opening number, by Pastor O. Fürbringer, written while Missouri and the Buffalo Synod were in open conflict over exactly this.

Die Sclaverei und die Bibel — printed over the editors' own signed dissent (August 1856)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, August 1856, p. 225 EN

A long argument on how American slavery is to be judged by God's Word, submitted by "K. B." and printed with a footnote in which the editors record that they disagree with it: "So little did we consider ourselves entitled to reject the present article on account of the dissent in which our — as we believe, well-founded — conviction stands with its content, that we cannot forbear giving expression herewith to our dissent." They do not say where the disagreement lies. The article itself refuses both sides of the American argument: it rejects the standard defense that Southern slaves are better fed than Northern laborers, and equally rejects "zealotic denunciation of slavery" and any part in political agitation against it, holding that the Gospel opens "the way by which the slaves may at last attain to their bodily freedom." Five years before the war.

Melanchthon und Luther über Sclaverei — the Twelve Articles of 1525, set before American readers

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, November 1856, p. 352 EN

The Twelve Articles of the peasants of Swabia — "it has hitherto been the custom that men have held us as their own property, which is a matter for pity, seeing that Christ has redeemed and purchased us all" — set before American readers in the year the Republican party first ran a presidential candidate.

Aufruf zu einer allgemeinen Conferenz — the call, and the men who signed it (1856)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, Juni 1856, p. 186 EN

The Aufruf zu einer allgemeinen Conferenz is reprinted across four consecutive numbers, and each printing carries a different set of names. It is not four copies of one document but a rolling subscription list for the free-conference movement, each line giving a man, his office, and the city he votes to meet in: "F. Wyneken, Pastor zu St. Louis, stimmt für Columbus, O." It opens with five St. Louis names, Walther among them, and by August has reached Sihler, Crämer, Brohm, Fick and Seyffarth.

Zu der Lehre von der Gnadenwahl, Seite 311 — where the compositor makes the scanner's mistake (1856)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, October 1856, p. 311 EN

Page 311 of O. Fürbringer's treatise on the election of grace, which runs S. 305-316. The passage argues from Exodus 33:19 and points to the proclaiming of the LORD's name — but the citation is set as "K. 84, 5 fgg." for chapter 34. The Fraktur 3 has a closed upper bowl and is read as an 8; the typesetter's hand made in 1856 the identical error this archive's OCR makes today, and it is preserved here exactly as printed.

Tabelle der verbotenen Verwandtschafts=Grade — the forbidden degrees, set as a wheel

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, Mai 1856, p. 160 EN

Eight blocks of type arranged around the words "Take Not in Marriage," closing a series on prohibited marriages — a diagram built entirely out of movable type, and the one page in the volume that carries no printed page number. Best seen at full zoom.

Joh. Matthesii regulae pastorales, ins Deutsche übersetzt — pastoral rules in rhyme (1856)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, Februar 1856, p. 56 EN

A page of verse on how to be a pastor, translated from Johann Matthesius, Luther's early biographer: be ordained as is fitting, go where the Lord leads, feed the flock entrusted to you, and search the Old and the New for their sake. Unusual form for a journal of dogmatics, and it reads as a rule of life rather than an article.

Ob jemand die Schwester seiner verstorbenen Frau heirathen dürfe? — may a man marry his deceased wife's sister?

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 2, September 1856, p. 268 EN

The question that occupied Anglo-American legislatures for a century, worked through here from Scripture and the Lutheran casuists for German pastors on the American frontier, where the state's marriage law and the church's did not agree.

Bayern, Seite 148 — Wilhelm Löhe's Gunzenhausen address, printed in full (1857)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 3, Mai 1857, p. 148 EN

Printed under the standing heading Bayern. Löhe spoke at the society conference at Gunzenhausen on 16 September 1856, and Walther's journal reprints the address at length — Löhe in his own words on congregational polity and on the independent Lutheran congregations of America. He names the Missouri, Buffalo and Iowa Synods together as factors of a Lutheran future, at a moment when his own relationship with Missouri was fraying and Missouri and Buffalo were in open conflict.

Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches, Seite 219 — Ströbel answers Schenkel on freedom of conscience (1857)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 3, Juli 1857, p. 219 EN

One page of the Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches department. "Professor Schenkel must really consider his fellow men more than arrant fools if he so much as attempts to sell them the juristically motivated formula of religious persecuting zeal as the standpoint of unconditional freedom of conscience." Ströbel traces that toleration back through the Herods, the Diocletians and the Innocents — who also asked only that believers wait until their religion had obtained the police placet — and lands on Stephen, James, Ignatius and Hus, who did not wait.

Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches, Seite 222 — "Lutheran" declared a misprint for "liturgical" (1857)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 3, Juli 1857, p. 222 EN

A note in the Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches department. A Berlin paper reported that a Lutheran service had been held in the united cathedral. "After a few days Lutheran was declared to be a misprint and liturgical was set in its place." The correction pleased the editors as an honest one — if only it were acknowledged, they add, that in all Unionist acts and reports the word Lutheran has probably always been a misprint for liturgical. The whole quarrel over the Prussian Union in one paragraph.

Wie werden wahrhaft lutherische Gemeinden gegründet und erzogen? — Sihler's congregation as a steam engine (1857)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 3, August 1857, p. 226 EN

Page 226 of Sihler's fourth article on congregational government, which runs S. 225-237. "A sort of ecclesiastical machine, in which the pastor is the engineer, the office the steam power, and the body of hearers the pistons, wheels and so forth that are moved and driven by this power, and that carry out the will of the spiritual engineer without consciousness." W. Sihler's image of what a congregation must not become — industrial machinery as a figure for church government, in 1857, aimed at Grabau's three-estates order.

Lutheranism in America, Seite 124 — the typesetter's eye slips and a line is set twice (1857)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 3, April 1857, p. 124 EN

A page of the review Lutheranism in America. "... stellt einen der wichtigsten Züge des Wortes Gottes und des Characters der Kirche dar. Die Eigenthümlichkeit der lutherischen Kirche dar. Die Eigenthümlichkeit der lutherischen Kirche besteht in ..." — the compositor returned to the wrong line and set the phrase twice. Kept exactly as printed: this archive records what the page says, not what it meant to say.

Vorwort. (Fortsetzung und Schluß.) — the editor's statement on slavery, concluded weeks after emancipation took effect (Februar 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, Februar 1863, p. 33 EN

January's installment had promised to treat the slavery question "not, of course, insofar as it is a purely political question... but from the standpoint of Christian, religious morality." This concluding installment delivers on that promise: arguing from the Old Testament servitude laws, Paul's household codes, and Philemon that the master-slave relation is not sin in itself, and naming abolitionism "a child of unbelief," kin to rationalism, pantheism, and "modern socialism, Jacobinism, and communism." Printed weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect — the journal's fullest wartime statement of its position.

Die alten lutherischen Lehrer über Sclaverei — the dogmaticians marshaled on the era's question (März–Juni 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, März 1863, p. 79 EN

A running anthology, begun here and continued through the summer numbers: Luther on 1 Corinthians 7 and Melanchthon (März), Brenz, Cruciger and Chemnitz (April), Balduin and Reichard's 1617 Wittenberg disputation (Mai), Harleß's Ethics (Juni) — each excerpted to argue that the old Lutheran teachers had found civil servitude compatible with Scripture, not sin. Reichard traces bondage to Noah's curse and quotes Ambrose: "Today there would be no servitude, had there been no drunkenness."

Bericht der sechsten ordentlichen Synodalversammlung — admission made conditional on the slavery doctrine, unevenly (October 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, October 1863, p. 306 EN

Prof. Crämer's submitted report of the Norwegian Synod's 1863 convention records the admission — ending a year-long schism — of Pastors Rasmussen, Fjeld and Amlund, only after the synod re-read a year-old private reconciliation and heard the men confess their "previous separatistic conduct... as sin." On slavery, Rasmussen declared himself "entirely clear" and in full agreement; Fjeld, admitted anyway, would only say he "no longer dared to oppose" the doctrine, admitting he was "not yet quite clear on the matter." An earlier installment (S. 279) records the opposite outcome: two Illinois congregations driving out Pastor A. C. Preus over the same doctrine.

Bericht der sechsten ordentlichen Synodalversammlung (Fortsetzung) — the Sunday debate, and a partial retreat (November 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, November 1863, p. 332 EN

A floor debate, transcribed at length, on whether Sunday rests on divine command or Christian liberty. Pastor C. L. Clausen argues Sunday's divine institution from Mark 2:27, Acts 20:7 and Revelation 1:9; he is answered chiefly from Romans 14 and Colossians 2:16, and by analogy to other apostolic customs no one now holds binding. At the session's close, on a poll, only Clausen still answers yes — then withdraws it, confessing he had "thought more of his own earlier grounds than of the proofs brought against him," and asks the assembly's forgiveness for his manner of arguing, though not full recantation of his view. Marked "(To be concluded.)"

Dr. Hengstenbergs Stellung zu den Fragen von Amt und Kirchenregiment — Missouri answers Hengstenberg and Stahl (Juni 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, Juni 1863, p. 165 EN

Prof. Brauer takes on two of German Lutheranism's most formidable names — Hengstenberg and Stahl — over church government and the preaching office, marshaling Luther from 1521 to 1533 against clerical hierarchy in every form, papal, consistorial, or Oberkirchencollegial, and framing the fight as for "the honor of Christ" and "the honor of Christians." The Missouri Synod's church-and-ministry doctrine argued on the European stage, in Walther's own journal.

Ein Beispiel der von den evangel.-luth. böhmischen Exulanten in Berlin ausgeübten Kirchenzucht — a whipping before the congregation, Berlin 1734 (Juli 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, Juli 1863, p. 218 EN

Translated from the Berlin Bohemian exile congregation's own minute-book by Lic. theol. Borbis: a servant girl convicted of theft is disciplined before the assembled congregation — struck first by her own mother, then by an appointed brother — with hymn-singing, a formal liturgy of accusation and confession, and the story of Achan invoked to justify communal punishment. An unflinching record of eighteenth-century church discipline, printed as an example for 1863 readers.

Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Seite 156 — the Antichrist as "Napoleon VII.," circa 1986 (Mai 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, Mai 1863, p. 156 EN

A reviewed Berlin pamphlet — reprinted from the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt — lays out a three-act apocalyptic timetable and predicts Satan's personal incarnation "in the form of the last Buonaparte, probably Napoleon VII (about the year 1986)." The reviewer, reprinted approvingly, is unimpressed; the modern reader, with 1986 come and gone, gets that rarest of things — a dated prophecy with a 123-year fuse.

Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches, Seite 319 — Codex Sinaiticus and the ending of Mark (October 1863)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 9, October 1863, p. 319 EN

Four years after Tischendorf carried the Sinai manuscript out of St. Catherine's, the journal reprints a Saxon churchman's technical verdict on what the oldest known New Testament means for the disputed ending of Mark (16:9–20) — concluding, against the alarmists, that Sinaiticus is actually a witness for the traditional ending, not against it. New textual criticism arriving, technically and seriously, in a confessional monthly. In December the same department prints Pius IX's autograph letter congratulating Tischendorf, hoping one day to "embrace" him as "a dearest son."

Kirchendienst und Kriegsdienst — may a pastor be drafted? (Februar 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, Februar 1864, p. 46 EN

Written "especially now in our sorely afflicted fatherland, where they are thinking of calling even church servants to war service," this survey asks what the church has held about clergy under arms, and finds "through all the centuries in the church only one voice" against a minister volunteering as a soldier. It walks from the 83rd Apostolic Canon ("what is Caesar's is Caesar's, and what is God's is God's") through Origen's answer to Celsus — "no one fights more for the emperor than we do," by prayer — to the Council of Toledo and Luther. The page never names the country or the war; a St. Louis reader in February 1864 would not have needed it to.

Der Bund der Schwesterkirchen — Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva and Constantinople as sisters (Mai 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, Mai 1864, p. 134 EN

Hengstenberg's Berlin church newspaper had concluded that "the Roman Catholic church is a sister of the Wittenberg-Catholic church; the papal church cannot do without the Lutheran," with the Greek and the Reformed churches as sisters behind them. Prof. Fleischmann takes the proposal apart under a mocking motto — "a thaler is equal to thirty silver groschen. So the Roman church is equal to the Lutheran" — and turns on the reader directly: "you, hidebound Lutheran, you Missouri Lutheran" are to learn from your sisters what you lack. His answer: "The Lutheran church exists by the grace of God, and not by the grace of his papal holiness."

Dr. K. K. Münkel's Beurtheilung der Schrift „Die rechte Gestalt…“ — Walther reports a Hanoverian verdict on his own book (Juli 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, Juli 1864, p. 199 EN

Signed "By C. F. W. Walther in St. Louis," the editor lays before his readers what a leading Hanoverian churchman made of his book on the state-free congregation, and says why it matters: "the more this dreadful civil war calls young men into the field … the harder it becomes to find the necessary number of young men for the ever-increasing need of the church," so help from Germany depends on Germany approving Missouri's constitution. Münkel obliges — "a rare and admirable knowledge of the ancients," "genuinely Lutheran principles" — and Walther quotes him at length. One of the volume's few articles carrying the editor's own name.

Das Leben Jesu von Ernst Renan — the sensation of 1863 reviewed, and reviled (August 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, August 1864, p. 237 EN

Submitted by Pastor Fick and translated by H. Otto, the review grants Renan's "Life of Jesus" "not a single new thought" and explains its success instead: Renan "sketches such an ideal that everyone — even the most ordinary worldling — recognizes himself again in it." It quotes Renan at length on the evangelists and on his "fifth gospel," the landscape of Galilee, and catches him contradicting himself. The review is also a document of its own prejudices: on page 240 it damns the Talmud in Luther's words and calls Renan's Jewish collaborator Neubauer "a deranged Jew." Both the argument and the language are on the page as printed.

Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches, Seite 309 — a Union general orders a bishop's prayers (October 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, October 1864, p. 309 EN

Printed while Price's Confederate army was in Missouri, the October news column's whole war is a Catholic bishop in Mississippi. Brigadier General Tuttle hands Bishop Elder of Natchez a prayer book: "I request you to read this prayer … I hate a traitor. There are many traitors in this city, and I believe you are one." The bishop: "I thank you, sir, for your compliment." Two Catholic paymasters point out that the prayer blesses a rebel governor; the general orders it read "exactly as it stands in the book." Elder appeals "directly to Major General Sherman and to President Lincoln," is banished to Vidalia by Special Order No. 11 and released by No. 31, and the editors, who have not one word about the raid on their own state, give him the last word: render unto Caesar.

Die Lehre der lutherischen Kirche vom Sonntag — against the Anglo-American Sunday (November 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, November 1864, p. 321 EN

A tract by Dr. Philip Schaff, "The Anglo-American Sunday," delivered to the National Sunday Convention at Saratoga in August 1863, gives the journal its occasion "to lay before our honored readers, for once, the doctrine of the Lutheran Church concerning Sunday." The case is built from Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession — the bishops may make ordinances "so that things proceed in an orderly manner in the church," not to bind consciences — and from Luther, Brenz and Chemnitz, with an admission along the way that seventeenth-century Lutherans had already let the doctrine slip. Twenty-four pages, translated for the journal by Prof. Crämer.

Trost eines Dieners Christi in dieser traurigen Kriegszeit — Bishop Simpson's silver rifles (November 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, November 1864, p. 350 EN

Under the heading "Comfort of a Servant of Christ in this Sad Time of War," the editors reprint the Methodist Bishop Simpson's Cincinnati speech on the national crisis: the gold mines of California, Idaho and Montana "are the basis of our wealth … Our ships could be armored with silver and our soldiers equipped with silver rifles," and if peace does not come by Christmas, "the petals of the June roses will bring it to us." The comment: "Such are the prophets the world wants to have" — and of repentance, the one thing a preacher owed a nation at war, "this false prophet said not a word." On the same page, McKendree Chapel in Nashville is returned to its Southern minister "by an order of President Lincoln."

Vorschlag und Probe zur Ausarbeitung eines Bibelcommentars aus den Schriften Dr. Luthers — Keyl's proposal (December 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, December 1864, p. 353 EN

"Submitted by Pastor Keyl, Sr.," the last volume of the decade opens on a plan three centuries old: a commentary on the whole Bible assembled from Luther's own writings. Keyl traces it from Luther's wish for "a short commentary … for preachers" like Nicholas of Lyra's, through Conrad Porta's Pastorale Lutheri of 1582, Calov's folio Bible of 1682, Spener's unfinished attempt, and Förtsch's promised parva Biblia of 1726 that "never appeared" — to conclude that there is "as yet no Bible from the writings of Dr. Luther," and to offer a specimen. The compiler of the journal's own registers, proposing one more index.

Der über die Generalsynode hereinbrechende theologische Conflict — the General Council's prehistory, from the other side (December 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, December 1864, p. 372 EN

A Lutheran Observer editorial, translated by Prof. Crämer, explains the split opening in the General Synod as the Observer's party sees it: a "party school" founded in Philadelphia, its organ the Lutheran and Missionary, and "Dr. C. P. Krauth Jr.," who "since his conversion to Ultra-Confessionalism … has at times displayed a very poor spirit, calling his former friends pirates and traitors." The St. Louis editors let it run with only their "(sic!)" and "(?)" in the margins — as when the Observer calls itself "entirely loyal to the Lutheran Church (?)." Two years before the General Council, the quarrel in the enemy's own words.

Ein gelehrter Neger über Sclaverei — Jacobus Capitein's 1742 dissertation, put to use (December 1864)

Lehre und Wehre, Jahrgang 10, December 1864, p. 380 EN

The volume's last word on slavery is the story of Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein, sold on the African coast "as a child of 7 or 8 years," raised and educated at The Hague, trained at Leiden, and sent back to Elmina as a missionary — who in 1742 defended a Latin dissertation "that slavery is not contrary to Christian liberty." The editors reprint it "to the shame of the abolitionist pseudo-theology, twisting of Scripture, and falsification of history now spreading so widely," a former slave's argument turned against the abolitionists in the last month of 1864. The item, and the use it is put to, are printed as they stand.

The first convention judges a neighbour's bans

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1847 · 1st Convention, Chicago, 1847, p. 17 EN

Two of the Synod's first acts judged another body's discipline. Fifty-seven Wisconsin Lutherans asked, through their deputies, what to do about Pastor Krause; the answer was that they had “nicht nur das Recht, sondern auch die heiligste Pflicht” — not only the right but the most sacred duty — to leave him, if the reports were true. It also admitted E. M. Bürger, whose Buffalo hearers Grabau had banned “ohne hinreichenden Grund,” without sufficient cause.

Only the power of the Word

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1848 · 2nd Convention, St. Louis, 1848, p. 31 EN

Walther opened the second convention by naming what the Synod could not do. Its constitution gave it “nur die Gewalt des Wortes und der Ueberzeugung” — only the power of the Word and of persuasion — no decrees, no laws, no binding ruling: “stehen wir nicht über unseren Gemeinden, sondern wir stehen in ihnen und ihnen zur Seite.” Eleven pages on, the same minutes assure Neu-Melle it may have its release whenever it asks.

A mission colony proposed for Oregon Territory

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1848 · 2nd Convention, St. Louis, 1848, p. 49 EN

The Mission Commission looked past Michigan to Oregon Territory. It proposed calling a man to St. Louis to meet visiting chiefs, then recruiting settlers — some from Germany — for a colony near Oregon City, with a school for “Heidenkinder,” heathen children. The convention declared itself agreed “im Wesentlichen,” in essentials, and voted nothing. Oregon appears once more in these ten volumes, in 1854, and only to be set aside.

A pastor shoves the investigator three times

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1850 · 4th Convention, St. Louis, 1850, p. 147 EN

St. Matthew's, Detroit, belonged to no synod when sixteen of its members complained that Pastor Winkler was imposing the ban at will. They appealed to Walther, who sent August Crämer. Crämer's report, printed entire, reaches its point in a single clause: “Herr Pastor Winkler gerieth so in Wuth, daß er mich dreimal mit dem Arm auf die Brust stieß” — flew into such a rage that he shoved me three times in the chest.

The year the address was not given

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1851 · 5th Convention, Milwaukee, 1851, p. 165 EN

Cholera in St. Louis kept Präses Wyneken from Milwaukee, and because word of it came too late for a substitute to prepare, the convention address was dropped altogether. His written report stands in its place, and it opens with a death: missionary Maier of the Shiboyangk mission station “fand seinen Tod in den Wellen” — found his death in the waves — wrecked in a storm on Lake Michigan, 15 September 1850.

Buffalo calls itself a murdered sister synod

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1853 · 7th Convention, Cleveland, 1853, p. 249 EN

The 1853 minutes print the whole Missouri–Buffalo correspondence “unverkürzt,” unabridged. Buffalo's letter — signed at Buffalo, 27 May 1853, by Grabau, ten other pastors and eleven congregational deputies — charges nine years of meddling in its discipline and asks Missouri to be reconciled with “der so tief beleidigten und, so weit es in ihrer Macht stand, ermordeten Schwester-Synode”: the sister synod so deeply insulted and, so far as lay in Missouri's power, murdered.

A district president loses his fellowship over chiliasm

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1857 · 9th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1857, p. 350 EN

The ninth convention opened the case in its second session and closed it in its eighteenth. Georg Albert Schieferdecker, president of the Western District, would not give up his thousand-year kingdom. Pressed with one plain question overnight, then six in writing, he qualified every yes. The Synod found that he “mit ihr auf Einem Glaubensgrunde nicht mehr stehe” — no longer stood with it on one ground of faith — and withdrew synodical fellowship.

Walther will not make his conviction a law

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1857 · 9th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1857, p. 336 EN

The chiliasm proceedings turned aside into a quarrel over Revelation's canonicity, which an article in Der Lutheraner had questioned. Walther answered in his own voice: “ich habe weder ein Recht, solche meine Ueberzeugung der Synode als ein Gesetz aufzudringen, noch glaubte ich dem Aufsatz eines Bruders die Aufnahme … verweigern zu dürfen” — no right to press my conviction on the Synod as a law, nor to refuse a brother's article. The Synod concurred.

Whether to give up the Indian mission

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1860 · 10th Convention, St. Louis, 1860, p. 69 EN

The Mission Commission reported “mit bedrängtem Herzen,” with a heavy heart, that the work had gone backward. The floor then argued the mission's “Sein oder Nicht-Sein,” its to-be-or-not-to-be: costly years without fruit, dispirited missionaries, money better spent on travelling preachers among scattered Germans — against which it was answered that one should think of “Beispiele, wie das von Hans Egede.” Both stations were kept. No speaker is named and no money was voted.

Absolution and justification, the convention's largest business

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1860 · 10th Convention, St. Louis, 1860, p. 34 EN

The tenth convention gave most of its time to a paper on the bond between absolution and justification, printed whole, then debated thesis by thesis as far as the sixth. The record never names its author. The plainest image comes in that debate, fifteen pages on: men lie in a prison whose gates Christ has already burst, not knowing it, and the Gospel is the word “Gehet heraus, ihr seid erlöst, ihr seid begnadigt, ihr seid frei” — go out, you are redeemed, pardoned, free.

Missouri and Buffalo, 1847–1860

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1853 · 7th Convention, Cleveland, 1853, p. 249 EN

A quarrel that begins as two rulings about other men's congregations and ends with a book, a refused arbitration and a defection. Missouri received people Grabau had banned; Buffalo held that receiving them was itself the sin, and that no colloquy could be held until Missouri confessed it. Neither side ever moved off that sentence. The Synod's own account of it fills six printed pages of the 1853 volume and a whole appendix of the 1857.

1. 1847 · S. 22 · E. M. Bürger is admitted, the Synod finding his Buffalo hearers banned “ohne hinreichenden Grund.”
2. 1850 · S. 119 · Walther's address names no man, only a “Richtung,” a tendency, with which the Synod has lately come into conflict “von zwei Seiten her.”
3. 1850 · S. 144 · under the heading “Grabau'scher II. Synodalbrief,” a committee is charged with writing a refutation.
4. 1851 · S. 169–170 · Walther's draft is read, the trigger named, and the theses discussed across eight sessions.
5. 1852 · S. 212 · the book is sent to Grabau with a colloquy offered and a truce on polemics; the secretary's footnote reads “Dieses ist von mir bereits geschehen.”
6. 1853 · S. 247–261 · the whole correspondence, printed unabridged, ending in Grabau's public answer of 21 June.
7. 1857 · S. 352 · arbitration refused, and every future peace proposal not grounded in doctrinal agreement rejected “ein für alle Mal.”
8. 1860 · S. 22 · the Präses reports that a fourth brother “hat sich der Buffalo-Synode angeschlossen.” He is not named.

Löhe's gifts, and being informed afterwards

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1860 · 10th Convention, St. Louis, 1860, p. 63 EN

Wilhelm Löhe gave the Synod its first seminary and its first mission stations, and thirteen years later was sent a printed report telling him what had been done with the seminary. Nothing in these volumes records a break; what they record is a slow change of grammar — from asking him, to thanking him, to lending him money, to informing him. His parish name is still on the Ohio rosters in 1860: “Neu Dettelsau, O.”

1. 1847 · S. 12 · the Synod resolves to ask “Herr Pfarrer Löhe” whether the founders will hand the Fort Wayne institution over to its free disposal.
2. 1848 · S. 41 · Löhe's letter transfers the seminary “in bester Form,” in his own name and Pastor Wucherer's.
3. 1849 · S. 87 · Löhe's own Urkunde, addressed to Pastor Hermann Fick, cedes the Michigan mission stations: “Gegen dieses Ansinnen wußte Pfarrer W. Löhe durchaus nichts einzuwenden.”
4. 1850 · S. 151 · invited to come in person.
5. 1851 · S. 167 · he thanks the Synod and regrets that he cannot.
6. 1853 · S. 257 · Grabau, arguing against Missouri, names Löhe as sharing Buffalo's doctrine of church and ministry: “die theilt ja auch ihr Freund Löhe mit uns.”
7. 1857 · S. 366 · of $422.90 left in the mission treasury, $400 is entered as “Herrn Pfarrer Löhe dargeliehen,” lent to him.
8. 1860 · S. 61 · the seminary is moved to St. Louis.
9. 1860 · S. 63 · the committee quotes the 1847 deed's three conditions, judges them unbroken, and proposes that Löhe be sent a copy of the convention report “zu seiner Kenntnißnahme,” for his information.

The Indian mission, from Oregon to the question whether to stop

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1860 · 10th Convention, St. Louis, 1860, p. 69 EN

Thirteen years, four stations and no settled success. The Synod planned for Oregon before it owned a station, took Michigan from Löhe and Leipzig, buried a missionary, printed a primer in Chippewa, watched one band fall away entirely, moved to Minnesota, sent two Native boys to Fort Wayne, and then, in 1860, debated on the floor whether to keep any of it. The record is unusually candid about failure; the Commission is thanked in 1860 for reports that are “ungeschminkt.”

