in the vineyard of the Lord, and the jealousy of a ministry in the parish they have opinions of their own of the spellbinder next door. He is a humbug and busybody: he does not know his business and he would control the state. The daughter churches of Calvinism only confirm the Lutheran in his conception of the manifest destiny of Lutheranism in America: to preach a truly Pauline Christianity and preserve the separation of church and state." Thus, the group, in more senses than one, laced our German with its own ego into the strait-jacket of an ancient-calling concept. As the primary group was wont to tell the cobbler to stick to his last, so it told the minister, he Christian himself, to mind his business. That business, ministry, and calling of the ego, Christian or otherwise, the group rationalizes and canonizes through its eminent organ, theology; whereupon it leaves it, together with the power of the keys, with the community. The community, we may say, loses keys, calling, ministry, church, ego, "socius," and all-in the parish.

For the church also, where it had given, it could take away. Afraid to lose both identity and numbers in the English language, it preserved the German language of the group as its own medium of indoctrination. But what it really uses is the topographical terminology of a dogmatic scholasticism of the seventeenth century. Its social philosophy is pre-Copernican "social geometry": it is the pre-Thomistic world-order of concentric circles as indicated by the medieval system of socialization." In its parochial schools it will continue to use the German language and Luther's Catechism to teach its children to stay put, unless those children have ceased to understand that language, or unless the state, for reasons best known to itself, tells them to stop. But the conservation of German-language nationalism has never been its aim. As soon as more English and Norwegian converts were to be had, and the days of the German were numbered, as soon as God came to be with the stronger battalions of the English language, it bethought Synodalberichte Michigan (1924), No. 4, p. 69; Theolog. Quartalsschrift, XV, 153-74; Schaller, Biblical Christology, 1919; Theolog. Quartalsschrift, XVI, 299–300. The evidence of a uniform reaction in the above sense is overwhelming. I Peter 4:15 is still applied.

10

"Simmel, p. 317.

itself of its identity as an American church. Having begun by claiming to know only Christians and speaking only German, it ended by becoming so characteristically American that it came near forgetting its own traditional Christianity.

12

On the whole, the church sublimated its own sociological form, the Gemeinschaft, and abhorred the rational technique of a partnership and Gesellschaft for itself and for its members. For its own corporation law it has learned to use the latter to build up a system of federated congregations and synods on the plan of co-ordination but not sub- or super-ordination. But all partnership it makes contingent on creed fellowship and Gemeinschaft.13

Thus the church is withholding from the Christian and from the natural man the right to enter partnerships where they prejudice its own existence or its catholic monopoly of the means of grace: the correct understanding of the gospel. As a result, the ego, which is its noblest function, cannot grow as a "socius" through a wider Gemeinschaft and fellowship, nor as an ego through a narrower Gesellschaft and partnership." No trial-and-error method This according to some criticism of its Christianity in the organ of the affiliated Wisconsin Synod, see Theolog. Quartalsschrift, XIX, 58, 113; XX, 254, 262. See also ibid., XV, XVI, 43 ff., 121 f., 179 f., 257 ff., an excellent sociological analysis by Professor August Pieper.

12

...

13 For its early fellowship law see A. J. S., Vol. XXX, No. 6, pp. 677, 682, notes and ibid., Vol. XXXI, No. 1, pp. 41, 44, 49; also Theolog. Quartalsschrift, VIII, 98 ff., 110 ff., 131 ff., 152; IX, 24 ff., 65, 83; also "Gedanken über kirchliche Vereinigung,” ibid., Jahrg., XI, 10, 31, 79 ff., 99: "Vereinigung ist unevangelisch . . . . ist Indifferentismus . führt zur Calvinistischen Theocratie mit seiner . . . . falschen Auffassung von den Aufgaben der Kirche. . . . . Streben ein sichtbares Gottesreich auf Erden aufzurichten . . . . Rücksichtslosigkeit gegen die Gewissensüberzeugung anderer. ." See also the clear distinction between Vereinigung und Einigung, ibid., p. 21. Why no partnerships without creed agreement, Romans 10, 9; Galatians 1, 9; and II John 10. Fellowship with reformed and Calvinistic churches is impossible: "Alle die zu reformierten Gemeinschaften gehören stehen uns wie Personen aus einer anderen Familie gegenüber. . . . . Kirchliche Einigung ist wesentlich Einigung im Bekenntnis," ibid., pp. 81–88. For a recent controversy within the church concerning the sources of the power of the keys and the implications thereof for the corporation law of the church (a clear-cut differentiation of the elements of fellowship and partnership therein) see Theolog. Quartalsschrift, IX, 102, and XVIII, 95 ff. But here also "Gottes Wort ist es was die Kirche macht." See also on confessionalism and modernism, Synodalberichte (North Dakota, 1922), Synod. Conferenz, 1898.

