Theodore Graebner letter to W.F. Dannenfeldt - March 29, 1919

Transcript

March 29, 1919. Rev. W.F.Dannenfeldt. Buhl, Idaho.R.I. Dear friend and brother.- Your lines of March 25th are at hand. Whether we preach English or German or Norwegian or Swedish depends in every case upon circumstance. If the command to preach the gospel to every creature were to be understood in the sense that every minister must preach the gospel to all persons in the community in the languages which they understand then our ministers have sinned most grievously during the past seventy years by not preaching regularly in the English language wherever the community had as much as five or six people who understood no German. Surely those creatures who understand only English are as much entitled to the gospel as those creatures who understand only German. If conditions are such that we can not serve the English and the German and the Norwegian, swedish, Russian, Spanish, etc., part of the community for all of whom Christ died and who are entitled to the gospel