can be met, language nationalism is only a medium of the Lutheran creed-loyalty; in the medium of language the interest of the church may require alternatives, in creed-loyalty it will not permit them. In this trench it will make its last stand in the tradition of the sixteenth century and of the Thirty Years' War.

One fact would arouse us to most energetic action, namely, when an attempt is made to close all our schools by legislative enactment. The motto which some misguided fools are trying to foist upon the whole country is: One nation, one flag, one language, one school, one church. We subscribe to the first two points, to the third with certain reservations, but never to the last two. We must be permitted to worship our God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and we must be permitted to bring up our children, so far as their moral and religious training is concerned, according to the policies of Scripture which we hold dearer than life itself.19

It might easily be shown that in this quarter, more than anywhere else, the German language has been effectively preserved "unto the third and fourth generation," not as a link with Germany and as an insulator against America, but as an insulator of an older group-life, an older social order against both. The strongest appeal of a separate linguistic and educational medium has been for its value as a protection and a means of domestication and immunization against "rationalism," "materialism," "indifferentism,” against the "paganism" of the state schools; "Staatsschulen sind Heidenschulen."20 Without it, the group is not safe nor true to its trust-the family itself is not safe. With the best of intentions— "by their fruits they shall be known"-the public schools, therefore, are in this quarter. The "fearful fruits" of a public education are that the children become wildlings, known by their indiscipline, insubordination, unresponsiveness to traditional moral inhibitions. Drill (abrichten) "rationalists and Pharisees," that is the best a revivalistic Christianity can do with its "Christian" public schools.21 Thus their very basic stewardship as a group, the guardianship of the family, the church, the state, indicates here not peace but war, and from an agency of self-preservation the parochial school be19 Iowa District Synod (1919), pp. 138-55.

20

Synodalconference (1922); also Wisconsin District Synod, Vol. VII (1891), and Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1904), p. 28.

comes an organ in a conflict situation where there can be no compromise. It is the conflict over the social order itself, between a mystery religion, with the sublimated inertia of its created, ordained, institutional categories, and an ethical rationalism or emotionalism, with its dynamics. For these Americans at least, America is not a Protestant country; there is strong doubt whether it is a Christian country. The state, at least, is not a Protestant state.22 But even so, in all good faith and with much understanding, the Christian man in this quarter throws down the gauntlet to the state as all the others understand it and would have it. "These people have neither understanding of the true spiritual nature of Christianity nor a conception of the legitimate character of our American state." They would save the state from itself, from the heedless emotionalism and the Godless rationalism of "the others." For what is ultimately at stake is the ultimate reserve power of the sovereign from which even the state derives its strength and without which there can be no "law and order." For the rights of the Christian man they would war in fulfilment of their highest civic duty, for: "We need citizens who obey for conscience's sake."23

This Freiheit des Christenmenschen with its ideas concerning the rights of the Christian man, it will be remembered, has been the mainspring of the modern social order. Dynamic power in the extreme, this fountain of a new "law and order" springing from the soil of a static universe, was first discovered by Luther, the Saxon. If it is a power in the land in Wisconsin and elsewhere, it is also due to the Saxons and their Missouri Lutheran church. It is due to the degree in which their group-technique socialized it-to the groupsocialism of their Christianity. It is also due to their consistent and scholastic rationalism with which they would combat a rationalism of another stripe. The terms upon which, the degree to which the group has here, in the Middle West, socialized this, its most important joint liability, will bear further analysis. How they condition the response of this type to specific situations will be shown at a later date. For the present it only remains to be seen how the socialism of the group has related its own categories of Freiheit and

23

23

See Walther's attitude in border cases, Briefe, I, 188, 192.

'Minnesota District Synod (1909), p. 16.

Recht, of may and must. For the terms of obedience without will be conditioned by those within.

Where the law has spoken, it must be obeyed. "If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner," he will not go long unchallenged in this parish of the American City of God; for with such a one they "do not eat." He is treated according to the scriptural precedents of Matthew, chapter 18; I Cor. 5:1-13. In the extreme case, he is not "put out," but, like the outlaw in Germanic law, he "puts himself out." The ban is here only a declaratory act, and as such the Christian duty of the whole group. Its effects are far-reaching, for as the Gemeinde, the commonalty has taken unto itself the powers of the keys of the Holy Catholic church and institution of grace-he is indeed a graceless fellow who is in the ban. "One banned in Wisconsin is also banned in Australia"; citizenship, wherever a Lutheran may go, is subject to challenge in this City of God. With the brotherly use of the apostolic technique of guidance and correction, the socius in this group-life learns both group-law and procedure; in terms of both the ego becomes socialized. What is more, the law, once it is granted that it must be obeyed, by the very case logic of events becomes applicable to the process of life in America. That may be hard on life, but it conserves a valuable meaning of law; namely, that unless it is enforced, it has ceased to be law, and if it is law, it must be obeyed. It also conserves a certain legal-mindedness in this sense, namely, that, imagining that it must be enforced, this type will go to considerable trouble trying to have the conscience of the law.25 In order to obey "for conscience's sake," he will trouble his conscience about it. In New York and St. Louis, for instance, after the Civil War, they began to worry over the meaning of "usury," and reprinted the treatise of Martin Chemnitz on that ancient subject as

24

24 See Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1904), p. 65: "Ein von einer christlichen Ortsgemeinde verhängter Bann ist auch von allen anderen christlichen Gemeinden zu respectieren." On Zucht und Ordnung, see Lutheraner, III, 128; also Iowa District Synod (1894), Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1898), and Michigan District Synod (1924).