1. 1848 · S. 49 · the Oregon colony proposed; the convention agrees in essentials.
2. 1849 · S. 87 · Löhe and the Leipzig mission board cede Frankenmuth and Bethanien to the Synod.
3. 1851 · S. 165 · missionary Maier drowns in a storm, 15 September 1850.
4. 1853 · S. 263 · Baierlein's Chippewa primer, printed in Detroit, with translated chorales; a young man named Johannes, present at that convention, can read the New Testament.
5. 1854 · S. 289 · the Shebahyonk band falls away entirely; the Commission points, instead of Oregon or California, to the Chippewa of Minnesota.
6. 1857 · S. 365 · the new station near Crow Wing, founded deliberately without government support; Philipp Mushuk and Paulus are studying at Fort Wayne.
7. 1860 · S. 69 · “Sein oder Nicht-Sein.” Both stations kept.

Confession and absolution: the practice the Synod would not legislate

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1852 · 6th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1852, p. 223 EN

Twice the Synod was asked to settle private confession by rule, and twice it declined to, while refusing just as firmly to let the practice be abolished where it stood. The argument runs through four named congregations — Frohna, Freistadt, Baltimore, Freistatt — over fourteen years, and ends not in a resolution but in a paper: the 1860 Referat on absolution and justification, which takes most of the tenth convention's time.

1. 1847 · S. 7 · Frohna asks that the clause permitting general confession be struck; the Synod is not persuaded and refers the matter to the Missouri pastoral conference.
2. 1847 · S. 18 · the ministers are polled on private confession, Beichtanmeldung, and the use of orthodox Agenden.
3. 1848 · S. 44 · the clause is struck, on the ground that church order should not be prescribed by the constitution; Augsburg XI is reaffirmed in the same breath.
4. 1850 · S. 141–142 · Frohna is told to keep its old order; Freistadt is told the keys do not belong to preachers exclusively.
5. 1851 · S. 178 · the delegate Weinhold has the 1850 record corrected: the question was his own, not his congregation's.
6. 1852 · S. 223 · “Auf Beichtanmeldungen soll von unsern Predigern bestanden werden” — our preachers shall insist on announcement for confession.
7. 1860 · S. 77–78 · fifteen members at Freistatt ask for general confession alongside private, citing abuse of private confession they had known under the Buffalo Synod; the Synod upholds the district.
8. 1860 · S. 34–49 · the Referat, and the floor debate on it.

The language question before 1917

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1857 · 9th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1857, p. 354 EN

English is in these volumes from 1849, and the Synod's answer changes from “not yet, for want of money” to “a sacred duty” in eight years. It is not a straight line: the Fort Wayne English Academy was dedicated in 1857 and had closed by 1860, and in 1860 the Synod declined to publish an English paper of its own, partly because American Lutherans “sich nicht gern von Deutschen belehren lassen.” Two of that convention's own weekday services were held in English.

1. 1849 · S. 84 · a third professor “mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der englischen Sprache” is wanted and postponed for want of funds.
2. 1850 · S. 128 · the Altenburg deed makes German “alleiniges Lehrmittel,” the sole medium of instruction, and requires that it “unverbrüchlich bleibe.”
3. 1853 · S. 267 · experience teaches that the children prefer English, “so daß es fast gewiß ist,” that the second or third generation will be estranged from German and with it from the pure confession; the Tennessee Synod is cited as proof a language shift need not cost the confession.
4. 1857 · S. 354 · Biewend's Referat adopted: it is a “heilige Pflicht” to found English congregations once enough members understand English better than German, under four conditions.
5. 1857 · S. 358 · the English Academy dedicated 26 October, with “manche unserer hiesigen englischen Mitbürger” present.
6. 1860 · S. 75 · an English periodical asked for and declined as a synodical organ; the Norwegian Pastor Brandt speaks for it.
7. 1860 · S. 78 · Pastor Schmidt of Baltimore, himself serving an English congregation, asks the Synod to revisit the 1857 rule; it declines and stands by it.
8. 1860 · S. 81 · the academy committee is abolished “weil die Academie eingegangen ist.”

From one synod to four districts

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1854 · 8th Convention, St. Louis, 1854, p. 292 EN

Proposed in 1848 and refused as premature; argued in 1849 and refused again, with Crämer writing up the case against; petitioned for from New York in 1850 and answered with a second vice-president; resolved in 1852; declared unavoidable in 1853; carried in 1854 by a unanimous “Ja” with every congregation's assent in hand. Three years later the design was already straining: one man could not visit every congregation in three years, so the Synod made it six.

1. 1849 · S. 98 · the 1848 proposal recalled and refused again; Crämer charged with setting out the grounds for and against.
2. 1850 · S. 141 · the New York conference asks for a branch synod and is given a second Vice-Präses for the east instead.
3. 1852 · S. 214 · four districts resolved, by states rather than geography: “Es soll keine Trennung, sondern nur eine Abtheilung in verschiedene Districtssynoden vorgenommen werden.”
4. 1853 · S. 235 · Wyneken opens the convention by saying the division can no longer be put off.
5. 1854 · S. 292 · every congregation, including those not represented, has assented; the question is put and answered with “ein einstimmiges ‘Ja!’”
6. 1854 · S. 293 · Wyneken elected the first general Präses; Schieferdecker elected president of the Western District.
7. 1857 · S. 353 · the visitation requirement judged still right but not practicable in three years; the period is set at six.

The order of worship, and a complaint nobody answered

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1860 · 10th Convention, St. Louis, 1860, p. 24 EN

The Synod ruled in its first year that uniformity of ceremonies is wholesome but not necessary to the Church's unity, and that no one is to be compelled into any ceremony. Having said so, it spent thirteen years being unable to get agreement it had declined to require. The last word in these volumes is a complaint, not a resolution: the general Präses's report for 1860 calls the state of things “ein buntes Durcheinander,” and the convention took no action on it at all.

1. 1847 · S. 9 · the addition adopted on Leonhardt's motion: uniformity held “nur für heilsam,” only wholesome, with “keinerlei Zwang,” no compulsion of any kind.
2. 1847 · S. 18 · the ministers polled on ceremonies, private confession and the use of orthodox Agenden.
3. 1849 · S. 90 · the New York district conference asks how the liturgical part of the service may be restored, and answers: by teaching the people.
4. 1854 · S. 286 · the St. Louis conference's written revision of the Saxon Agende is weighed and referred back to it.
5. 1857 · S. 321 · “Sehr mangelhaft steht es noch mit der Gottesdienstordnung”; where the Old Saxon or the Löhe Agende is not used entire, the pieces are assembled “ohne gehörigen Zusammenhang und Takt.”
6. 1860 · S. 24 · still “ebenso mangelhaft … wie früher”; the liturgy is a Mittelding, a thing indifferent, and precisely for that reason the congregations ought to agree. “Gott besser's.” Nothing was resolved.

The question the twenty-fifth year put

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1872 · 15th Convention, St. Louis, 1872, p. 44 EN

The convention of 1872 met in the Synod's twenty-fifth year and opened its chief business with a question about the anniversary itself: “Welche Aufgabe haben wir zu löſen, damit der Segen, welchen Gott in den letzten fünf und zwanzig Jahren über uns ausgeſchüttet hat, von uns nicht verſchüttet, ſondern auf unſere Nachkommen vererbt werde?” — what task have we to solve, so that the blessing God has poured out on us in the last twenty-five years is not spilled by us but passed on to our descendants. The theses had been made known beforehand in Der Lutheraner; their first part sets the blessing out under seven heads, their second the dangers of spilling it. The jubilee itself had been kept on 26 April with a sermon by Walther on Ps. 119:43 and evening services in every Lutheran church of the city belonging to the Synod.

“Halt an mit Leſen” — the pastor at his desk

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1872 · 15th Convention, St. Louis, 1872, p. 82 EN

Inside the anniversary theses, under the head that preachers must go on studying, the convention took up St. Paul's words “Halt an mit Leſen!” — give attendance to reading, the words of 1 Tim. 4:13, though the page gives no chapter and verse. It applies them to the minister himself: “Der Paſtor iſt nicht treu in ſeinem Amte, welcher nicht mit Leſen anhält d. h. ſtudirt,” and calls the duty not a human opinion but “ein klarer göttlicher Befehl,” a clear divine command. What he is to read is Holy Scripture and, beside it, Luther: no Lutheran preacher should let a day pass “ohne etwas aus Luthers Schriten geleſen zu haben” — the sheet's own spelling of Schriften — because it is from Luther that one first gets the right understanding of the confession. Searched through all nineteen corrected German volumes of 1847–1914, this is the only place the Synod quotes the verse, and it means the study.

Walther lays down the chair

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1878 · 17th Convention, St. Louis, 1878, p. 50 EN

The incorporation of the Synod could not be discussed without reference to the General President, so Walther gave up the chair before the debate on it began, declaring “daß er beide Synodalämter nicht mehr länger verwalten könne, und eins ihm abgenommen werden müſſe” — that he could no longer administer both synodical offices and one must be taken from him. Pastor Schwan of the Middle District took the chair. The Northwestern District's memorial held that the theological professorship was by far the more important and could not be taken away; when the first call for a vote came, the majority answered yes but a very considerable minority demanded that the discussion go on, and it did. The Synod then resolved, “wenn gleich mit ſchwerem Herzen,” to relieve him of the presidency entirely.

A congregation suspends its pastor

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1884 · 19th Convention, St. Louis, 1884, p. 89 EN

St. John's, New Orleans, resolved on 13 January 1882, “auf Rat des Präſes, der theologiſchen Facultät und der hieſigen evang.⸗lutheriſchen Paſtoren” — on the advice of the President, the theological faculty and the local Lutheran pastors — to suspend Pastor J. F. Döscher from every official act until his nerves should be restored, and to keep him and his family meanwhile. He was not at the meeting. Told of the decision, he answered that he was glad part of his work had been taken from him, since he would now have more time for the English mission, and “Er wohnte dann auch dem erſten Leſegottesdienſte bei” — he then also attended the first reading service; soon afterwards he declared the suspension null and void. The committee's report is printed entire by the convention's own order, as the Synod's answer to his appeal.

The telegraph reaches Fort Wayne

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1887 · 20th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1887, p. 3 EN

On Saturday 7 May 1887, while the fifth Delegate Synod was sitting at Fort Wayne, the telegraph brought word “daß Herr Dr. C. F. W. Walther gegen Abend um 5½ Uhr ſanft und ſelig entſchlafen ſei.” The convention met in extra session that Sunday evening and asked that the burial be put off to Tuesday 17 May, after it rose; that the grave be in the old churchyard by Holy Cross, so that anyone coming to St. Louis could visit it; and that the General President, Pastor H. C. Schwan, give the funeral address for the whole Synod, with Professor A. Crämer speaking briefly at the coffin as senior and for the faculties. It declined a long mourning service, having a great deal of necessary work before it, and “am allerwenigſten um der Landesſitte willen ganze Sitzungen ausfallen laſſen” — least of all would it drop whole sessions for the custom of the country. On Monday morning it sang “Aus tiefer Noth,” read Psalm 90, and sang the Litany kneeling.

166 votes, and then a resolution

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1899 · 24th Convention, St. Louis, 1899, p. 139 EN

“Das ſchließliche Wahlreſultat bezüglich des Präſesamtes ergab die abſolute Majorität von 166 Stimmen für Herrn Profeſſor Pieper” — an absolute majority of 166 votes. The unanimity came after, and by resolution: “Beſchloſſen, daß die Wahl Herrn Profeſſor Piepers zu einer einſtimmigen gemacht werde.” Because Pieper would now hold the presidency beside a professorship and the seminary's own presidency, the convention named a committee — Dr. H. C. Schwan, the two vice-presidents and the St. Louis theological faculty — to say how the offices could be carried together, and adopted its three-part answer. Pieper replied that the task went against his own inclination, but that he was used to giving up his own preference and leaving himself to God's leading.

“Americaniſche Ideen”

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1899 · 24th Convention, St. Louis, 1899, p. 35 EN

In his lecture “Die Kirche und Gottes Wort” Pieper named two ways a church body falls from the Word: by giving up its authority to the claims of what calls itself science, and by keeping church fellowship with those who teach otherwise. On the first he judged the Synod in no immediate danger. On the second he quoted what was said against it — that the so-called Missourians never stop being told to expect their ruin if they hold to the exclusiveness “der Alten” and give no room to “americaniſchen Ideen.” His answer is one sentence: “Wir haben unſere kirchliche Stellung nicht nach ‚americaniſchen‘ und andern Ideen, ſondern lediglich nach Gottes Wort zu bemeſſen,” with Rom. 16:17 quoted after it.

Pieper answers Harnack

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1902 · 25th Convention, Milwaukee, 1902, p. 24 EN

The lecture at the 1902 convention was “Das Weſen des Chriſtenthums,” and its first paragraph says why: for two years nearly the whole of outward Christendom had been debating what Christianity consists in, “veranlaßt … durch die Vorleſungen des Berliner Profeſſors Harnack über dieſen Gegenſtand.” Pieper's judgement of the occasion is blunt — what Harnack said and soon afterwards printed “verdient allerdings nicht die allgemeine Aufmerkſamkeit, die es erregte,” the Berlin professor having only repeated old and long-known assertions. He states the teaching in two sentences: that Christ is not God but a uniquely wise and virtuous man, and that he therefore did not keep the divine law in men's stead or bear the penalty for breaking it. Two theses of his own follow on the pages after.

