- Substitution of the “filter” system in the election of provincial and general synod members for that of the community electorate.
- Strengthening of the lay element in all synods; and
- Abolition of the equality of small village communities with large town communities
the first was by far the most important and serious in its consequences, but the other two bore fruit through the decree that two-thirds of the members of the district and provincial synods should be laymen, and the other one-third should be freely elected to the district synod from the populous town communities, for the provincial synods from the larger district synods. Also in reference to the rights belonging to the several grades of synods, considerable modifications were made, whereby the privileges of communities were variously increased (e.g. to them was given the right of refusing to introduce the catechisms and hymn-books sanctioned by the provincial synods), while those of the district and provincial synods were lessened in favour of the general synod, and those of the latter again in favour of the high church council and the minister of public worship. After nearly four weeks’ discussion the bill without any serious amendments was passed by the assembly, and on January 20th, 1876, received the royal assent and became an ecclesiastical law. But in order to give it also the rank of a law of the state, a decision of the States’ Parliament on the relation of church and state was necessary. The parliament had already in 1874, when the original congregational and synodal constitution was submitted to it, in order to advance the movement, approved only the congregational constitution with provisional refusal of everything going beyond that. In May, 1876, the bill already raised by the king into an ecclesiastical law, passed both houses of parliament, and had here also some amendments introduced with the effect of increasing and strengthening the prerogative of the state. The main points in the law as then passed are these: The general synod, whose members undertake to fulfil their duties agreeably to the word of God and the ordinances of the evangelical national church, has the task of maintaining and advancing the state church on the basis of the evangelical confession. The laws of the state church must receive its assent, but any measure agreed upon by it cannot be laid before the king for his sanction without the approval of the minister of public worship. It meets every sixth year; in the interval it, as well as the provincial synods, is represented by a synodal committee chosen from its members. The head of the church government is the Supreme Church Council, whose president countersigns the ecclesiastical laws approved by the king. The right of appointing to this office lies with the minister of public worship; in the nomination of other members the president makes proposals with consent of the minister. Taxation of the general synod for parliamentary purposes needs the assent of the minister of state, and must, if it exceeds four per cent. of the class and income tax, be agreed to by the Lower House, which also annually has to determine the expenditure on ecclesiastical administration.
§ 193.6. When preparations were being made for the extraordinary general synod, the king had repeatedly given vigorous expression to his positive religious standpoint, and from the proposed lists of members for that synod submitted by the minister of public worship all names belonging to the Protestantenverein were struck out. Still more decidedly in 1877 did he show his disapproval in the Rhode-Hossbach troubles (§ [180, 4]), by declaring his firm belief in the divinity of Christ, and when the then president of the Brandenburg consistory, Hegel, tendered his resignation, owing to differences with the liberal president of the Supreme Church Council, Hermann, the king refused to accept it, because he could not then spare any such men as held by the apostolic faith. In May, 1878, Hermann was at last, after repeated solicitations, allowed to retire, Dr. Hermes, member of the Supreme Church Council, was nominated his successor, and the positive tendency of the Supreme Church Council was strengthened by the admission of the court preachers, Kögel and Baur. His proposals again disagreeing with the royal nominations for the provincial synod and for the First Ordinary General Synod of autumn, 1879, led the minister of public worship, Dr. Falk, at last, after repeated solicitation, to accept his resignation. It was granted him in July, 1879, and the chief president of the province of Silesia, Von Puttkamer, a more decided adherent of the positive union party, was named as his successor; but in June, 1881, he was made minister of the interior, and the undersecretary of the department of public worship, Von Gossler, was made minister. The general synod, October 10th till November 3rd, consisted of fifty-two confessionalists, seventy-six positive-unionists, fifty-six of the middle party or evangelical unionist, and nine from the ranks of the left, the Protestantenverein; three confessionalists, twelve positive-unionists, and fifteen of the middle party were nominated by the king. The measures proposed by the Supreme Church Council:
- A marriage service without reference to the preceding civil marriage, with two marriage formulæ, the first a joint promise, the second a benediction;
- A disciplinary law against despisers of baptism and marriage, which threatened such with the loss of all ecclesiastical electoral rights, and eventually with exclusion from the Lord’s supper and sponsor rights; and
