INDIFFERENTISM
146. Actual Conditions.—All sectarian churches formally acknowledge the Bible, yet they reject many of its doctrines. So a Lutheran synod may, in a formal and official way, accept the Lutheran symbols, and at the same time ignore or reject its material content. Witness the Lutheran state churches in Europe and the General Synod in America. In a measure, the actual conditions also within the congregations and district synods of the United Synod in the South have always been in conflict with their truly Lutheran basis. False doctrines, especially pertaining to the Puritanic observance of the Sabbath, were held and taught within the Synod. Without a word of criticism, for example, the Lutheran Church Visitor, July 13, 1911, published the following from the Sunday-school Times: "Don't use a public vehicle on Sunday unless you are prayerfully convinced that it would be sinning against God and man not to do so. Is not that a reasonable and safe principle? Is any other principle a safe one? A very limited amount of Sunday travel seems to be necessary. Probably more than ninety-nine one-hundredths of it is unnecessary and therefore wrong. To use a trolley car or train to go to church on Sunday may or may not be right; it is simply a question of God's expressed will for the individual at that particular time. To walk, or to attend another church would sometimes be the solution. To make a mere convenience of Sunday travel, under any circumstances, would seem to be a violation of the spirit of the day. But God will make each case clear to each surrendered seeker after the light of God's will, if the doing of God's will and the avoiding of sin by the widest possible margin are the only impelling motives."
147. Ignoring Intersynodical Differences.—With respect to the doctrines controverted within the Lutheran Church of America the United Synod has always maintained a neutral and indifferentistic attitude. Dr. Horn writes: "It can be said of the doctrinal basis of the Southern Synods that it is the sincere and intelligent confession of the churches. By this I do not mean that the Lutheran churches in the South have pondered all the controversies in which the symbols originated, and to which they gave the answer; nor that they have accepted all the inferences which sincere Lutherans now draw from the Confessions, and even may be justified in urging." (Dist. Doctr., 1893, 183.) Dr. Voigt: "The United Synod has no distinctive doctrines apart from the distinctive doctrines of common confessional Lutheranism." (Dist. Doctr., 1914, 179.) In other words, the United Synod accepts only those doctrines in which all agree who claim to be confessional Lutherans. The Lutheran Church Visitor, March 15, 1917, wrote: "The United Synod has the fundamental doctrines, rests on them, and is satisfied with them. Not, perhaps, the doctrines fundamental to Missouri, but fundamental to Christian faith and life." Ridiculing the doctrines of conversion and election as taught by the Missouri Synod, the Visitor continues: "These doctrines are the simon-pure, unadulterated, unalloyed Lutheran doctrines! Missourianism and Lutheranism are convertible terms!"— Regarding the fact that the United Synod has refused to take a definite stand with respect to the doctrinal differences within the Lutheran Church, the Visitor, March 15, 1917, remarked: "Still, husband and wife may live together in peace and happiness although they do not agree on every point. It may even be understood that some subjects are altogether taboo." This, evidently, is the spirit of indifferentism, inherited from the General Synod, with whom, in accordance with the law of spiritual affinity, the United Synod exchanged fraternal delegates, and is now organically united in the United Lutheran Church in America.
148. Old Spirit of Indifferentism.—To what extent the leaven of indifferentism was active also within the United Synod in the South appears from the following utterances of a layman in the Lutheran Church Visitor: "The spirit that developed this country, and that which has animated the clergy of the Lutheran Church, are antipodal. This unprogressive spirit, together with their aversion to innovations of all kinds, their refusal to deal with present-day problems, their mania for ramming doctrine wholesale down the throats of their communicants, their spirit of aloofness from ministers of other denominations, and their refusal to cooperate with them, has been the chief cause of this lack of progress in our Church. They have, in their strict and even painful adherence to dogma and form, taken the spirit and life out of the Church and its worship. The enthusiasm and warmth of natural religion have given way to a religion of form and ceremony. They have taken the life and beauty out of the Bible, and made it a code of dry and inspired theology. Instead of preaching, they have almost invariably talked theology, and theology alone. Our Church has never been in need of would-be theologians, but we have been and are now sorely in need of pastors and preachers. They have discouraged honest investigation, if that investigation has the least taint of rationalism. In their supreme disgust for innovations they have made our Church as inflexible and unfit for the various conditions of modern life as the customs and practises of the Middle Ages would be out of place now. They have been completely oblivious of the fact that there are necessarily change and progress in theology and religion as well as in everything else. True, there are certain fundamentals that never grow old; equally true is it that there are some non-essentials that change with the varying hours. The non-essential has been made essential, and so strongly insisted upon that it is almost a sacrilege even to insinuate against its authority." The Visitor, March 15, 1917, referring to this publication, remarks: "Well, we admit the excerpt from the article is pretty raw. But the Visitor believes in allowing some freedom even to the religious press…. Unanimity ere long becomes monotony. Varietas sine unitate diversitas. Unitas sine varietate mors."