Zoar, “unſer Schmerzenskind”

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1905 · 26th Convention, Detroit, 1905, p. 100 EN

The Indian mission's report to the 1905 convention heads the section on its second station “Zoar. (Unſer Schmerzenskind.)” — our child of sorrows. How the station came about is given by quoting the commission's own minute of 5 January 1903: Missionary Kretzmann had reported on the Waiaskesit settlement on the Menominee Reservation, some twenty miles from Red Springs “im tiefſten Urwald,” whose people — Menominees, Pottawatomies, Ojibwas — refused to send their children to the government or the Catholic boarding school at Keshena and had asked the missionary for a school of their own. $500 was granted for a building to serve as school, meeting house and teacher's dwelling, and Washington was petitioned for the land.

An appeal about a defence not heard

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1905 · 26th Convention, Detroit, 1905, p. 159 EN

Pastors A. and E. v. Schlichten of Cincinnati appealed to the 1905 convention against the Middle District, which at Indianapolis in 1904 had condemned them on all three of the charges President Niemann brought. Their appeal sets the case out as a court — “Herr Präſes Niemann war der Kläger. Die Synode Mittleren Diſtricts … war der Richter” — and then: “Theure Väter und Brüder, ihr findet keine Vertheidigung im ganzen Bericht des Mittleren Diſtricts vom Jahre 1904.” They had been declared outside before the hearing by the president who was at the same time the plaintiff, their names left out at the roll call, seat and vote refused. The committee found the charge against the District unfounded and the Synod adopted that finding; the committee's own willingness to recommend a commission to look into the Cincinnati affair was made conditional on a declaration the two refused to give, in speech and in writing.

A gold medal for the parish schools

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1905 · 26th Convention, Detroit, 1905, p. 171 EN

The Synod put its parish schools' work on show at the World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904. The report to the 1905 convention lists the subjects exhibited — English composition, United States history, geography, arithmetic, religion, German composition, physiology, zoology, botany, world history, penmanship in both languages and drawing — and records that a sub-committee of the jury, three specialists, examined the exhibit closely, and that on its report “hat dann das ganze Collegium unſern Schulen in Anerkennung ihrer Leiſtungen die goldene Medaille zugeſprochen.” Two things made the award worth having: that it came from an impartial body of teachers from various countries, and “daß dies ganz ohne unſer Zuthun geſchah” — that it happened entirely without any doing of ours.

The President who was not there

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1911 · 28th Convention, St. Louis, 1911, p. 18 EN

“Nach geſchehener Regiſtration der Synodalen verlas der Ehrw. Vizepräſes F. Pfotenhauer die folgende Synodalrede.” Under the rule that closes the address, the minutes add that the General President's Präsidialrede was read by the secretary, “da der Ehrw. Präſes leider ſich genötigt ſah, auf perſönliche Teilnahme an den Sitzungen der Synode zu verzichten.” The roll of officers prints him “Präſes: D. F. Pieper;*”, the asterisk marking him excused for the whole session. The St. Louis seminary board's report gives the reason: he had had to break off the dogmatics lectures, travelled to California on his doctor's advice, and after returning in February had ventured only pastoral theology.

“Fire-traps”, and the vote to leave Addison

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1911 · 28th Convention, St. Louis, 1911, p. 51 EN

On the Saturday of the convention week a committee of seven deputies and the General Vice-President went out with the board to look at the teachers' seminary at Addison. Its report on the dormitory: rooms far too small for the number in them, halls four or five feet wide in a building housing some two hundred pupils, partly low attic rooms that ought not to be used for sleeping at all — “etliche derſelben kann man mit Fug und Recht fire⸗traps nennen” — and thirty or forty beds with as many trunks in some of the dormitories. Against that, and against an offer of land from Lutherans in and about Chicago, the convention resolved “daß wir die ganze Anſtalt von Addiſon nach Chicago verlegen (Abſtimmung ſchriftlich; Annahme mit geringer Mehrheit)” — by written ballot, carried by a small majority. The $100,000 voted for the move was then carried unanimously.

Two committees, two accounts of what the Synod is

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1911 · 28th Convention, St. Louis, 1911, p. 137 EN

“Zweierlei einander gegenüberſtehende Berichte über die Inkorporationsangelegenheit lagen vor der Synode” — two opposed reports on the incorporation question. The Milwaukee committee reported that working with the St. Louis committee joined to it in 1908 had proved impossible, the two differing in principle: the St. Louis members start from the principle “daß die Ehrw. Allgemeine Synode kein Verband von Gemeinden iſt, ſondern aus den einzelnen Gliedern beſteht,” and their two attorneys sought besides to show that the General Synod is not a religious body. The Milwaukee committee laid its own position before the convention in short theses — that the constitution of 1847 is still the constitution, that the Synod is a federation of congregations and not of delegates or representatives, and that the incorporation of 1894 was not meant to alter what the Synod had been in 1847. The attorneys' opinions are printed in English over the following pages.

The President, the Mass and Columbus Day

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1914 · 29th Convention, Chicago, 1914, p. 181 EN

Under the heading “Römiſche politiſche Propaganda hierzulande” the 1914 convention resolved on three stated grounds: that the Roman church works ever harder to influence and dominate the civil government of the country for itself and its interests, against the constitutional separation of church and state; that it had already brought “unſere Präſidenten” to honour the Roman Mass officially on Thanksgiving Day; and that a memorial had again gone to Congress to fix 12 October by law as a national holiday in honour “nicht ſowohl eines Entdeckers als vielmehr eines Angehörigen der römiſchen Kirche” — not so much of a discoverer as of a member of the Roman church — which it found the stranger because no historically important day of the country, not even the Fourth of July, had been made one. It resolved to make representation to the President over his part in the Mass, to protest as a body to Congress “gegen die Erhebung des ſogenannten Columbus Day zu einem geſetzlichen Nationalfeiertag,” and to authorise the General President to do the same whenever like efforts should come to light.

The New York mission and the Antimissionsliga

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1914 · 29th Convention, Chicago, 1914, p. 101 EN

The commission's report on the Jewish mission in New York to the 1914 convention calls the work of the triennium laborious, difficult and yet blessed, and takes the three in order. Under the second: the attendance the mission drew caused a stir, and “Sie bildeten aus Synagogen und Vereinen eine große Antimiſſionsliga, um unſere und andere chriſtliche Miſſionen unter Israel zu zerſtören.” The report describes printed warnings handed out before the mission hall, visits to the parents of children attending its school, disturbed services, property broken and life endangered, police protection at first insufficient and fines paid by the league — and then better protection and stricter judges, after pastors and their people began attending the mission's services. Of the triennium it says: “die letzten Jahre waren böſe Jahre für unſern Miſſionar.”

The language question, 1899–1914

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1905 · 26th Convention, Detroit, 1905, p. 113 EN

The founding-era highlight “The language question before 1917” carries this as far as 1860, where the Synod calls it a “heilige Pflicht” to found English congregations and then declines to publish an English paper of its own. Here it runs to the end of the German record: a commission's forecast that the boundary will move one way only; a memorial to strike the German-only clause of the constitution, laid over and sent in print to every congregation; a resolution that keeps the clause unaltered and on the same page opens the Synod to English-speaking congregations; the English Synod received as the English District, with the German wording of the resolutions binding on all sides; and a jubilee in 1914 at which German addresses and English addresses were given at three places each, at the same hour.

1. 1899 · S. 70 · the English-mission commission's forecast: of 21 preachers in the Western District's home mission only four still preach German alone and 17 preach both; a shift of the language boundary will go “nicht in der Richtung von Engliſch nach Deutſch, ſondern von Deutſch nach Engliſch.”
2. 1902 · S. 81 · the Southeast Missouri pastoral conference asks that Chapter II § 7, the German-only clause, be changed or struck, since it “gehört offenbar in das Gebiet der chriſtlichen Freiheit”; it quotes Walther's Pastoraltheologie § 47 for the rule that no such provision should be unalterable.
3. 1902 · S. 83 · the memorial is laid over to the next Delegate Synod, commended to the congregations to consider over the next three years, and sent to every congregation in print.
4. 1905 · S. 113 · § 7 is resolved to stand “unverändert”; four lines below, the same page resolves “daß die Synode von jetzt an auch engliſchredende Gemeinden, Paſtoren und Lehrer aufnehme, resp. in ihrem Verband behalte.”
5. 1911 · S. 34 · the English Synod is received as the English District: against the second recommendation “fiel gegen deren Annahme nur eine einzige Stimme,” and the brother who voted no answered the chair that he had no scruple of conscience about the union.
6. 1911 · S. 35 · a dispute over how to render one expression is settled by establishing that for these resolutions “der deutſche Wortlaut allſeitig bindend” is, as the English wording is for the resolutions sent from the English brethren.
7. 1914 · S. 39 · Fort Wayne engaged an assistant for boys too weak in German, but “nicht etwa ein engliſches Departement”: the aim stays men who command both languages — and “die Zahl der im Deutſchen ganz ungenügend vorbereiteten Schüler wird aber von Jahr zu Jahr immer größer.”
8. 1914 · S. 190 · at River Forest's golden jubilee, before about 30,000, the programme sets “Deutſche Reden, gleichzeitig an drei Stellen” and “Engliſche Reden, gleichzeitig an drei Stellen.”

From Walther to Pieper to Pfotenhauer

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1911 · 28th Convention, St. Louis, 1911, p. 42 EN

Three times the Synod had to decide whether one man could carry a theological chair and the presidency together, and it answered differently each time. In 1878 it took the presidency from Walther, with a heavy heart. In 1899 it gave both offices to Pieper and appointed a committee to say how they might be carried at once; in 1905 it laid a memorial to separate them on the table and would not separate them; in 1911 the St. Louis seminary board asked the Synod, together with the faculty, “von der Wiedererwählung D. Piepers zum Allgemeinen Präſes abſehen zu wollen.” No resolution on the presidency stands anywhere in the 1911 volume. The Synod answered with its ballot.

1. 1878 · S. 50 · Walther gives up the chair before the debate, “daß er beide Synodalämter nicht mehr länger verwalten könne”; the Synod relieves him of the presidency “wenn gleich mit ſchwerem Herzen.”
2. 1887 · S. 3 · the telegraph brings word of his death on Saturday 7 May, in the middle of the convention.
3. 1899 · S. 139 · Pieper is elected with an absolute majority of 166 votes; the election is then “zu einer einſtimmigen gemacht” by resolution.
4. 1905 · S. 142 · the Michigan District's memorial to separate the two offices cleanly is “auf den Tiſch gelegt”; the Synod “konnte ſich … nicht entſchließen, die gewünſchte Trennung der beiden Aemter ins Werk zu ſetzen.”
5. 1911 · S. 42 · the board of control, with the faculty, asks the Synod not to re-elect him, for the institution's sake rather than the Synod's.
6. 1911 · S. 193 · the list of officers elected for three years opens “P. F. Pfotenhauer, Präſes.”
7. 1914 · S. 17 · Pfotenhauer's first Synodalrede opens with Luther's forty theses of 1530 on the doctrine of the church, and with two groups of them “als Einleitung für unſere Synodalſitzung.”

The missions widen, 1878–1914

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1914 · 29th Convention, Chicago, 1914, p. 89 EN

In 1878 the Synod had no heathen mission of its own, and kept the commission in being only to administer what property the old mission had left. By 1914 the convention was printing a statistical table for the foreign-language missions alone — Estonian, Lettish, Polish, Lithuanian, Finnish, Persian and Slovak, 28 congregations, 97 preaching places and 4,486 souls — beside the work in Brazil, London, New Zealand, India and China, among Jews, the deaf and immigrants. The same page shows how it was governed: the committee's recommendations were carried except two, and the proposal touching a Lettish mission on the Pacific coast was laid on the table on 12 May, and on the 13th the part about joining it to an emigrant mission there was struck.

1. 1878 · S. 53 · “Obgleich unſere Synode gegenwärtig keine eigene Heidenmiſſion hat,” the commission is continued to administer the mission property; money is voted for a building lot and a small church at Little Rock, Ark., for the Negro mission.
2. 1902 · S. 73 · the home-mission commission is charged to help the pastors and congregations in Brazil “zur Bildung eines eigenen Synodaldiſtricts”; until that is done they are to join the Southern District.
3. 1905 · S. 62 · after a visitation, a general meeting of pastors and deputies at Rincão São Pedro organises the Brazilian District and elects its officers, P. Mahler president.
4. 1905 · S. 93 · the Jewish mission in New York leaves Delaney Street, where whole blocks were torn down for the approaches to the Williamsburg bridge, and takes a room at 185 Ludlow Street for $28.00 a month.
5. 1914 · S. 94 · New Zealand: “Der Maori Te Punga, der in Springfield ausgebildet worden iſt,” has gone there and begun a mission among his own people, “über die uns aber keinerlei Berichte vorliegen.”
6. 1914 · S. 89 · the foreign-language statistics for June 1911 to March 1914, printed in the Synodal-Bericht because the mission “noch nicht ſo bekannt iſt, wie ſie bekannt ſein ſollte.”

The Agenda and the English liturgy, 1887–1914

LCMS Convention Proceedings, 1911 · 28th Convention, St. Louis, 1911, p. 152 EN

In 1887 the Synod declined to add to its Agenda a burial formulary and formularies for installing teachers and church officers, for laying a cornerstone and for dedicating a church, pointing instead to what Pastor Lochner had published. In 1911 it adopted Committee No. 21's report on revising the Agenda, and that report names one new piece expressly: “daß auch ein kurzes Formular für einen Leſegottesdienſt empfohlen werde” — a short form for a reading service. The commission whose recommendations the committee endorsed “im großen und ganzen” had also asked for Lochner's formulary for a burial read in the pastor's absence, shortened; the adopted report never names that one. A memorial of the same year asked for an English liturgy “im Sinne des ſogenannten Common Service,” and the resolution recommended in answer drops those words; in 1914 the committee recommended the Common Service itself, with English translations of the Missouri orders inserted, and the Synod adopted that.