- A law dealing with Emeriti,
were adopted by the synod and then approved by the king. On the other hand a series of independent proposals conceived in the interests of the high-church party remained in suspense.The last effected elections for the general synod committee resulted in the appointment of three positive-unionist members, including the president, two confessionalists, and two of the middle party.[549]
§ 193.7. The Evangelical Church in the Annexed Provinces.—In 1866 the provinces of Hanover, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein were incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. In these political particularism, combined with confessional Lutheranism, suspicion of every organized system of church government as intended to introduce Prussian unionism, even to the extreme of open rebellion, led to violent conflicts. The king, indeed, personally gave assurance in Cassel, Hanover and Kiel that the position of the church confession should in no way be endangered. “He will indeed support the union where it already existed as a sacred legacy to him from his forefathers; he also hopes that it may always make further progress as a witness to the grand unity of the evangelical church; but compulsion is to be applied to no man.” The consistories of these provinces were still to continue independent of the Supreme Church Council. But the ministerial order for the restoration of representative synodal constitution increasingly prevailed, although the wide-spread suspicion and individual protests against the system of church government, such as the temporary prohibition of the Marburg consistory of the mission festival, as avowedly used for agitation against the intended synodal constitution, helped to intensify the bitterness of feeling. But on the other hand many preachers by their unbecoming pulpit harangues, and their refusal to take the oath of allegiance or service, to pray in church for their new sovereign, and to observe the general holiday appointed to be held in 1869 on November 10th (Luther’s birthday), etc., compelled the ecclesiastical authorities to impose fines, suspension, penal transportation, and deposition. In the Lutheran Schleswig-Holstein a new congregational constitution was introduced in 1869 by the minister Von Mühler, as the basis of a future synodal constitution, which was adopted by the Vorsynode of Rendsburg in 1871, preserving the confessional status laid down, without discussion. In 1878 an advance was made by the institution of district or provostship synods, and in February, 1880, the first General Synod was held at Rendsburg. As in Old Prussia so also here the conservative movement proved victorious. The laity obtained majorities in all synods, and the supremacy of the state was secured by the subordination of the church government under the minister of public worship.
§ 193.8. In Hanover, where especially Lichtenberg, president of the upper consistory, and Uhlhorn, member of the upper consistory (since 1878 abbot of Loccum), although many Lutheran extremists long remained dissatisfied, temperately and worthily maintained the independence and privileges of the Lutheran church, the first national synod could be convened and could bring to a generally peaceful conclusion the question of the constitution only in the end of 1869, after the preliminary labour of the national synod committee. In 1882 the Reformed communities of 120,000 souls, hitherto subject to Lutheran consistories, obtained an independent congregational and synodal constitution. Against the new marriage ordinance enacted in consequence of the civil marriage law (§ [197, 5]), Theod. Harms (brother, and from 1865 successor of L. Harms, § [184, 1]), pastor and director of Hermannsburg missionary seminary, rebelled from the conviction that civil marriage did not deserve to be recognised as marriage. He was first suspended, then in 1877 deposed from office, and with the most of his congregation retired and founded a separate Lutheran community, to which subsequently fifteen other small congregations of 4,000 souls were attached. As teacher and pupils of the seminary made it a zealous propaganda for the secession, the missionary journals and missionary festivals were misused for the same purpose, and as Harms answered the questions of the consistory in reference thereto, partly by denying, partly by excusing, that court, in December, 1878, forbad the missionary collections hitherto made throughout the churches at Epiphany for Hermannsburg, and so completely broke off the connection between the state church and the institution which had hitherto been regarded as “its pride and its preserving salt.” A reaction has since set in in favour of the seminary and its friends on the assurance that the interests of the separation would not be furthered by the seminary, and that several other objectionable features, e.g. the frequent employment in the mission service of artisans without theological training, the sending of them out in too great numbers without sufficient endowment and salary, so that missionaries were obliged to engage in trade speculations, should be removed as far as possible; but since the seminary life was always still carried on upon the basis of ecclesiastical secession, it could lead to no permanent reconciliation with the state church. Harms died in 1885. His son Egmont was chosen his successor, and as the consistory refused ordination, he accepted consecration at the hands of five members of the Immanuel Synod at Magdeburg.