26 The domestication to the life of this religious group entails an excellent civic education, in this sense at least, that all social relationships are endowed with sanctions and thoroughly rationalized.

relevant in a new era of capitalism. It has considerable influence on the economic conscience of the group, as will be shown. Their group- and case-logic in this connection is illustrated by the fact that one member who excused his rate of interest "because he thought it was right" was not put out, while another one who pleaded that "the others did it" was banned.

It is because they do not judge "them that are without" but only "them that are within" that the social categories of inclusion and exclusion must also work overtime. Sooner than lose the sense for the difference between the without and the within, they lose everything else. Their law may be arrested in its development, it may be inadequate for the problems of a socius at large; their urban life within may become stunted. But for the cognition of differences between the within and the without, the whole group becomes a "social sensorium.""26

That the social categories of inclusion and exclusion must work in terms of law is very important. Because they do not propose to "go to law before the unjust," they do not propose to have them go to law with them. A conflict of law is thus bound to arise between the within and the without over what the Lutherans have rationalized under the category of Adiaphora." For it is precisely in these matters that the Christianity of "the others" is especially expansive especially prone to "make Sin what God made not Sin." Because the group shares the power of legislation over the Adiaphora with other social agencies, such as the state, the conflict with "the others" over prohibition and Sunday closing laws and labor legislation, and child labor laws and even social insur'See Illinois District Synod (1877); Lutheraner, XXXVII, 106; LX, 6; LXIII, 35; LXIV, 414; Michigan District Synod (1898), pp. 51-52; South Dakota District Synod (1910); Lehre und Wehre, LIV, 559.

28

"See Lutheran Quarterly, VIII, 8-29, 165–84; also Wisconsin District Synod (1896), pp. 21-62; Kirche und Staat, pp. 743-44 ("a political pastor is an Unding"); Nebrasca Syn. (1912); Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1895); and for limitation of freedom, see I Cor. 6:12. For attitudes on gambling, taking chances, speculative enterprise, etc., see Osterliche Dist. Syn. (1874), p. 55; for attitudes on drink (Saufteufel), see Luther, Erl. Ausg., XXXIX, 353; for attitudes on dancing, the theater, the movies, etc., see Wisconsin District Synod (1900), p. 1, also Walther, Tanz und Theater, and especially, for a complete survey, Nebrasca Syn. (1912), pp. 62 ff., also Lehre und Wehre, LVIII, 130, Lutheraner, XLVII, 110 ff., and Minnesota-Dakota District Synod (1894), p. 37.

ance, becomes a conflict between the group and the supergroup over a principle of limitations. It presents itself as a problem of federal relations, as war between the "states" in the Augustinian sense. But because their own divinely ordained federal constitution is involved: the static arrangement between the three estates, the stewardship of which is the eminent domain of the group, that group fights here in self-defense. In defense of its own inherent interest, its very constitutive principle, according to the rational medium of the group, it interposes itself into the social kineticsinjects itself into the social process as a factor of inhibition. By the irony of fate, it rises in defense of the Jeffersonian state, the limited state, the "pagan state," the thing that was begotten in the iniquity of rationalism. It is averse to the growth of the police power of the state, because it is jealous of its own police power, which it holds by divine right. In that divine right and its organ, the local community, the Jeffersonian state once more finds an ex ossibus ultor. Which champion, if we only trace the genetics of that limited state back to the Christian man, is not to be despised. It is not to be despised unless we are sure whither it is going unless we have unlimited confidence in the "natural bent" and fear nothing from the modern state which knows no limitations.

Because it has learned to think in terms of limitations it leaves the police power of that state severely alone. The Lutheran is the exceptional American who does not always think that "There ought to be a law"-precisely because he knows that there is a law. The Lutheran ministry of this group at least is distinguished in America by its self-restraint in the presence of political temptation; it does not mix in ein fremdes Amt, and a political pastor is here considered ein Unding, a contradiction in terms. It is decidedly bad form, and at once resented by the congregation, unless the inherent interest of the group is at stake.

Its principle of limitation becomes one of self-limitation in the case of Adiaphora. Where it is a case which logic under its law can construe a case of sin, they will not eat. Nor will they give a Christian funeral to a drunkard or one living in open sin. But in border cases, the group can only educate, domesticate to its standard, to Sittlichkeit, by brotherly persuasion; there must be no coer