1. 1887 · S. 55 · the Synod declines the burial formulary and the formularies for installing teachers and Vorſteher, for cornerstone-laying and for church dedication, and points those who need them to what “Herrn Paſtor Lochner” has published.
2. 1911 · Eingaben, S. 122 · the revision commission asks for nine occasional formularies “ſämtlich nach Fr. Lochners Lit. Formulare, aber verkürzt,” and adds: “Nur das etwas zu verkürzende dortige Formular einer Leſeleiche bei Abweſenheit oder Verhinderung des Paſtors (S. 109 ff.) hielten wir noch für wünſchenswert.”
3. 1911 · S. 152 · “Der folgende Bericht des Komitees No. 21 wurde angenommen” — and with it the recommendation of a short reading-service formulary; the revision itself goes to Prof. L. Fürbringer and P. C. C. Schmidt, their work to be approved by the St. Louis pastoral conference.
4. 1911 · S. 157 · the Arkansas and West Tennessee conference's memorial, reprinted entire by Committee No. 17, asks for a liturgy “im Sinne des ſogenannten Common Service”; the resolution the committee then recommends asks only for “eine engliſche Liturgie.”
5. 1911 · S. 158 · the part of that report bearing on an English order of service is “ausdrücklich angenommen”; a committee of three is set up and Prof. C. Abbetmeyer named to it.
6. 1914 · S. 125 · the German revision is reported finished, and defines itself by two references — “(S. 152 und 153 des Synodalberichts)” and “die Synodaleingabe 1911, Seite 118—123.”
7. 1914 · S. 127 · the enlarged English committee is adopted, the double edition — “als Altarbuch und in Taſchenformat mit den nötigſten Formularen” — adopted, and “Ferner beſchloſſen, daß beide Agenden, die deutſche und die engliſche, möglichſt bald gedruckt werden.”

Six church bodies, lately enemies

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1872 · 1st Convention, Milwaukee, 1872, p. 4 EN

The Synodical Conference first met on 10 July 1872 in Pastor Bading's church at Milwaukee, and by its own resolution Walther's opening sermon is printed in place of an opening address. Preaching on 1 Tim. 4:16, he pointed to „eine Schaar Vertreter von ſechs kirchlichen Körperſchaften, welche noch vor wenigen Jahren ſich gegenüber ſtanden, ja, als Feinde ſich gegenſeitig bekämpften“ — representatives of six church bodies that a few years before had fought one another as enemies. He did not regret the fight: it had been, he said, the one right means to the peace now given.

1. 1872 · S. [3] · the opening minute: the Conference meets in Bading's church, and „Auf Beſchluß der Conferenz wird dieſelbe [the sermon] hier ſtatt einer Eröffnungsrede mitgetheilt.“

A constitution ratified, and a Norwegian promise

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1872 · 1st Convention, Milwaukee, 1872, p. 13 EN

Asked whether their synods had adopted the constitution, every delegation answered that the adoption had been unanimous. The Norwegian Synod had asked whether it could join though, as a synod, it confessed only the Unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small Catechism; the Conference answered that it must, as a part of the Conference, confess all the Lutheran confessional writings with it and be judged by them in doctrinal disputes — „Da dies nun von den Vertretern der ehrw. Norwegiſchen Synode zugeſagt wurde, ſo ſah die Conferenz kein Hinderniß ihrer Aufnahme.“ The same page records the first officers: Walther president, W. F. Lehmann vice-president, P. Beyer secretary, J. Schmidt of Youngstown treasurer.

1. 1876 · S. 57 · four years on, resolving how to keep the Formula of Concord's tercentenary, „die lieben Norweger, unter denen die Concordienformel kein officiell anerkanntes Bekenntniß iſt“, join the jubilee resolutions with joy.

“Only an advisory body,” 1872–1900

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1877 · 6th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1877, p. 43 EN

Looking for a way through the quarrel over state synods in 1877, a speaker put what every side granted: „Darin ſeien wir ja einig, daß wir nur ein berathender Körper ſind und daher nichts gebieten können und wollen“ — we are only an advisory body, and so can and will command nothing. The principle runs through these volumes from the founding convention on, and it marks the edge of what the Conference could do with its synods, their congregations and their pastors.

1. 1872 · S. 73 · asked by the Illinois Synod what the „entſcheidende Gewalt“ of § 4 of the constitution refers to, the Conference answers unanimously that decisive power „in Sachen der Lehre und des Gewiſſens“ is out of the question, and that in all else each synod is safe because it can withhold its consent.
2. 1872 · S. 74 · on the Minnesota Synod's inquiry, the „kirchenrechtliche Verbindung“ which the constitution disclaims is defined: where one synod has given another the right to share in deciding matters of constitution or administration.
3. 1876 · S. 52 · defending the joint seminary: „die Synodalconferenz nur ein berathender Körper iſt, der den Gemeinden keine Beſchlüſſe zur Ausführung aufzwingen“ can.
4. 1877 · S. 44 · the conciliation committee's declaration: no counsels or demands bind a synod that is not yet clearly convinced of their rightness.
5. 1890 · S. 30 · the mission commission proposes asking Missouri and Wisconsin for $4000 and $2000; Presidents Schwan and von Rohr declare „daß ſie keine Autorität für Genehmigung einer ſolchen Bitte hätten“; the Conference appeals to the congregations by circular instead.
6. 1900 · S. 61 · an appeal against a congregation's ban is turned away unanimously, „Da nun die Synodalconferenz in allen Zuchtfällen keine Competenz hat“.

A mission to the Chinese of St. Louis

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1874 · 3rd Convention, Pittsburgh, 1874, p. 47 EN

District President J. F. Bünger told the 1874 convention that some 300 heathen Chinese were living in St. Louis, and that Karl Vogel — trained at the Lutheran mission house in Dresden, three years a missionary in China, and lately living „in tiefſter Verborgenheit“ — had found he could still make himself understood in their language. Examined by colloquium and found „in der Lehre mit uns einig“, he was reading the New Testament with them in Chinese, and a committee of three was set over the work. A year later the salary had cost $550.00 against $292.28 received, and the Conference declared, „wenn auch mit ſchwerem Herzen“, that it could not promise to go on supporting the mission.

1. 1874 · S. 48 · Vogel's training and colloquium, the New Testament read with the Chinese „in ihrer Mutterſprache“, and the committee of three: Bünger, Brauer, Umbach.
2. 1875 · S. 34 · the account and the decision: the small and changing Chinese population and „der Gebrechlichkeit und dem vorgerückten Alter des Miſſionars“ leave the Conference no confidence to continue.

A deaf boy prays before the Conference

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1874 · 3rd Convention, Pittsburgh, 1874, p. 52 EN

Pastor G. Speckhardt, teacher at the deaf-mute institution at Royal Oak near Detroit, brought three pupils to the 1874 convention to show that most of the deaf are not truly mute and can be taught to read speech from the lips and answer with their own mouths; the Conference gave the first hour of a Thursday afternoon to the examination. The boys had been in the school less than nine months. „gewiß blieb kein Auge thränenleer“, the minutes say, when a twelve-year-old began, slowly and clearly: „Lieber Gott, mach mich fromm, daß ich zu dir in Himmel komm. Amen.“

1. 1874 · S. 51 · „Taubſtummen⸗Examen“: Speckhardt and his three pupils.
2. 1904 · S. 74 · thirty years on, P. H. Speckhard reports on the deaf-mute institution at North Detroit, and the Conference commends it to the congregations.

Admitting a synod: Virginia, 1874–1876

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1876 · 5th Convention, St. Paul, 1876, p. 56 EN

The Concordia Synod of Virginia shows how a synod came in. In 1874 its delegate, Pastor H. Wetzel, laid its proceedings and theses before a committee, which pronounced it a confessionally faithful body but deferred admission, because it had not yet formally adopted the Conference's constitution and because under § 4 every member synod must vote. In 1875 five synods had consented and Ohio had not, having been unable to see the documents; in 1876, „da die ihr geſtellte Bedingung erfüllt worden iſt“, the Conference declared it a member by unanimous resolution.

1. 1874 · S. 49 · the committee's report: the documents and the delegate's explanations show a „bekenntnißtreue Körperſchaft“; admission deferred under § 4.
2. 1875 · S. 34 · Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin and the Norwegian Synod have consented; Ohio has taken no decision, not having seen the documents.
3. 1875 · S. 35 · Virginia is a member „ſobald die Ehrw. Synode von Ohio ihre Zuſtimmung … gegeben und dieſelbe in unſeren Kirchenblättern veröffentlicht haben wird“.

The lodge as a test of fellowship

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1875 · 4th Convention, Cleveland, 1875, p. 29 EN

Thesis 9 of the theses on church fellowship took up the secret societies. After a long debate whether they were religious societies, the Conference adopted a declaration that it meant all secret societies with moral aims resting on the principle of secrecy, and then stated the condition itself: „wir verlangen als Bedingung der Kirchengemeinſchaft, daß ſie öffentlich von der Kanzel aus dieſen Krebsſchaden angreifen“ — that pastors attack this cancer from the pulpit, and not rest until lodge members leave the lodge or are put out of the congregation. The General Council, the page notes, had condemned only „unchriſtlichen“ societies and been careful to name none.

1. 1875 · S. 27 · the debate: no doubt that the lodges are contrary to God's Word, but „es wurde längere Zeit darüber debattirt, ob die geheimen Geſellſchaften religiöſe ſeien oder nicht“.
2. 1896 · S. 19 · Gräbner's paper on church practice: a churchly burial confesses fellowship with the dead, so to give one to a man who did not belong is „eine ganz offenbare, große, grobe Lüge“.
3. 1904 · S. 40 · on Harders's paper, whether a Lutheran pastor may give the Sacrament to a lodge member, the Conference by resolution adopts the second thesis and the essayist's exposition.
4. 1904 · S. 43 · Harders: there may be Christians in the lodge, as in the church of Antichrist — „Ja hier und Ja dort. Aber Nein hier und Nein dort, wenn es ſich um Zulaſſung zum heiligen Abendmahl handelt.“

No doctrine decided by majority vote

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1875 · 4th Convention, Cleveland, 1875, p. 30 EN

The Conference's bylaws, adopted partly for good and partly provisionally in 1874 and as a whole, unanimously, in 1875, gave the president the usual rules of order for business. For doctrine they laid down another rule: „in den Lehrbeſprechungen aber ſoll nichts durch Stimmenmehrheit entſchieden, ſondern alles mit möglichſter Gründlichkeit beſprochen werden, bis alle erheblichen Schwierigkeiten möglichſt entfernt ſind“ — nothing decided by majority vote, everything discussed until every considerable difficulty has so far as possible been removed.

1. 1874 · S. 46 · the same § 5 in the bylaws as first proposed and provisionally adopted.
2. 1875 · S. 31 · „Diesmal wurde die ganze Vorlage in obiger Form einſtimmig angenommen.“

Sound doctrine, wrong name: turned away

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1876 · 5th Convention, St. Paul, 1876, p. 11 EN

In the debate on unionist congregations the Conference recalled congregations that stood rightly in the confession but bore a false name, and that were refused admission to a synod, though they pleaded for it, until they changed the name — better to let the church property go, it was said, than the confession. Its unanimous declaration: „Es iſt Unrecht, daß eine Gemeinde in den Verband einer Synode, welche zur Synodalconferenz gehört, aufgenommen wird, welche nicht den Namen einer evangeliſch⸗lutheriſchen Gemeinde tragen will, obſchon dieſelbe ſonſt die lutheriſche Lehre hat.“

Wyneken, “to whole regions of America their apostle”

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1876 · 5th Convention, St. Paul, 1876, p. 55 EN

A year after the Conference met in his congregation at Cleveland, F. C. D. Wyneken died on 4 May 1876, and the St. Paul convention set his memorial in its minutes in the words of Der Lutheraner: a man who had been „ganzen Gegenden Amerika's ihr Apoſtel“ — to whole regions of America their apostle — and „eine der ſchönſten Zierden und eines der gewaltigſten Rüſtzeuge unſeres amerikaniſch⸗lutheriſchen Zions“. The page is one of eleven whose top lines are wiped in the Harvard scan, so the date stands at its head with the words around it partly lost.

1. 1876 · S. 54 · „IV. Der ſelige Paſtor F. C. D. Wyneken sen.“ — the heading, and the Cleveland convention of 1875 recalled.

The Negro Mission begins, 1877

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1877 · 6th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1877, p. 44 EN

Item II of the 1877 business, „Die Wiederaufnahme der Heidenmiſſion“, opened on a proposal and inquiry from Präses H. A. Preus, brought forward in a committee's report: „Ob es nicht an der Zeit ſei, daß die Synodalconferenz ihre Aufmerkſamkeit auf die Heidenmiſſion richte und eine Miſſion etwa unter den Negern und Indianern dieſes Landes ins Leben rufe.“ It was taken up at once as in keeping with the constitution. The floor agreed to look first to „die Neger des Südens“, and the Conference set a mission board of three, seated at St. Louis, over the whole work.

1. 1877 · S. 45 · „daß die Neger des Südens wohl zunächſt in's Auge gefaßt werden ſollten“, with an English-speaking travelling preacher, a mission director and congregations staffed „mit Presbytern“.
2. 1877 · S. 47 · the commission: Pastors J. F. Bünger and C. F. W. Sapper and Mr. J. Umbach, seated at St. Louis.

