verybody has a right to join a lodge as long as he gives
the first place in his heart to the Church. (L. u. W. 1902, 115.) The
_Observer_, March 14, 1902, reported with satisfaction that the
prominent Lutheran Mr. Dewey had become Grand Master of the Freemasons
in Kansas, and appointed his pastor, the Rev. Fuller Bergstresser, Grand
Chaplain of the lodge. (_L. u. W._ 1902, 115.) Lodge-membership, said
the _Observer_ of January 17, 1913, is a non-essential, permitted by the
Augsburg Confession. Reviewing a sermon of Rev. Bowers in which he
defended and recommended the lodges, the _Lutheran Observer_, in 1909,
remarked: "It is a fair and unprejudiced presentation." (_L. u. W._
1909, 227.) In the same year a committee of the General Synod declared
with respect to a resolution of the Wartburg and Nebraska synods,
forbidding their ministers to hold membership in lodges: "The General
Synod as a body has never taken any action, so far as we know, upon the
so-called lodge-question. We deem its position sound and wise, and
especially in view of the fact that the Lutheran bodies in this country
which have indulged in such legislation have by no means escaped
trouble.... We deem it their [Wartburg and Nebraska synods'] synodical
right so to judge and affirm so long as they do not ask other synods of
this body to accept their judgment and affirm their action.... A synod
has a right to voluntarily restrict itself if it so chooses, and impose
upon itself such limitations as it may elect." (_Proceedings_ 1909, 126
f.) Also with respect to this attitude of the General Synod toward the
lodges the Atchison Amendments brought about no marked change whatever.
After as well as before 1913 prominent lodge-men, without protest, were
elected to, or continued to hold, some of the most important offices of
Synod. In 1917 Dr. George Tressler, a 32d degree Scotch Rite Mason and a
Knight Templar, was chosen president of the General Synod. Prof. C.G.
Heckert, president of the Theological Seminary at Springfield, 0., is a
Freemason. Mr. J.L. Zimmerman, president of the Lutheran Brotherhood of
the General Synod, who took a leading part in the Lutheran Merger
movement, also is, and was publicly declared to be, a Mason. Nor did the
practise cease of arranging for special lodge-services and
entertainments of lodges. September 17, 1918, the Masonic Lodge of Camp
Hill, N.J., held its anniversary dinner at the General Synod church, the
women of the church ser