The pastors did everything. They considered themselves a final court
of trial. The whole procedure was based upon the medieval assumption that the Church
consists of the clergy and that the laymen have no part in the government of the Church.
Page 88
By unanimous vote of the clergy, without even a trace of participation on the part of
the laymen aside from the conventional "Ja" vote, Stephan was excommunicated,
deposed, and removed from the landed property of the colony-all on that eventful day of
May 30 1839. The fact that the laymen had previously gotten out a document in which they
pleaded for participation of the laity in the action against Stephan and in which they
pointed to the convention of laymen and pastor described in Acts 15 that the pastor had
resigned their commissions in Germany and were temporary without calls-seemed to have not
effect upon die Herrn Amtsbrueder [bored bureaucratic cronies]. Page 89
For years Stephan had adroitly manipulated his doctrine so that very many of colonists
were of the firm conviction that Stephan was their chief means of grace
(Hauptgnadenmittel) [head grace mediator] and that outside, and apart from, him there was
no hope. Page 94
The clerical faction was gradually headed by C. F. W. Walther and the lay faction by
Dr. Carl Eduard Vehse, perhaps the most learned of the entire group. Page 95
As far as the minutes show, the pastor was never legally permitted to attend the
business part of the voters' meetings. Page 107
Walther was realistic enough to see that Vehse's theories, now espoused by Marbach and
Burger, had many adherents through the colony. Page112
Walther, on the other hand, took his cue from Vehse and attacked the problem from the
viewpoint of sixteenth century theology. Page 120
Theses IV-VIII supplement Vehse and therefore are really, as they existed at the
moment, the heart of Walther's contributions at Altenburg. Page 121
Unhesitatingly he acknowledges the contribution which Vehse, Fisher, and Jaechel had
made with their document of September 19, 1939. Page 122
Simply but quietly he [Walther] built his case on the same authority which Marbach,
Buerger, Vehse, Fisher, Jaeckel and Wege had used. Page 123.
Just how did the principles which Vehse and Walther derived from the writings of Luther
work out in the days-to-day life of a Lutheran Congregation? Page 125
The present writer has gone over the minutes of the early years several times with a
view to tracing the application of the Vehse-Walther-Luther principle. Page 125
..it can be said that by the large the principle of congregational supremacy was
applied in the early years of "old Trinity" and that it worked. Page 125
Every step which the congregation took was apparently in agreement with Walther's
principle of the supremacy of the congregation, as is revealed the minutes. Page 126
Another major project of Trinity Congregation, of which we have an extensive record in
the minutes and which illustrates the working of Walther's polity as derived through Vehse
from Luther, is the framing of a constitution for the congregation. Page 132
August 1, 1842, it was resolved that Pastor Walther read the testimonies in Vehse's
book which refer to the rights of a congregation. Page 139
Looking over the entire process of adoption of the constitution and examining the
constitution itself in its entirety, the present writer could not escape the impression
that genuinely democratic methods were used on the part of the congregation and that the
constitution safeguarded the principle of congregational supremacy at every turn. Page 148
In estimating the almost morbid concern of the congregation to safeguard the principle
of congregational supremacy the present writer wished to point to three factors: . page
148
The principle of decentralized government championed by Vehse and Marbach and adopted
by Walther was upheld beyond a doubt in all operations connected with the building of the
mother church of the Missouri Synod. Page 160
In fine, the principles which Vehse and Marbach had gathered from the writings of
Luther, and which Walther adopted, were beginning to determine the routine of the
congregation. Page 162
Walther states that their ultimate aim was to introduce uniform church government in
all congregations served by them according to the pattern set by Luther. Page 165
In order to insure publication, the congregation as a whole voted to grant the magazine
its (Der Lutheraner) financial support. Page 170
It was a channel through which Luther's concepts of church government and of doctrine
generally flowed incessantly to the Lutheran laity of the American frontier, and it was a
means of publicity whereby the Saxon pastors placed what they believed to be a true
picture of themselves, their doctrine, and polity before the Lutheran Church of America..