The Conference asks Walther for a dogmatics

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1877 · 6th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1877, p. 49 EN

On petitions from the general pastoral conference of Minnesota and from the Illinois Synod, the Conference declared a doctrinal theology in the spirit of the old orthodox dogmaticians, with regard to the newer theology, „etwas äußerſt Wünſchenswerthes, ja hoch Nöthiges“, and named the man: „Wir erachten Herrn Profeſſor Walther ſowohl durch ſeine beſonderen Gaben als auch durch ſeine ganze Stellung vor Anderen für hiezu berufen.“ He was to begin when his other work allowed, perhaps in instalments in Lehre und Wehre, as his pastoral theology had appeared.

1. 1877 · S. 48 · the two petitions, „VI. Herausgabe einer Dogmatik“.

Declining to sign an address to the Kaiser

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1877 · 6th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1877, p. 50 EN

A pamphlet reached the Conference — „Die Culturjunker, oder die gegenwärtige Kriſis von Staat und Kirche im deutſchen Reiche“, an open letter to the German Emperor „von der lutheriſchen Kirche in Nordamerika“ — with its author's request that the Conference sign it. The committee had only to read out a few sentences. The unanimous answer gave three reasons: the Conference had no call to such a testimony; quite apart from its doctrinally wrong passages and those blaspheming the Emperor's majesty, a church-political address is no means God's Word commands, or the Church has ever used, for helping a fallen church; and the Conference is „kein Theil derjenigen ‚lutheriſchen Kirche in Nordamerika‘ …, in deren Namen die Adreſſe in Deutſchland übergeben werden ſoll“.

1. 1877 · S. 49 · „VIII. ‚Die Culturjunker‘“ — the pamphlet's full title and the request.

Five mornings on the deceased wife's sister

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1878 · 7th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1878, p. 5 EN

In 1877 a special pastoral conference complained, through a petitioner the minutes print only as „Herr Paſtor N. N.“, that a pastor of the Conference had blessed such a marriage against the practice of the place, and Walther was asked for theses. In 1878 they filled all five morning sessions: „die … von Herrn Profeſſor Dr. Walther verfaßten Theſen über die Schwager⸗Ehe“, beginning with the claim that the marriage laws of Lev. 18 and 20 are moral law binding every conscience, and citing the pointed Hebrew where the case turns on the words „Fleiſches Fleiſch“. The sixth thesis was adopted and the paper approved as a whole.

1. 1877 · S. 33 · the question first raised in the parish-boundary debate, and judged too weighty for the floor.
2. 1877 · S. 50 · „X. Schwager⸗Ehe“: the petition of „Herr Paſtor N. N.“ and the request to Walther.
3. 1878 · S. 33 · „Fleiſches Fleiſch (שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ)“ — the Hebrew of Lev. 18:6, set with its vowel points.
4. 1878 · S. 53 · „Theſis 6. wurde hierauf angenommen und dann das Referat als Ganzes genehmigt.“
5. 1900 · S. 61 · twenty-two years on, a man charges the Conference itself with false doctrine on the Schwagerehe; the committee finds nothing in his paper to support it.

A candidate withdrawn, and a first baptism

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1878 · 7th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1878, p. 59 EN

The mission board's first report tells how it called a second missionary for Little Rock. Student Zahn of the Springfield seminary was called first, but when it emerged that he had „eine ungemein ſtarke Antipathie gegen Farbige“, so that it was „faſt unmöglich“ for him to associate with them, the board set him aside and called Student F. Berg of St. Louis at $600 a year. On 15 June Berg baptized a man half an hour before his death, at his earnest request and after instruction, and buried him the next day: „Das war alſo die erſte lutheriſche Negertaufe und Negerleiche unſerer Miſſion.“

Eighteen theses on church fellowship, 1873–1879

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1879 · 8th Convention, Columbus, 1879, p. 6 EN

The theses on church fellowship that the 1879 minutes credit to Dr. W. Sihler were the Conference's doctrinal work for most of its first decade: eighteen were set out in 1873, only the first four could be declared adopted that year, and the rest came a few at a time. In 1879, with thirteen behind it, the convention adopted three more, and of Thesis 14 — that it contradicts the confession when a body calling itself Lutheran does not exercise doctrinal discipline and pays homage to the theory of „offenen Fragen“ — the minutes record: „Dies iſt die wichtigſte Theſis in der ganzen Series“, a test to apply not only to others but to the Synodical Conference itself.

1. 1873 · S. 5 · the eighteen theses begin: „Theſis 1. Das einzige innerliche Gemeinſchaftsband …“
2. 1873 · S. 20 · „Leider konnte die Conferenz nur die vier erſten Theſen über Kirchengemeinſchaft … für einſtimmig angenommen erklärt“.
3. 1874 · S. 6 · Thesis 5: whoever denies the binding force of conclusions drawn from the Confession „iſt kein wahres Glied der lutheriſchen Kirche“.
4. 1876 · S. 24 · Thesis 10 on unionist congregations: the words „fort und fort“ struck „mit Ausnahme dieſes Einzigen“ — one member would not agree.
5. 1877 · S. 23 · „Hierauf wurde die zwölfte Theſe angenommen“ — the parish school as a mark of a confessional body.
6. 1879 · S. 5 · the doctrinal minutes open: Sihler's theses, thirteen already discussed, the next three adopted in three morning sessions; Thesis 14 printed.

The Bennett Law, answered in two languages

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1890 · 13th Convention, St. Paul, 1890, p. 36 EN

Asked by the school committee of the Wisconsin Synod and Missouri's Wisconsin District for a statement on the new school laws of Wisconsin and Illinois, the 1890 convention adopted a declaration in German and English, styling itself „der größte evangeliſch⸗lutheriſche allgemeine Kirchenkörper“ — “the largest general Evangelical Lutheran church-body.” It made Missouri's resolutions on the school question its own, endorsed Wisconsin's, and promised the brethren in Illinois and Wisconsin, „denen jetzt der Schulſtreit aufgedrungen iſt“, its support so far as it could.

1. 1890 · S. 35 · Pastor J. Herzer's request, and the reply: the Conference will declare itself, „und zwar in deutſcher und engliſcher Sprache“.
2. 1900 · S. 42 · ten years on, Schaller's paper on parish schools: „Wir laſſen uns keine Bennett⸗ und Edwards⸗Geſetze aufdrängen“.

The first statistics, and the statistician's complaint

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1890 · 13th Convention, St. Paul, 1890, p. 64 EN

In 1890 the Conference resolved that every report should carry a statistical appendix and named Pastor C. F. W. Maaß its statistician; the first appendix appeared in the same volume. Maaß closed it with a warning: most pastors had sent nothing, „und gerade diejenigen Paſtoren, welche die größten, volkreichſten Gemeinden bedienen, haben keinerlei Angaben gemacht“, so that almost every figure would have been more than twice as large had all reported.

1. 1890 · S. 34 · the resolution: „daß fortan einem jeden officiellen Bericht … ein ſtatiſtiſcher Anhang … beigegeben werde“, and Maaß named statistician.

Joining or leaving a synod: an inalienable right

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1892 · 14th Convention, New York, 1892, p. 51 EN

Two pastors and their congregations asked about changing their synodical connection, and the Conference answered with a general rule: „Das Recht und die Freiheit, ſich einer Synode anzuſchließen, oder von einer ſolchen auszutreten, iſt ein unveräußerliches Gemeinderecht.“ It then bound the use of that right by love: a congregation moving among orthodox synods stays tied to the one it is leaving by a special bond, and should act only for the weightiest reasons and in Christian order.

1. 1892 · S. 52 · points 3–5: the congregation decides, but must not sin against love; it is bound to its former synod „durch ein beſonderes Band“.

Michigan: admitted 1892, divided 1896, a district 1898

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1896 · 16th Convention, Evansville, 1896, p. 65 EN

The Michigan Synod was received in 1892, on the strength of a doctrinal conversation already held with its representatives at the Wisconsin president's request, subject to ratification by the member synods. By 1896 it had split, only its minority sent delegates, and a complaint against its president, Böhner, came before the Conference; since the accused had not come, it sent a commission of five to hear them, admonish, and report „ſo die übrigen Synoden und ihre Glieder in den Stand zu ſetzen, zu wiſſen, welche Stellung ſie zur Michigan⸗Synode einzunehmen haben“. In 1898 the congregations and pastors that had taken no part in „dem Austritt der alten Michigan⸗Synode“ were recognised, as the District Synod of Michigan, as members.

1. 1892 · S. 49 · the committee: the „geordnete Weg“ would be a doctrinal conversation before witnesses, but Wisconsin and Minnesota have already held one.
2. 1892 · S. 50 · the Michigan Synod received, „mit dem Vermerk, daß … dieſer Beſchluß den einzelnen … Synoden behufs Ratificirung vorgelegt werde“.
3. 1896 · S. 4 · the roll: „Michigan⸗Synode: Nicht vertreten, da in derſelben eine Spaltung ſtattgefunden hatte“.
4. 1896 · S. 64 · neither President Böhner nor anyone for his party appears; the complaint goes to a committee, which sits three evenings over the documents.
5. 1898 · S. [3] · the roll: „Michigan⸗Synode: P. F. Soll.“
6. 1898 · S. 51 · the District Synod of Michigan recognised „als in gliedlicher Verbindung mit der Synodalconferenz ſtehend“.

Meherrin, held together by reading services

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1898 · 17th Convention, Cincinnati, 1898, p. 45 EN

In 1886 the Conference resolved to give up its small station at Meherrin, Virginia, and to move its people to Little Rock at its own cost. That hope came to nothing; instead, for two years and without a missionary, they held together „durch regelmäßige Leſegottesdienſte und Sonntagsſchule als ein lutheriſches Gemeindlein“, and kept asking until one was sent again. By 1898 the congregation counted 133 souls and a weekday school of 45. The 1892 report counts the remnant as seven souls, the 1898 report as seven families.

1. 1892 · S. 42 · „Zwei Jahre lang hielt ſich das kleine Häuflein von nur ſieben Seelen durch Leſegottesdienſte und Sonntagsſchule zuſammen“.

An essayist on lynching, 1902

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1902 · 19th Convention, Milwaukee, 1902, p. 8 EN

Director E. A. W. Krauß's paper „Sind in der Bibel Widerſprüche vorhanden?“ answered the charge that Scripture falls short of a refined modern ethics with a list of what that ethics tolerated: cashiers vanishing to Canada, widows and orphans left unpaid by the lodges, thousands of workers at the whim of a few, and — „ſolange es nicht für etwas Sträfliches gilt, der Obrigkeit das Schwert aus der Hand zu reißen und den ihr entriſſenen Neger, ſchuldig oder nicht, geſtändig oder nicht, am Pfahl oder auf dem Scheiterhaufen langſam zu braten — ſo lange bleibe ich lieber bei der minder geläuterten Ethik der Bibel.“

1. 1902 · S. 5 · „(Referent: Dir. E. A. W. Krauß.)“ — the paper's title and opening.

Walther on Ranke's History of the Popes

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1902 · 19th Convention, Milwaukee, 1902, p. 49 EN

In the same paper Krauß set down a saying of Walther's, made to him in conversation about Ranke's much-praised History of the Popes, „von dem ich will, daß er nicht unbekannt bleibe“: „Wer den Pabſt nicht für den Antichriſt hält, kann keine Geſchichte der Päbſte ſchreiben, und wenn er ein Ranke iſt.“ On the next page he makes his own version of it, „obgleich ich kein Walther bin“, about a historian who will not say plainly that Jesus rose from the dead.

1. 1902 · S. 50 · „Und ich möchte ſagen, obgleich ich kein Walther bin: Wer in einer Weltgeſchichte nicht wagt, geradeaus das Factum zu bekennen: JEſus iſt von den Todten auferſtanden …“

The Negro Mission, 1877–1904

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1902 · 19th Convention, Milwaukee, 1902, p. 74 EN

Twenty-five years after the question that began it, the mission commission read the 1877 minutes back to the Conference, and after two sessions on whether to found a school for Black preachers and teachers the 1902 convention stopped short of a seminary but resolved: „Es ſoll eine Präparandenanſtalt für Negerzöglinge errichtet werden.“ The reports between run from the first missionary's call and release, through stations from Little Rock and New Orleans to Virginia and North Carolina, and they record plainly what the work met, in the South and in the Conference's own congregations.

1. 1878 · S. 58 · J. F. Döscher called as „erſten Miſſionar unter den Negern dieſes Landes“, at $300 and free housing or $1000 without, and sent first on a tour of the South.
2. 1878 · S. 64 · on the floor: „Sei doch die Seele eines Negers von ebenſo unendlichem Werthe als die eines Weißen“ — and in the same remarks, that Black men who set up as preachers „ſind meiſtens elende Wäſcher“.
3. 1879 · S. 39 · Döscher, having accepted a call to a German congregation, is released; and no orthodox person from outside the Conference may serve the mission, though such a one may be admitted „zu einem Colloquium“ and enter the Conference's fellowship.
4. 1890 · S. 28 · in New Orleans one station has a school building, „ein dem Verfall nahes Bretterhäuschen, in welchem 100 Kinder zuſammengepfercht ſind“.
5. 1892 · S. 43 · North Carolina opens when Phifer, of a small „Alphaſynode“ formed by four Black pastors, writes to President Schwan.
6. 1894 · S. 61 · the commission's reason: „unſere Weißen, ſogenannte Chriſten, waren es ja, deren Habſucht dies Negervolk hierher in dies Land gebracht hat“, laid at the door „wie einen armen Lazarus“.
7. 1896 · S. 48 · Atlanta: every room is withdrawn „ſobald es bekannt wurde, daß hier ein weißer Mann den Negern predigen wollte“; the first service, in an old store at $12.50 a month, draws seven.
8. 1898 · S. 41 · „Ich kann mich für die Negermiſſion nicht begeiſtern. Sie iſt ein überflüſſig gut Werk!“ — heard „aus Chriſtenmund“; Southern hotels refuse the missionaries a table and a bed.
9. 1900 · S. 48 · Phifer leaves and founds an opposition congregation against Missionary Bakke at Charlotte.
10. 1900 · S. 53 · a seminary for Black pastors, urged by Bakke and opposed by the Louisiana missionaries, is put off to 1902.
11. 1902 · S. 59 · the commission quotes from the 1877 minutes: „Es ſind nun 25 Jahre her …“
12. 1904 · S. 68 · two preparatory schools, in North Carolina and Louisiana, to train mission teachers fully; „auch Negermädchen“ to be admitted and trained as teachers; $10,000 to $15,000 for grounds and buildings in North Carolina.

