Marquart Says Kieschnick Keeps Misapplying CTCR Statement
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

In his most recent mailing to the Synod, July 9, 2002, President Kieschnick continues to claim that the Convention's adoption of the CTCR statement, "The Lutheran Understanding of Church Fellowship," gives him the right to overrule Vice President Wally Schulz's decision to suspend Atlantic District President David Benke.

Kieschnick also claims the approval of this document in resolution 3-07A at the 2001 Convention gives him the right to take action against Schulz according to LCMS Constitution, Article XI.B. 4."The President shall see to it that the resolutions of the Synod are carried out" and Bylaw 3.101, B, 5. that directs the president to "call up for review any action by an individual officer ...which, in his view, may be in violation of the Constitution, Bylaws and resolutions of the Synod ...."

The following is the quotation from "The Lutheran Understanding of Church Fellowship" to which President Kieschnick refers:

B. Cases Of Discretion . . .
"Pastors, teachers, and other officially recognized church workers are often asked to participate in activities outside of their own and other LCMS congregations. Some of these are civic events. Offering prayers, speaking, and reading Scripture at events sponsored by governments, public schools and volunteer organizations would be a problem if the organization in charge restricted a Christian witness. For instance, if an invitation requires a pastor to pray to God without mentioning Jesus, he cannot in good conscience accept. Without such a restriction, a Lutheran pastor may for valid and good reason participate in civic affairs such as an inauguration, graduation or a right-to-life activity. These occasions may provide opportunity to witness to the Gospel. Pastors may have honest differences of opinion about whether or to what extent it is appropriate or helpful to participate in these or similar civic events. In these cases charity must prevail."

On this particular point, Professor Kurt E. Marquart wrote as follows to President Kieschnick on Monday, February 25, 2002, a point which Kieschnick continue to ignore:

Dear Brother President:

Thank you for your message of 13 February 2002. In view of the importance of the matter I believe that I owe you a response, to be shared also with those to whom your communication was sent.

In the first place, I agree with you that as President of the Synod you have and retain the right to 'advise, admonish, and reprove'. You have this by human right according to the Constitution, and by divine right as a Christian and especially as a minister of the Gospel, responding to a public challenge to the truth of the Gospel.

Secondly, I thank you for recognizing that 'there are those, even in our midst, who defend participation in 'interfaith services' because they believe that we are all praying to the same God.' I therefore expect that you will use all the powers of your office to advise, admonish, and reprove such, in the hope that they will renounce this apostasy and return to the evangelical truth, or else see to it that they are excluded from the confessional fellowship of our Synod.

Finally, I deeply deplore the fact that instead of applying the true balm of Gilead to our Synodical wounds, as is your solemn duty, you in fact deepen the confusion by continuing to misapply a brief CTCR reference to 'civic events' as though that was ever meant to justify crass syncretism like that of the Yankee Stadium affair. To make a mere 'civic event' out of what the whole world knows to have been an 'inter-faith service,' consisting largely of pagan readings, 'meditations,' and prayers, and framed within Roman Catholic and Jewish 'invocations' and Greek Orthodox and Hindu 'benedictions,' is to destroy the obvious and honest meanings of the words. President Benke himself bore witness to this truth when he said that 'this field of dreams' had become not a civic event but a 'House of Prayer.'

The Lord rescue our poor Synod from bureaucratic and pragmatic evasions--however well disguised under frothy rhetoric about 'missions'-and restore to us the truth and unity of the purely preached Gospel and Sacraments. It is my earnest prayer that you, Brother President, may yet prove to be not an obstacle but rather our gracious Lord's instrument in the restoration of our lost evangelical unity. To Him and His mercy I commend us all.

Yours in Him,
Kurt Marquart


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

July 15, 2002