George Unangst Wenner

“ Language is the medium of ideas. The thirty denominations that constitute the bulk of Protestantism in this country derive the spirit of their church life for the most part from non-Lutheran sources through the medium of English literature. This is as it should be. But when Lutherans no longer understand the language of their fathers or the literature in which the ideas of their confession have found their fullest expression, they lose an indispensable condition of intellectual and spiritual growth. They can never understand as they should the spirit of the church to which they belong. ”

“ Thus the Romanists regard the Church as essentially visible, the Reformed, as essentially invisible, while Lutherans hold that she is both. The invisible Church is contained within the visible just as the soul is contained within the body. The Church is not merely a congregation of believers, but also an institution for the promotion of the Kingdom of God. ”

“ The fifteen languages in which we minister to our people confer upon us an honorable distinction. Each one represents an individuality which cannot be ignored, some spiritual gift which is worth exercising and preserving. By keeping in touch with this many-sided life we enrich our own lives, obtain broader conceptions of the church's mission, and fit ourselves for more effective service in this most cosmopolitan city of the world. ”

“ When our country was young, and Protestantism was the prevailing type of religion, these two ideas dwelt peacefully together. The founders of the Republic had no theory of education from which religion was divorced. But the influx of millions of people of other faiths compels us to revise our methods and to test them by our principles, the principles of a free Church within a free State. ”

“ The clearer comprehension of the principles we hold and of the work we have to do, and the sense of our responsibility as one of the larger communions of the metropolis, compel us more and more to emphasize not the unessential details of our theological system but rather the larger truths and principles for which we stand and which we hold in common.
A hundred years ago, on the tercentenary of the Reformation, after a period of political humiliation and economic distress in the Fatherland, the Ninety-five Theses of Claus Harms sounded a call for a Lutheran awakening throughout the world. ”

“ Where Arensius and Falckner ministered to a feeble flock under inconceivable difficulties, there is built the greatest, certainly the largest, city of the world. From all the races and tongues of the earth men are gathering here to solve the problems of their lives. From Lutheran lands fifty myriads have already come and are living within our walls. Consciously or otherwise they appeal to us, their brethren in the faith, for that religious fellowship for which every man sometimes longs. ”

“ According to the Confessors of Augsburg: "For the true unity of the church it is sufficient to agree concerning the doctrines of the Gospel."
It would seem, therefore, to be in harmony with the spirit of Lutheranism to make "the confession of the churches" rather than "the Confessions of the Church" the bond of union. Underneath the Confessions there are distinctive principles differentiating us from the sacerdotal churches on the one hand and from the Reformed churches on the other hand. ”

“ Complete records are especially necessary in our great city with its constant removals and changes of population. The individual is like the proverbial needle in the haystack, unless we adopt a method of accounting not only for each family but for each individual down to the latest-born child.* *In order that I may not be as one that beateth the air, I venture to suggest a method of laying the foundation of records that has been helpful in my own work. ”

“ Others, more spiritually minded, base their hopes on the evangelist and the revival. But when the evangelist has taken his leave, and the people have to listen to the same voice they have heard so long before, having been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that it is not the Church that makes a man a Christian, that sacraments and ordinances are merely human devices, is it any wonder that many of them ignore the church altogether? ”

“ In New York, in common with other churches, we have the Sunday School. We do not undervalue its influence and cannot dispense with its aid. But does the Sunday School meet the requirement of an adequate system of religious instruction? It is an institution that has endeared itself to the hearts of millions. Originally intended for the waifs of an English manufacturing town, it has become among English-speaking people an important agency of religion. ”

“ What we plan and what we do here in New York projects itself far beyond the walls of our city. Nowhere are the questions of the community more complicated and the needs of the time more urgent than here. We should therefore ask ourselves whether the disjointed sections of our church, arrayed during the Quadricentennial as one, for the purposes of a spectacular celebration, but each exalting some particularism of secondary value, adequately represent the religious ideas which four centuries ago gave a new impulse to the life of the world. ”

“ Few care to force themselves into the precincts of a private club even if it bears the name of a church.
A pecuniary method of effecting friendly relations is not without its merits. In this city of frequent removals there are many families who have lost all connection with the congregation to which they claim to belong. An opportunity to contribute to the church of their new neighborhood might be for them a secondary means of grace. They become as it were proselytes of the gate. Having taken the first step, many may again enter into full communion with the church. ”

“ Thus is conserved what was best in the institutional theory of the ancient church, so that in spite of her many defects both as a national church and in her transplanted condition, the Lutheran church will remain an important factor in the development of Protestant Christianity.
When our Reformed neighbors charge us with Romanism, it is either because they do not understand our theory and have overlooked the historical development, or because they judge of us by the Romish practice of our own ministers who have thoughtlessly slipped over too far toward the institutional theory. ”

“ In view of the efforts made all around us to bring about a closer and more harmonious relation between the various Protestant denominations, the Martin Luther Society of the City of New York respectfully begs you to consider whether the time has not come to make an effort to bring about, if not a union, at least a better understanding and more fraternal intercourse between the Lutherans themselves. We all deplore the divisions that separate us ”