State synods and a joint seminary, 1872–1879

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1876 · 5th Convention, St. Paul, 1876, p. 47 EN

The constitution set the Conference the goal of synods bounded by state lines, „vorausgeſetzt, daß die Sprache nicht ſcheidet“, and in 1876 it resolved unanimously to advise all its synods „ohne Verzug Schritte zu thun, daß Staatenſynoden in's Leben treten“, with one joint seminary under its control. Wisconsin declined the seminary in 1877 and by 1878 stood on its resolution to open a seminary of its own that autumn; the plan was recast in 1879 as two or three general synods and a seminary in three departments, German, English and Norwegian. In the corrected volumes for 1890–1904 the words do not occur again.

1. 1872 · S. 72 · in the home-mission debate it is urged that the synods carry on alone „bis … jeder Staat ſeine eigene durch ihn begrenzte Synode habe“.
2. 1875 · S. 35 · a committee (R. Lange, H. Wunder, A. Mikkelsen) is to bring proposals toward the constitution's „Anſtrebung einer Abgrenzung der Synoden nach territorialer Grenze“.
3. 1876 · S. 46 · asked whether its goal is one general synod for North America, the Conference answers „einſtimmig mit Nein“.
4. 1876 · S. 48 · six points on the teaching institutions, the first: dissolve the synods' seminaries and found one under the Conference's control.
5. 1877 · S. 42 · Wisconsin will join a Wisconsin state synod but no general synod, and finds a great joint seminary „nicht für gut und erſprießlich“.
6. 1878 · S. 56 · Wisconsin cannot take up Walther's letter on the joint seminary while its resolution to open its own seminary that autumn stands.
7. 1878 · S. 57 · one synod ready, one refusing, the rest approving but not ready: the joint seminary is left lying.
8. 1879 · S. 28 · the Capital University plan: two or three general synods, a seminary „in oder bei Milwaukee“ in German, English and Norwegian departments, and point 8 making each piece conditional on all the others.

The Lehrwache: synods reading one another, 1876–1902

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1876 · 5th Convention, St. Paul, 1876, p. 54 EN

Because „was in einer Synode veröffentlicht wird, iſt gewiſſermaßen von allen anderen Synoden der Conferenz anerkannt, falls Niemand Proteſt erhebt“, the 1876 convention resolved that every member synod send its proceedings to the Conference's president, who was to lay a written report on them, with anything doubtful, before the next convention. The debate had put it so: „Eine gewiſſe Lehrwache von Seiten der Synodalconferenz über die einzelnen Synoden iſt gewiß wünſchenswerth, nöthig und heilſam.“ Most of the reports that follow are a line or two; now and then a committee objects, or is itself overruled, and the minutes keep it.

1. 1877 · S. 49 · the first review: „Nur in einem derſelben fand man in den Lehrverhandlungen etwas Anſtößiges“; the synod, unnamed, has already resolved to reconsider.
2. 1878 · S. 67 · reviewing three Missouri district reports, C. A. Frank commends their doctrinal discussions, „den herrlichen Lehrverhandlungen über die Gnadenwahl“ among them, as reading for everyone's blessing, asks the Conference to join two districts' stand on the Hermannsburg mission, and finds nothing else needing attention.
3. 1879 · S. 45 · committees henceforth to be named a convention ahead, so that they have time to read; F. A. Schmidt's committee finds no doctrinal discussions in Missouri's 17th general report and nothing in it needing remark.
4. 1879 · S. 50 · the next assignments run mostly across synod lines: Missouri's districts largely to Wisconsin, Norwegian and Ohio men, the Minnesota report to the Chicago ministerium.
5. 1900 · S. 58 · three committee reports refused because each bore one signature: „Alle Sache beſtehe auf zweier oder dreier Zeugen Mund.“
6. 1900 · S. 59 · the Kansas District told that extending „Lehrverhandlungen“ to the souls of the fathers in the church triumphant „des zureichenden Schriftgrundes ermangelt“.
7. 1902 · S. 84 · a committee's report on the Michigan District's 1901 proceedings is itself rejected unanimously, and the volume handed to a new committee to report in 1904.

The English question, 1872–1904

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1890 · 13th Convention, St. Paul, 1890, p. 34 EN

In its second and third sessions in 1872 the Conference discussed Prof. Loy's theses on its task toward „der engliſchen Bevölkerung unſeres Landes“; in 1879 it advised a small English conference in Missouri to join Missouri's Western District, since the Conference „ja keine Viſitatoren anſtellen könne“; and in 1890, after articles of its constitution on Scripture, the confessions and the lodge had been read into the minutes, it received the General English Lutheran Conference of Missouri and Other States, „ſoweit dies durch den hier verſammelten Körper geſchehen konnte“. The links follow the English school books, the English Book of Concord and catechism, and the first English congregations.

1. 1872 · S. 14 · Loy's first thesis: the church must proclaim God's great deeds „in engliſcher Sprache hier zu Lande“.
2. 1874 · S. 32 · an English congregation inside a German parish: „Die deutſche Gemeinde begeht eine ſchwere Sünde, die dies hindern will“.
3. 1874 · S. 33 · „Man baue Denen, die in eine ſolche engliſch⸗lutheriſche Gemeinde übergehen wollen, dazu eine goldene Brücke.“
4. 1875 · S. 32 · Missouri will publish English readers itself if the Conference does not, the usual American readers being intolerable in parish schools; an English primer approved.
5. 1877 · S. 47 · a new English Book of Concord resolved, the Tennessee Synod's having „manche nicht unweſentliche Fehler“.
6. 1878 · S. 66 · F. A. Schmidt, translator and chief editor, has resigned; the work is laid aside.
7. 1878 · S. 67 · the English Conference of Missouri, meeting at Hindsville, Arkansas, in October 1877, has resolved to apply for admission to the Synodical Conference.
8. 1879 · S. 41 · the English Conference of Missouri — „6 Paſtoren mit 8 Gemeinden und 640 Seelen“ — asks to be taken under the Conference's care as its mission body.
9. 1879 · S. 42 · it is advised instead to join Missouri's Western District as an English district, „indem die Synodalconferenz ja keine Viſitatoren anſtellen könne“.
10. 1890 · S. 33 · the committee recommends admission of the new English body, quoting the rule that admission needs „zuſtimmenden Beſchluß aller verbundenen Synoden“.
11. 1892 · S. 53 · the English Book of Concord assigned to the English Synod.
12. 1900 · S. 32 · the parish school is to serve „Nicht der Sprache, die unſer Luther geredet hat, ſondern dem Worte Gottes, das er verkündigte“.
13. 1902 · S. 75 · Loy's English Small Catechism, revised by a committee and adopted in 1878, has served since as „Standard⸗Text, textus receptus“; the revisers cannot agree on the first three commandments.
14. 1902 · S. 86 · a commission to find out whether uniformity can be had in liturgy and hymnals among English congregations and German ones beginning English services; the Norwegian sister synod invited.
15. 1904 · S. 70 · at the New Orleans pastors' request the catechism revision is dropped and its papers sent to the archive.

The election controversy, seen from its edges

Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings, 1878 · 7th Convention, Fort Wayne, 1878, p. 67 EN

The years in which the controversy over election divided the Conference fall between the corrected volumes of 1879 and 1890; the Norwegians' own account, given in 1894, says only that they left „zur Zeit des Gnadenwahllehrſtreites“. So the controversy has to be read at its edges. In 1878 Prof. C. A. Frank of Capital University, Columbus, reviewing three Missouri district reports for the Conference, commended their doctrinal discussions — „den herrlichen Lehrverhandlungen über die Gnadenwahl“ among them — as reading for everyone's blessing; in 1879, with F. A. Schmidt on its committees, the word Gnadenwahl does not occur in the volume at all; and from 1890 the Norwegians return as guests while the papers speak of „unſere Widerſacher“.

1. 1872 · S. 66 · the founding convention's paper on justification charges Iowa with teaching that „die letzte Entſcheidung beim Seligwerden ſtehe ſchließlich beim Menſchen“.
2. 1878 · S. 66 · F. A. Schmidt resigns as translator of the English Book of Concord.
3. 1879 · S. 45 · Schmidt's committee reads Missouri's 17th general report, which has „keine Lehrverhandlungen“, and finds „nichts, das beſonderer Erwähnung oder Erinnerung bedürfte“.
4. 1890 · S. 5 · the president hopes the Norwegian brethren „möchten nicht mehr lange als Gäſte, ſondern bald als vollberechtigte Glieder“ appear.
5. 1892 · S. 20 · Hoyer's paper: the Calvinist decree rejected, as „in den letzten Jahren … denen gegenüber bezeugt worden, die uns des Calvinismus beſchuldigen“.
6. 1892 · S. 36 · „Eine ſynergiſtiſche Löſung iſt ferner die heutzutage bei vielen Lutheranern beliebte.“
7. 1894 · S. 5 · Prof. L. Larsen: the Norwegian Synod left „zur Zeit des Gnadenwahllehrſtreites“ not for want of doctrinal agreement but because the controversy shook it more than any other synod; weak members and the German language still keep it from rejoining.
8. 1894 · S. 15 · Hönecke: „Man ſoll alſo nicht thun, wie jetzt unſere Widerſacher gethan haben …“
9. 1894 · S. 80 · a delegation, President von Rohr and P. C. A. Frank of Evansville, sent to the Norwegian Synod's next convention.
10. 1898 · S. 9 · Gräbner: „Wenn ein Ohioer heutzutage in Ohioſchem Sinne die erſte Bitte betet, ſo betet er damit gegen uns“.
11. 1902 · S. 73 · the Norwegian Synod, „Die mit uns in Glaubensgemeinſchaft ſtehende“, asked to name representatives for the Negro Mission.
12. 1904 · S. 4 · President Sagen and Prof. Hove bring the Norwegians' greeting; a fraternal greeting is wired to their pastoral conference at Red Wing.

The first number states its purpose

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 1 (1879), 1879, p. 1

The first number of the Pioneer, edited by Prof. R. A. Bischoff, opens with a letter to the reader saying who sends the paper and why. The Synodical Conference had called the Rev. J. Doescher as its first missionary, and F. Berg had taken charge of a small congregation at Little Rock, Arkansas, with a chapel and a school; in July 1878 the Conference resolved to publish a paper, at twenty-five cents a year, to be “a Pioneer of the Lutheran Church, marching with or before the missionaries.”

Not tied to the German language

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 2 (1880), 1880, p. 50

Volume II opens with a letter of congratulation to the paper, signed only “Missionary”, which argues that the Lutheran Church cannot do its work among English-speaking Americans without books, tracts and periodicals. On the same page the editor reports the paper's first year: it was welcomed in 2,400 homes, at twenty-five cents a subscriber.

Bakke ordained for New Orleans

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 2 (1880), 1880, p. 60

On Sunday, 7 November 1880, J. N. Bakke was ordained at St. Louis for the Black congregation at New Orleans, and two days later he married Concordia Guenther, daughter of Prof. Guenther of the Lutheran University at St. Louis. The same column reports that Charles Berg, a teacher in the Little Rock mission school, had accepted a call to the school at New Orleans. Bakke, whose initials the paper usually prints as N. J., served the mission for forty years.

Grace for colored and white alike

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 5 (1883), 1883, p. 1

Opening its fifth volume, the paper restates the gospel it means to print, under Romans 3:23–25, “There is no difference.” It applies the doctrine of sin and grace to every reader without distinction of race.

Rejected because he was white

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 8 (1886), 1886, p. 38

A letter from New Orleans in 1886 says the Colored Mission there is no longer a question of “to be or not to be” but an established fact, its schools overcrowded. Of the new station under Pastor Burgdorf it reports opposition on three counts, and it records the installation of W. Joeckel, a graduate of the teachers' seminary at Addison, in the mission school at Carrollton.

The Alpha Synod and North Carolina

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 14 (1892), 1892, p. 22

Writing from Concord, the pastor of Mt. Zion and St. Paul's in New Orleans, transferred for a time to North Carolina, explains how the new field came to the Synodical Conference. Its Black Lutheran pastors had formed an “Alpha Synod”, which he calls “both premature and unwise”; when its president died the organization died with him, and at the request of P. W. Phifer the Mission Board took the mission in charge the previous September.

1. 1891 · Admission asked · from the German mission paper: “Three colored pastors with five congregations have applied for admission to the Synodical Conference” and asked for aid in North Carolina.

Carrollton closed: “none of that book-religion”

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 16 (1894), 1894, p. 22

The New Orleans report of 1894 announces that the mission at Carrollton has been discontinued, that F. J. Lankenau has been relieved of Mount Zion to keep St. Paul's, and that Mr. Kuss, moved from Carrollton, was installed at Mount Zion on Pentecost. The writer, who calls the shouting worship of neighbouring churches the work of “a foul spirit”, reports what the people of Carrollton had said of the Lutheran service.