§ 193.9. In Hesse the ministry of Von Mühler sought to bring about a combination of the three consistories of Hanau, Cassel, and Marburg, as a necessary vehicle for the introduction of a new synodal constitution. In the province itself an agitation was persistently carried on for and against the constitutional scheme submitted by the ministers, which wholly ignored the old church order (§ [127, 2]), which, though in the beginning of the seventeenth century through the ecclesiastical disturbances of the time (§ [154, 1]), it had passed out of use, had never been abrogated and so was still legally valid. A Vorsynode convened in 1870 approved of it in all essential points, but conventions of superintendents, pastoral conferences and lay addresses protested, and the Prussian parliament, for which it was not yet liberal enough, refused the necessary supplies. As these after Von Mühler’s overthrow were granted, his successor, Dr. Falk, immediately proceeded in 1873 to set up in Cassel the court that had been objected to so long. It was constituted after the pattern of the Supreme Church Council, of Lutheran, Reformed, and United members with Itio in partes on specifically confessional questions. The clergy of Upper Hesse comforted themselves with saying that the new courts in which the confessions were combined, if not better, were at least no worse than the earlier consistories in which the confessions were confounded; and they felt obliged to yield obedience to them, so long as they did not demand anything contradictory the Lutheran confession. On the other hand, many of the clergy of Lower Hesse saw in the advance from a merely eventual to an actual blending of the confessional status in church government an intolerable deterioration. And so forty-five clergyman of Lower and one of Upper Hesse laid before the king a protest against the innovation as destructive of the confessional rights of the Hessian church contrary to the will of the supreme majesty of Jesus Christ. They were dismissed with sharp rebuke, and, with the exception of four who submitted, were deposed from office for obstinate refusal to obey. There were about sixteen congregations which to a greater or less extent kept aloof from the new pastors appointed by the consistories, and without breaking away from the state church wished to remain true to the old pastor “appointed by Jesus Christ himself.”—In autumn, 1884, the movement on behalf of the restoration of a presbyterial and synodal constitution of the Hessian evangelical church, which had been delayed for fourteen years, was resumed. A sketch of a constitution, which placed it under three general superintendents (Lutheran, Reformed, United) and thirteen superintendents, and, for the fair co-operation of the lay element in the administration of church affairs (the confession status, however, being beyond discussion), provided suitable organs in the shape of presbyteries and synods, with a predominance of the lay element, was submitted to a Vorsynode that met on November 12th, consisting of two divisions, like a Lower and Upper House, sitting together. The first division, as representative of the then existing church order, embraced, in accordance with the practice of the old Hessian synods, all the members of the consistory, i.e. the nine superintendents and thirteen pastors elected by the clergy; the second, consisting at least of as many lay as clerical members, was chosen by the free election of the congregation. The royal assent was given to the decrees of the Vorsynode in the end of December, 1885, and the confessional status was thereby expressly guaranteed.
§ 194. The North German smaller States.
In most of the smaller North German states, owing to the very slight representation of the Reformed church, which was considerable only in Bremen, Lippe-Detmold, and a part of Hesse and East Friesland, the union met with little favour. Yet only in a few of those provinces did a sharply marked confessional Lutheranism gain wide and general acceptance. This was so especially and most decidedly in Mecklenburg, but also in Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. On the other hand, since the close of 1860, in almost all those smaller states a determined demand was made for a representative synodal constitution, securing the due co-operation of the lay element.—The Catholic church was strongest in Hanover, and next come some parts of Hesse, which had been added to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine (§ [196, 1]), but in the other North German smaller states it was only represented here and there.