ection in 1823 was the fear that the
General Synod might prove an obstacle in the way of the contemplated
Lutheran and Reformed union. In the New York Ministerium Socinianism
ruled supreme. Quitman, for twenty-one years its president, permitted
rationalists only in his pulpit, and in 1814, with the consent of his
synod, he published a catechism denying the deity and atonement of
Christ. F. C. Schaeffer, of New York, in a letter to the convention at
Baltimore, 1819, urged the Pennsylvania Synod "to leave nothing undone
that might serve, in a proper way, to bring about a union of the
different Lutheran synods in the United States." But in the same breath
he proceeds: "It is also desirable that another object, of gravest
importance, should be duly considered--a closer union between the
Lutheran and Reformed churches in our States. In this laudable and truly
evangelical cause our brethren in Germany [Prussian Union, 1817] have
set us an excellent example . . . as the Lutherans and Reformed in
Germany are united in one Evangelical Church, and are no longer
separated as different churches, but form one fold, the true Germans in
America will, in this respect, try to imitate the Germans in Germany."
(Spaeth, _C.P.Krauth_, 1, 323.) In North Carolina, where the
rationalistic Catechism of Velthusen was used, conditions were no
better. Shober, of the North Carolina Synod, who served on the committee
appointed for the drafting of the _Planentwurf_, and exerted himself to
the utmost in the interest of the Lutheran union, was a Moravian, who,
though serving Lutheran congregations, harbored Reformed views and
reveled in the prospective dawn of the grand union of all Protestant
denominations, to which, according to his views, the General Synod was
to serve as a stepping-stone. Accordingly, the aim of the General Synod
neither was, nor could be, confessional unity, but, _ad intra_, a mere
external organic union, irrespective of doctrinal differences, and _ad
extra_, a unionistic intercourse with the Reformed and other Protestant
denominations. And throughout its history this has remained the
paramount object of the General Synod. In accordance with this policy
she has made concessions in both directions, as required by expedience
and the circumstances, to doctrinal laxism as well as to Lutheran
confessionalism, the latter especially during the last decades. Union
was always the primary, true unity hardly ever even a secondary
consideratio