“ For philological reasons, as we have seen, no people are more ready than the Germans to adopt English for every-day use. None amalgamate more easily with the political and social life of the country of their choice. In normal times we do not think of them as foreigners.
English has the right of way. Its composite character makes it the language for every-day use. Thirty-five languages are spoken in this city, but the assimilative power of English absorbs them all. ”

“ But there was a deeper reason for the growth of our church. Ever since the Luther Centennial of 1883 the young people of our churches had begun to understand not only the denominational significance of their church but also something of its inner characteristics and life. In various groups, in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn, they got together and organized English congregations in which an intelligent Lutheran consciousness prevailed. ”

“ We baptize their children and we bury their dead. Once in a while some of them even come to church. In spite of all their wanderings and intellectual idiosyncrasies they still claim to be Christians. And whatever their own attitude toward Christianity may be, there are few who do not desire to have their children brought up in the Christian faith. We have before us an open door.
The churches can do more than they are doing now to win these lapsed Lutherans. Some people are kept out of church through no fault of their own. ”

“ It is true that Calvin and the Reformed churches also accepted this principle, but they did not begin with it. Their system was based on the idea of the absoluteness of God. The Lutheran system emphasizes the love of God to all men; the Reformed system emphasizes predestination; which, by selecting some, excludes the others. As the theologians describe it, Lutheranism is Christocentric, Reform is theocentric.* *Calvin, like Luther, read theology through Augustine and without his ecclesiology, but from an altogether opposite point of view. ”

“ Laymen, more interested in practical results, find it hard to understand why there should be so many different kinds of Lutherans. Even ministers, accustomed as they are to sharp distinctions, sometimes deplore these divisions and wonder when they can be healed. They long for the time when the adherents of the Augsburg Confession may unite in one great body, "beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners." ”

“ Alluring as such a prospect may seem, it is not of highest importance in a communion which from the beginning emphasized the right of private judgment and acquired for the world the right to think for itself in matters of conscience and religion. The Church of the Reformation derives its strength from unity rather than from union. Theoretically at least, it is a communion, a fellowship of believers. Its earliest designation was not "The Lutheran Church," but "Churches of the Augsburg Confession." ”

“ Great men had gathered from all parts of the country. But to the older members of the Swamp Church there was doubtless no one, not even Washington himself, who stood higher in their esteem and affection than the representative from Pennsylvania, the Reverend Frederick Muehlenberg. And when a few days later the erstwhile German pastor of the Swamp Church was elected Speaker of the first House of Representatives of the United States of America, none knew better than they that it was only a fitting tribute to the character and abilities of their former pastor. ”

“ Historically and doctrinally the Lutheran Church is committed to week-day instruction in religion. Historically, because in establishing the public school her chief purpose was to provide instruction in religion; doctrinally, because from her point of view life is a unit and cannot be divided into secular and spiritual compartments.
American Christians are confronted with two apparently contradictory propositions. One is that there can be no true education without religion. The other is that we must have a public school, open to all children without regard to creed. ”

“ We have common tasks, and it would be well if we knew more of each other's ways and aims.
New York is a cosmopolitan city. It is the gateway through which the nations are sending their children into the new world. ”

“ From these Lutheran lands, from Scandinavia to the Balkan peninsula, from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains, other myriads will come in the long years that will follow the war. New history is sure to be written for Europe and America. What shall be our contribution to its unwritten pages?
In solving the problems that confront us we shall at the same time help to solve the problems of our city and of our country. The simple faith and the catholic principles of our church should secure far us a wide field of useful and effective service. ”

“ Our figures should include every soul, man, woman and child, in any way related to our congregations, classified in such a way as to show clearly in what relation they stand to the church. A church that does not count its members as carefully as a bank counts its dollars is in danger of bankruptcy.
Church bookkeeping ought to be taught in the Theological Seminary. But if the pastor himself is not a good bookkeeper, almost every congregation has young men or young women who are experts in this art, who could render good service to the church by keeping its membership rolls. ”

“ In our church polity there was no adequate provision for the needs of such an immense and ever expanding population. Now and then a broadminded pastor would encourage the planting of a church in some needy field, but too often the establishment of a new mission was looked upon as an encroachment on the parochial rights of the older congregation. At this point in the congregational polity of our church the absence of a directing mind and a unifying force was sorely felt.
The condition of immigrants at the port of New York was for many years a public scandal. ”

“ Man's thoughts have not been God's thoughts, nor man's ways God's ways, in the mingling of races and religions on this island. The Lutheranism that so sorely struggled for a foothold in the early days is now the second Protestant communion in numbers, and its recent increment throughout Greater New York, contributed to by German, Scandinavian, Finnish and many English Lutheran churches, has exceeded that of any other Protestant body. ”

“ Lutherans are a cosmopolitan church. Our pastors minister to their flocks in fifteen languages. No church has a greater obligation to "seek the peace of the city" than the Lutherans of New York. No church has a deeper interest in the problems that come to us with the growth and ever changing conditions of the metropolis.
In their earlier history our churches had a checkered career. In recent years they have made remarkable progress. In Greater New York we enroll this year 160 churches. The Metropolitan District numbers 260 congregations holding the Lutheran confession. ”