See again Simmel, pp. 319-28.

may net him a new technique. He can do no other because his group, his institution, knows none. He may not respond to, he may not even recognize, a situation, except in terms of his group. It stands to reason, then, that whatever partnerships our type will enter for social or political purposes, such as a party, will rarely attain the intimacy of a fellowship. It may attain the duration and stability of a fellowship through tradition, but not its intimacy and loyalty through identification. The traditionalism of the parish will, its socialism of thinking and of feeling will not, bless a wider circle of social relationships. For in its theory of the state our church denied that the state may make Christians what they ought to be, and then handicapped its Christians from making the state what it might be. For while the state should be governed by natural reason, the Christian may not so do it. It keeps away from all the social Christianity and from the Christian endeavor of the others because it is a Calvinistic and sectarian idea to try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. It thus saves its breath trying to reform the world at large, and then blows everlastingly the hot pudding of Sodom and Gomorrah. It puts the strongest possible premium on the "freedom of the Christian man,” but where it sees others make use thereof, it will recommend doing the opposite.15 It will everlastingly decry the wicked world, but when that world begins to join in prayer, our Lutheran will stay away, for "there is no such thing as a non-denominational prayer." It is convinced that a storm is threatening the church from the state, but when that storm breaks, it demands Christian obedience and preaches nonresistance." The literature of the church reads like a scathing satire on the bankruptcy of American Christianity. It is also a faith

15 As in matters of the adiaphora, see some of the Synodalberichte which recommend: when in doubt, watch the others and do the opposite.

16 Theolog. Quartalsschrift, XVI, 202.

"Its theory of church and state will be treated later, in the social process at large, see Michigan, 1909, Illinois, 1901, Theolog. Quartalsschrift, III, 434; IV, 149. Kansas, 1889, Syn. Conf., 1890; Wisconsin, 1892; Iowa, 1901. Thus Luther: "Gott will lieber leiden die Obrigkeit so Unrecht thut denn den Poepel so rechte Sache hat," Michigan, 1909, p. 35.

ful record of the limitations of that of the Germans, including its

On the whole, we may say that our Lutheran is still a German in this, that he abhors the Sabbath, and prohibition, and all the social meliorism of the sectarians. He is an American in this, that he is much more provincial, much narrower in his attitude toward amusements, than the continental German, even where such amusements do not come under the category "sin." He is a Puritan all by himself.

If his idea of a good neighbor and Christian is this, that he should stay on his own side of the fence, the final and most potent reason is his fear of "rationalism." For rationalism is the very denial of his selfhood. The individual as an economic being and as a Christian, the group as the family, the neighborhood, the church, the group as an aggregate, and the group as a type form are therewith doomed. It hurts their feelings and it corrodes their minds. Between the Missouri Lutheran and rationalism, the social process is dramatized as a mystery play: the devil is rationalism, the soul is group tradition, the deus ex machina is the sola fides.

It has been suggested previously in what sense the group is threatened objectively in its psychological elements, its behavior mechanism, its social reason, and its social faith. We have said that the very logic of the heterogeneous situation threatened the Gemeinschaft, undermined its social reason, and shook its faith. Whatever its modes, from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, that logic is the substance of "rationalism." It is the thing which does not love a fence.

How the danger from that situation was translated into terms of soul fear and how our organism was made impregnable against that danger, if not against that fear, might be worth showing in detail. Only enough can be suggested here to satisfy our double curiosity, namely, in what part of their capitol these Romans keep their geese, and the social process as a conditioning of an ego.

18 For sheer moral and intellectual honesty in criticizing the limitations of his own church, as well as that of the others, the articles of Professor Köhler in the Theolog. Quartalsschrift of the affiliated Wisconsin Synod have no rival.

The forms in which the primary group meets rationalism are well-known enough. With reasoning the German farmer gets nowhere; he must carry on. Once the wife, the oldest boy, the man servant and the maid servant rationalize, they will soon be talking back, and cease to know their place. Rationalizing in the community is dangerous to the consensus, for it disturbs the peace. That sort of individualism soon causes Argernis. The rationalizing of the new theology is dangerous in the extreme; it is not in keeping with tradition; it only benefits "the others," and then, es steht geschrieben. The so-called "higher criticism" is folly in the name of reason, and in the name of religion it is blasphemy.1 As a matter of course, the modern evolutionary theory is impossible. But Professor Graebner, of the seminary of the group at St. Louis, the largest theological college in the country, has made a careful investigation of it and written a criticism. The result is gratifying: "Evolution is in its last mortal throes. . . . . Darwin is dead . . . all that is left are some lesser disciples dancing about the remains and frantically shouting make-believes that the thing is still alive. Obsequies are in order.”20

We easily see that whether the thing presents itself as the mild rationalism of the eighteenth century or the evolutionary rationalism of the nineteenth, the rational synthesis of pietism or that of science does not matter. The rationalism of Thomas Paine, and Jefferson, and Heinzen, and Marx, and all those people have one thing in common: they have forgotten to reckon with original sin. Hence they know neither creation nor salvation.

With all this some American Christians may heartily agree. But what about the idea that Calvinism itself is rationalism? Dr. Hodge's assertion, for instance, that "the Bible never requires us to receive as true anything which the constitution of our nature, given to us by God himself, forces us to believe to be false or imposAllg. Delegatenconferenz, 1893.

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20 Th. Graebner, Evolution: An Investigation and a Criticism, 1920. The book, as usual in that quarter, shows great industry and much learning, and is one of the best treatises on the subject that has come from the fundamentalist camp. See also Theolog. Quartalsschrift (1921), p. 208.