page 170
Walther wrote, "Furthermore, our immigrant congregations view with alarm every
institution that even faintly resembles a hierarchy, because of their terrible experience
with Stephan." Page 172
The wording [for congregational supremacy] was fixed in the midst of a [Trinity]
congregation that was intensely jealous of its congregational rights [in St. Louis, on May
18th, 1846, a month before the Fort Wayne Conference]. page 177
.and Trinity Congregation, St. Louis, became the leading congregation of the Missouri
Synod and remained so fore over half a century. Page 177
In a certain sense one may call the constitution of the Missouri Synod the result of a
seven-year battle for congregation rights [at Trinity Lutheran Church]. Page 179
Giving the laity equality with the clergy was something new in the American Lutheran
Church. Page 181
The polity of the Missouri Synod was something apart from anything then known in
America. It was the result of a catastrophic experience in their own midst. Page 183
The constitution also insisted on purely Lutheran forms of worship, hymnbooks,
Catechism, and readers in the parish schools. Page 184
Finally they prepared what they thought was an airtight paragraph safeguarding the
supremacy of the congregation against any and all possible clerical encroachments. Page
192
There are several factors which make connection between the genesis of Missouri's
polity and existing American democratic theory rather improbable. The resemblance between
the theory of congregational supremacy and American popular sovereignty is more apparent
than real. Only male communicant members of the church who reached their twenty-first year
had the right to vote. Furthermore, matters of doctrine and conscience which assumed great
importance in the immigrant Church were not subject to popular vote, but were decided on
the sole authority of the Scriptures. In such matters the Word of God hovered as a SUPEEME
AUTHORITY over the congregation and Synod. This authority, be it remembered, was wielded
officially and effectively by the pastor and by the Synodical officials. In a sermon
delivered upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the
Missouri Synod as the jubilee convention, St. Louis, 1872, Walther said, "Reverence
and implicit obedience are due the ministry when the pastor teaches the Word of God."
Page 201)
The demand for lay participation in the government of the Church did not come until
September 19, 1839. The demand came from a group of laymen led by Dr. Eduard Vehse. Page
204
The removal of Martin Stephan on May 30, 1839, and all the misery that followed that
event gave the laymen the necessary jolt to press for lay participation in the government
of the Church. This misery drove them into the writings of Luther, and here the laymen
found the weapons which they needed to win the battle for CONGREGATIONAL SUPREMACY from
the power-jealous pastors. Page 205)
Any democratic political theories which the founders of the Missouri Synod might have
entertained, they did not get from America, but from the same source from which they
derived their theory and church polity, viz., from the writings of Martin Luther.
Walther's political democracy was not that of John Locke nor of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Page 207
Led by Dr. Vehse from May 30 to December 11, 1839, and after his return to Germany by
Dr. F. A. Marbach, a group of highly intelligent laymen propagandized the colony in behalf
of laymen's participation in the government of the Church. At the suggestion of Stephan
these laymen had studied the writings of Martin Luther for years while they were still in
Germany. Their knowledge of Luther's writings was astonishing. Their claims for lay
participation in the government of the Church were based primarily upon the earlier
statements of Luther concerning the priesthood of all believers. At first the Saxon
ministerium, including C.F.W Walther, resisted these laymen most vigorously, as already
stated.) Page 212
In this extreme exigency Walther made a virtue of necessity and adopted a realistic
course. He accepted the principles of church government from the writings of Luther. Page
213
By putting real power into the laymen's hands the founders of the Missouri Synod
nurtured and developed a sturdy and informed laity. The laymen learned by doing. The
difficult problem of teaching men and women who had been brought up in the State Church of
Germany the task of paying for the maintenance of the Church was solved by giving laymen
the privilege and the duty of making important decisions in the Church.... The zeal which
the early Missouri Synod laymen showed for their Church in that they attended meeting
after meeting was produced, no doubt, in part by the fact that these men knew that their
decisions were final. Page 218-219