lly, that the Tenneesee [tr. note: sic]
confessors were avoided, ignored, despised, hated, maligned, and
ostracized by their opponents. Tennessee was decried and stigmatized as
the "Quarreling Conference" ("Streitkonferenz"). The "Henkelites," it
was said, had been convicted of error at the "Quarreling Synod"; there
they had not been able to prove their doctrine; they were false
Lutherans; some of them had been excluded from Synod, therefore they had
no authority to officiate as ministers; their synod was not a lawful
synod; its transactions were invalid, etc. (1820, 22.30; 1824, App. 3;
1827, 43 f.) All endeavors on the part of the Tennessee Synod to bring
about an understanding and a unification in the truth were spurned by
the other synods "with silent contempt," says David Henkel. (1827, 6.
25.) In the Maryland Synod the prediction was heard: "This Tennessee
Synod will go to pieces finally." The Address of the General Synod of
1823 states: "Our Church, which was originally embraced in two
independent synods [Ministeriums of Pennsylvania and New York], has
spread over so extensive a portion of the United States that at present
we have _five_ synods [North Carolina, Ohio, Maryland and Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and New York Synods], and shall shortly have several
more." (3. 9. 14.) The General Synod, then, refused to recognize
Tennessee as a Lutheran synod in America. In a letter, dated January 23,
1826, and addressed to Solomon Henkel, H. Muhlenberg remarked that the
Tennessee Synod "had as yet not been recognized as a synod by the other
Lutheran synods." In 1839 the General Synod censured both the Franckean
and Tennessee Synods as the two extremes "causing disturbances and
divisions in our churches" and standing in the way of a union of the
Lutheran Church in America--a resolution which was rescinded in 1864.
Thus universal contempt and proscription was the reward which Tennessee
received for her endeavors to lead the Lutheran Church out of the mire
of sectarian aberrations back to Luther and the Lutheran Symbols. Rev.
Brohm, after his visit with the Tennessee Synod, wrote in the
_Lutheraner_ of June 5, 1855: "In order to heal, if in any way possible,
the deplorable breach, the Tennessee Synod, in the course of seven
years, made repeated attempts to persuade her opponents [in the North
Carolina Synod] to discuss the mooted doctrines, offering them
conditions most just and most acceptable . . . . But with exasperating
in