Walther's Dance & Theater, more pious than Pietists: improved translation (A BTL Book)

      Although I have previously presented a translation of Walther's book 8 years ago on worldly Dance and Theater, yet recent improvements in the tools of text extraction and translation have caused me to once again publish this book in a much enhanced translation using the DeepL Translator, with the aid of

a translation made in a series of articles in the Lutheran Witness from 1887 to 1888.  

      There are some LCMS pastors who publicly ridicule "Pietism", not on doctrinal matters, but for being too strict in piety.  But Walther shows the error of these LCMS pastors, that the Pietist Lutherans were not wrong in warning against the ways of the world.  On page 63 of the German text, Walther tells members of his congregation who may be thinking like these LCMS pastors:

“We know well that the pious so-called Pietists rejected and condemned the theater”; but, one thinks, perhaps this was more Pietistic than soberly Lutheran. — You, therefore, who think you stand in a very precarious prejudice, are the first that I have to meet with. For what good would all my talk be if you thought that this was going too far?

No! The Pietists who fought against the modern Dance and the Theater were not wrong, and in fact they are outdone in their warnings by… C. F. W. Walther!  Walther taught a higher piety than the Pietists! — This subject is very personal for me, for I vividly remember my LCMS youth group having a dance involving the girls and boys embracing while dancing.  I recall even today how confusing for my faith this was — how could this happen in our church group??  And indeed, my faith began to falter even then. — Some quotes from this book:

Dance:

page 9: "Even in our congregation, especially in our inexperienced youth, a worldly Christianity wants to penetrate with power"

15: "already in the time of Christ people began to dance mixed.… Strabo (d. 25 A.D.) wrote that he had heard to his greatest astonishment that among a people in Lusitania …both sexes danced together."

16: "…they say: 'What do you want, you "Missourians"? You go even further than Luther; you are even stricter than Luther, because he defends the wedding dance!'"

20: "Oh, dear brothers and sisters, stop it!… Luther did not want to know anything about the dance."

37: "Then Spitta says to her, 'Go on, take only Jesus with you.'… Then she says, 'I asked the Lord Jesus to go with me, but he would not, so I had to turn back.'"

Theater:

63: "'We know well that the pious so-called Pietists rejected and condemned the theater'; but, one thinks, perhaps this was more Pietistic than soberly Lutheran. — You, therefore, who think you stand in a very precarious prejudice, are those I have first to meet. For what good would all my talk be if you thought that this was going too far?"

98-99: 1778 American Congress: "Resolved, … to take care of the suppression of theatrical entertainments… because true religion and good morals are the foundations of public liberty."

106: Goethe: the Theater "only devoted to the higher sensuality."

People quoted or mentioned:

Ancient pagan philosophers: Solon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Strabo

Reformation, Lutheran theologians: Dannhauer, Scriver, Gerhard, Hutter, Lassenius

Church fathers: Augustine, Tertullian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Chrysostom

German philosophers: Goethe, Lessing;  — England's playwright, poet: Shakespeare

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Below is a Google Docs viewer where the navigation hyperlinks are active:

The DOCX file may be downloaded  >>  HERE  <<.

Below is a PDF viewer where the internal navigation links do not work, but the external links do:

For the original German text DOCX, download >> HERE <<.

      There was a major article in Der Lutheraner, vol. 10 (1853), p. 42-44 [EN], [DE, text] on Luther's position on Dancing by a writer "K." and I hope to present a polished translation of it in the future. — Also a book review by Prof. Guenther was published in Der Lutheraner, vol. 41 (1885), p. 128 [EN], [DE]. Old Missouri was unified in teaching against the modern Dance and the Theater.