A college resolved at Concord

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 22 (1900), 1900, p. 15

From 2 to 5 February 1900 the missionaries in North Carolina met at Grace Church, Concord, elected N. J. Bakke president and took the name Immanuel Conference. On the Monday Mr. Coleman, “a wealthy colored man of Concord”, showed them a site he had promised to give for a college, and the conference resolved to ask the Mission Board to support one; P. Engelbert wrote the report.

The first two Black graduates

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 24 (1902), 1902, p. 43

Doswell, a native of Meherrin, Virginia, came to Greensboro in 1895 at his pastor's request, was instructed there by J. C. Schmidt, and spent six years at the seminary in Springfield. The paper adds that six or seven more students from the Greensboro congregation were then at Springfield.

Twenty-five years, the same aim

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 26 (1904), 1904, p. 1

Opening its volume for 1904, the paper reprints the aim stated in its first number twenty-five years before: Bible doctrine as the Lutheran Church professes it, and news from the field. The 1879 wording had promised that the little paper had “a hard road to travel”.

Tom Smyre, licensed to preach in 1866

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 29 (1907), 1907, p. 76

The report on the mission at Conover, N. C., traces it to Black Lutherans of the slave era, among them Tom Smyre, born in 1792 and a slave child on Washington's plantation when Washington died. Owned by a German Lutheran of Catawba County, he read German and English and knew the Book of Concord, and in 1866 two pastors of the Tennessee Synod examined him and licensed him.

1. 1882 · “Uncle Tom” · a notice from the Philadelphia Lutheran that appears to describe the same man: an old Black Lutheran pastor in North Carolina, “94 years of age”, who “says that he was sold from the Mount Vernon estate after the death of General Washington”.

Lankenau leaves New Orleans

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 30 (1908), 1908, p. 87

Quoting Prof. F. Wenger in The Southern Lutheran, the paper reports that F. J. Lankenau, pastor of St. Paul's Mission congregation in New Orleans for seventeen years and a professor at Luther College, had accepted a call from a white congregation in Napoleon, Ohio. He later became editor of the Pioneer and held the post until its last number in 1933.

Berg, from Little Rock to Greensboro

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 33 (1911), 1911, p. 77

When N. J. Bakke became director of the mission, the presidency of Immanuel College passed to F. Berg, installed at the opening of the tenth term on 6 September 1911; his son Albert was appointed assistant to the faculty. The paper recalls where Berg's ministry had begun thirty-three years before.

The founding editor retires

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 2

At the start of 1913 the paper takes leave of Prof. R. A. Bischoff, who had edited it from the first number. The tribute says that month after month for thirty-four years his fingers had touched “the same strings of the Gospel-harp”.

Black Lutherans before the Civil War

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 43

A memoir of the North Carolina pastor David Koonts opens with the Black Lutherans of the slave South. Pastors of white congregations baptized and confirmed the children of slaves, seats were assigned to them in the galleries, and they were admitted to communion after the white members.

Rosa Young asks for help

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 38 (1916), 1916, p. 11

In November 1915 the chairman of the Mission Board received a letter from a teacher in Alabama's Black Belt, unknown to the Board, offering it her school if it would take charge of the school for the children of her community. The next page says she had first consulted Booker T. Washington, who advised her to apply to the Lutheran Church.

1. 1916 · Washington's advice · Washington told her “that of all the Churches working for the uplift of the Colored people the Lutheran Church stood in the front ranks, because of the excellent Christian school-training which it offers to the children.”

Black workers ask for a synod

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 42 (1920), 1920, p. 52

The Luther Conference, meeting at New Orleans from 26 to 30 May 1920, resolved to ask the Synodical Conference to organize the whole Colored Mission field into one body, “or a synod, if you please”, through the Mission Board and after laying the request before the Immanuel and Alabama Luther conferences. It gave this reason among others.

Immanuel's faculty to remain white

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 44 (1922), 1922, p. 80

At Luther College in New Orleans the faculty had asked that John McDavid, a Black pastor from Charlotte, join it, and the Board called him. For Immanuel College at Greensboro the Board's meeting of 21 April 1922 resolved otherwise, while naming self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating congregations as its ultimate aim and calling it “but natural” to train Black workers for the college faculties.

The Pioneer becomes a mission paper only

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 44 (1922), 1922, p. 86

Among the resolutions on the mission adopted by the Synodical Conference on 16–21 August 1922 is one about the paper itself. It was to serve as a missionary monthly only, and the existing Alabama Lutheran was to become a church paper for the Black congregations.

A Klan warning at Plaquemine

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 46 (1924), 1924, p. 77

A survey of the Louisiana stations reports that work at Plaquemine had stopped the previous summer, when building had already begun, and that the contractor had also failed to meet local building regulations. The Board meant to sell the property and build in another location.

The “open door” at Immanuel

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 54 (1932), 1932, p. 155

The Synodical Conference of 10–15 August 1932 ratified the closing of Luther College in New Orleans and made Alabama Luther College a preparatory school for Immanuel, teaching the eighth and ninth grades. For Immanuel it kept the present arrangement and appointed a committee to study the “open-” or “closed-door” policy at its Black institutions.

The first self-supporting congregation

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 98

In 1933 the paper reported that St. Philip's in St. Louis had become the first congregation of the Colored Mission to support itself. Close behind, the paper says, was the Chicago congregation of M. N. Carter, who had written from Rosebud, Alabama, in 1918.

A first step toward Africa

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 29

With the synods' grants cut, the Board reported $26,000 less income, but it also recorded a beginning abroad: at the suggestion of Jonathan Ekong, a native of Africa studying at Immanuel College, it sent English sermon books and other literature to his people in Nigeria, whom the paper calls the Ibeskipo. The Lutheran Ladies' Aid for Colored Missions in St. Louis held money for a missionary's journey.

The final issue

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 55 (1933), 1933, p. 130

The Missionary Board's farewell announces that the Pioneer and the German Missionstaube both end with this number, chiefly because of “the economic conditions of the times” and a wish among the synods to merge their periodicals. The editor, F. J. Lankenau, ill for months, had been forced to resign, and mission news was to pass to the Lutheran Witness, the Lutheraner and the papers of the other synods.

The Alabama field, 1879–1933

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 38 (1916), 1916, p. 44

In 1879 the Conference resolved to open a mission at Mobile, and L. Wahl took charge of it in 1880. The field that lasted began in the Black Belt: at Easter 1916 Christ Church at Rosebud, Wilcox County, was organized with 117 baptized members after a Palm Sunday confirmation of seventy, and left in the care of W. H. Lane and Rosa Young. By 1933 the Alabama field counted thirty-three stations.

1. 1879 · Columbus · the Conference resolves “to sent a missionary to New Orleans, Louisiana, to open a mission at Mobile, Alabama, and, if possible, at Sherman, Texas” (the printer's “sent”).
2. 1880 · Mobile · L. Wahl, formerly a missionary in India, rents a hall at Mobile and opens a day school, charging tuition because “the colored people at Mobile do not like free schools”.
3. 1917 · Rosa Young's letter · her own account: sent by Superintendent Bakke to Vredenburgh, she organizes St. Andrew's Sunday-school with 20 pupils and a day-school with 8.
4. 1928 · Twelve years · “We have now been in Alabama twelve years, and this is the first time we have climbed above the two thousand mark”: 2,135 souls.
5. 1933 · Field statistics · thirty-three stations, 2,622 baptized and 1,401 communicant members, 922 day-school pupils; later in the same paragraph the communicants are 1,407.

Colleges for Black students, 1902–1928

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 24 (1902), 1902, p. 36

In 1902 the Board told the Synodical Conference that the time had come for colleges to prepare young Black men for its seminaries. The links follow what came of it: a preparatory college at Concord in 1903, Luther College in New Orleans in 1904, Immanuel College at Greensboro in 1907, Alabama Luther College at Selma in 1925, and the closing and reopening of Luther College.

1. 1903 · Concord · from The Southern Lutheran: a preparatory college for Black boys opens at Concord, N. C., on 2 March 1903, with N. Bakke as president, so that the people may have “preachers of their own race”.
2. 1904 · Luther College · on 6 November the permanent home of Luther College, New Orleans, for boys and girls, is dedicated; its first pupils had been taught in the vestry of St. Paul's.
3. 1907 · Immanuel dedicated · Immanuel College at Greensboro is dedicated in June 1907; C. F. Obermeyer, president of the Board, “spoke of the love that gave us the college, and the great work it is to do for the race.”
4. 1925 · Luther College to close · the Luther Conference expresses “our deepest regret that circumstances made the Mission Board's decision imperative” to close Luther College, and pledges support to Selma.
5. 1925 · Selma · Alabama Luther College is dedicated on 20 September; its “chief aim and purpose shall be to train our young colored Lutherans to teach others the way of salvation”.
6. 1928 · Reopening · the Synodical Conference resolves unanimously “to reopen Luther College at New Orleans as a feeder of the normal school at Selma”.

Paying for the mission, 1879–1928

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 46 (1924), 1924, p. 74

From its first year the paper's receipts went into the mission box, and its pages regularly set out what the work cost and who paid for it. In 1924 the Board reported that the Black members, most of them poorly paid servants and tenants, had given $25,256.72 in 1923, and that their average gift exceeded that of the white members of the Synodical Conference.

1. 1879 · The mission box · the editor denies that the paper's receipts are his income: “It is all put into the mission-box”; the German Mission-Dove already has over 13,000 subscribers.
2. 1890 · The Board's count · receipts for 1889 of $7,516.50, against $575 a month for salaries; 576 souls, 268 communicants, 591 day-school pupils, five missionaries and four teachers.
3. 1921 · A deficit · a $10,000 deficit; gifts of white Christians up from $56,410.44 (1916–17) to $85,439.57 (1920–21), of Black Christians from $4,955.61 to $15,282.91.
4. 1928 · Alabama, 1927 · Black Belt congregations, “poor in this world's goods”, give $10,074.74 in 1927, about $1 a month for each communicant member.

How the paper spoke of race, 1879–1931

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 35 (1913), 1913, p. 66

Across five decades the Pioneer printed two kinds of statement about the people it served: that the Gospel made no distinction of race, and judgments of their worship, their capacities and their place. The links give both as printed. In 1913 an editorial, “The Gospel Is for All”, likened the prejudice of Christians of its day to that of the Jewish Christians toward the Gentiles, and quoted a former missionary in East Africa.

1. 1879 · To all people · a Christmas conversation with “Old Uncle”: the Saviour does not belong “only to the white people, or only to the rich people, but ‘to ALL people’”.
2. 1882 · Tennessee Synod · the paper prints a Tennessee Synod resolution that Black worship “partakes more of the form of heathenism than Christianity”.
3. 1905 · A retrospect · the mission recalled as “a mission at home, among a race unduly despised, berated, and quite often abused.”
4. 1920 · Bakke · N. J. Bakke after forty-odd years: “The Lutheran Church has been and still is the Negroes' best friend.”
5. 1928 · Race consciousness · the Board: “Since the World War another hindrance has become apparent. We refer to race consciousness”; hearers ask why they must have a white man for their preacher.
6. 1930 · Islam in Africa · Islam is said to spread faster because “it knows no barriers of race or color, whereas Christianity recognizes the superiority of Japheth over Ham.”
7. 1931 · The curse of Canaan · Pastor Rau's conference paper holds that the curse “was fulfilled, as history points out”, and goes on: “we must not forget that these people also should hear of the Savior”.
8. 1931 · One race? · an editorial asks whether the Lutheran faith is “suited only to one race of people or to one language or to one locality?”

Deaths in the mission, 1884–1931

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 43 (1921), 1921, p. 43

The paper reported the deaths of its workers and friends as losses to the mission itself. The longest of these careers was N. J. Bakke's: when he began at New Orleans there were three stations, and the directory printed at his death in May 1921 listed 57.

1. 1884 · Meilaender · C. F. Obermeyer reports that Missionary Meilaender of Little Rock died of typhoid-malarial fever on 19 July: “When he died he was 25 years and 7 months old, and had been married but 3 months.”
2. 1887 · Walther · C. F. W. Walther dies on 7 May in his 76th year: “In him our Colored Mission has lost one of its most devoted and faithful friends.”
3. 1888 · Charles Berg · the New Orleans teacher dies on 9 March aged 28, after “seven years of self-denying and faithful service”.
4. 1918 · E. R. Vix · “Uncle Bob”, teacher of Black children at New Orleans since September 1881, dies on 10 July; a native of New Orleans, “he bore no prejudice against the Colored people.”
5. 1931 · C. F. Drewes · the director of Colored Missions dies “after an illness of only six days in St. Louis, the victim of influenza and pneumonia”; the caption dates his death 3 March 1931.

War and influenza, 1916–1920

The Lutheran Pioneer, Vol. 42 (1920), 1920, p. 67

The Board's report to the Synodical Conference in 1920 named three hindrances of the past four years: the World War, two epidemics of influenza and the migration of Black people to the North. Black members' contributions had still risen from $5,528 five years before to $14,325 in 1919.

1. 1916 · India · German missionaries in India are interned or repatriated, among them the Gossner missionaries in Bihar and Orissa.
2. 1917 · A spy scare · Superintendent Bakke in Alabama “suspected of being a German spy”; shots fired to intimidate him and threats of fire, laid to “some jealous enemies of our work”.
3. 1918 · The Kaiser's church · a booklet answering “the assumption that the Lutheran Church is the Kaiser's church”.
4. 1918 · No convention · the district presidents decide that “it would be best for the Synodical Conference not to convene this year.”
5. 1918 · Rosebud · M. N. Carter writes that “the ‘flu’ temporarily shut the doors of school and church”, while the congregation raised its monthly gift to the Board from $10 to $15.