“THE ONE CONSERVATIVE LUTHERAN BODY”
The future work of the General Council will devolve more and more upon the second generation, and by them and by all Lutherans in this land, two facts should not be forgotten:The first is this, that the General Council is the one conservative Lutheran body in this country, accepting unreservedly both the Confessions and the history of the Church. As over against any radicalism, which would cut away the Confessional fullness of our Lutheran Church, or which would make a syncretistic combination between parts of our heritage and other doctrinal elements in America which are not our own, the General Council stands firmly for the complete and concordant sum of Lutheran truth. With equal firmness does it accept and build upon the historical past, both in Europe and in this country, and avoid that other radicalism which, instead of purging the hay, straw and stubble from the old foundations, would begin, without just recognition of the good that is in the past, to erect, by means of an exclusive ecclesiastical organization, a new Lutheranism, without regard to any previous or contemporary work of Providence in the land...The attitude of Luther toward the Catholic Church in the Sixteenth Century is the attitude of the General Council toward all forms of Lutheranism today. It would conserve the past and upbuild the future on the basis of a sound faith. Its depth is the depth of salvation which is in Jesus Christ. Its length is the length of history, and its breadth is the breadth of our own land and our own time.”
From George W. Sandt, Theodore Emanuel Schmauk
A Biographical Sketch, Chapter 12.
