Luther on Congregational Voting: Attention LC-MS Convention Delegates
By Rev. Jack Cascione

This article is directed primarily to 2001 Convention delegates and LC-MS laity who want to preserve Voter Supremacy in the LC-MS. If you know who your Convention lay delegate is, make sure he receives this article. There is a better than even chance that your pastoral delegate will be opposed to what is written here. There is also a strong possibility that the clergy will attempt to keep the resolution reaffirming Voter Supremacy off the 2001 LC-MS Convention floor as took place in the 2000 Michigan District Convention.

Who is opposed to Voters' Assemblies in the LC-MS?

Reclaim News has received numerous objections from LC-MS pastors that lay people didn't vote in Luther's day and Luther didn't teach it. We don't know how often they voted in Luther's day but Luther certainly taught about congregational voting. Hyper-Euro-Lutheran LC-MS pastors who want to return to pre-Walther, European, Lutheran hierarchy, are spreading the myth that Luther didn't teach congregational voting. They want to convince congregations that Walther invented congregational voting when he came to America, and not Luther.

The 2001 LC-MS Convention is being asked to reaffirm Voter Supremacy as the polity of the LC-MS. The opposition is claiming this is not Lutheran. Neither LC-MS Seminary faculty will support Voter Supremacy as the official polity of the LC-MS. The majority of the faculty and student body at Fort Wayne are intensely opposed to Voter Supremacy.

Even more disastrous is the LC-MS Council of District President's efforts to suppress and nullify the administrative authority of Voters' Assemblies. They are openly promoting contemporary Leadership Training/Church Growth style constitutions that place the administration of the congregation under a board in place of the Voters' Assembly. They are promoting Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI) for this purpose under the pretext of efficiency. Yes, dictatorship is always efficient.

The Executive Director of PLI, Dr. Norbert Oesch, told this writer at the Rockwell meeting, (12/29/00) in the presence of witnesses, that PLI did not teach Walther and that Voter Supremacy or identifying the Voters' Assemblies as the "final tribunal" was "inflammatory language." Yet, these are Walther 's words. "Jesus First" is a strong advocate of PLI and is promoting Texas District President, Gerald Kieschnick, a founder of PLI, for LC-MS President in place of Doctor A. L. Barry.

The goal of reaffirming traditional LC-MS Voters' Assemblies, as the final tribunal in the LC-MS, is to retain the administration and ownership of the congregation and property in the hands of the laity, as intended by the Synod's first president, C. F. W. Walther in 1847. We don't need another nation-wide, top-down, clergy-run denomination in the United States like, the Catholics, Orthodox, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or the ELCA.

Quotations from Luther on congregational "voting," "ballots" and "elections"

Luther may not have identified any particular group as a Voters' Assembly as Walther did, but he certainly taught about voting. The following are quotations about the election of a pastor by the congregation from the American edition of Luther's Works.

"The other way of sending is indeed also one by God, but it is done through the instrumentality of man. . . . Now a new way of sending was instituted, which works through man but is not of man. We were sent according to this method; according to it we ELECT AND SEND others, and we install them in their ministry to preach and to administer the Sacraments. This type of sending is also of God and commanded by God. Even though God resorts to our aid and to human agency, it is He Himself who sends laborers into His vineyard." LW22:482

"Let this passage be your sure foundation, [1Cor.14:31] because it gives such an overwhelming power to the Christian congregations to preach, to permit preaching, and to call. Especially if there is a need, it [this passage] calls everyone with a special call-without a call from men-so that we should have no doubt that the congregation which has the gospel may and SHOULD ELECT AND CALL from among its members someone to teach the word in its place." LW39:311 (The 1985 CTCR document "Women in the Church" contradicts Luther and says 1Cor.14:31ff is speaking about the pastor in the worship service and not the congregation.)

"Neither Titus nor Timothy nor Paul ever instituted a priest without the CONGREGATION'S ELECTION AND CALL." LW39:312

"Moreover, if there were really decent bishops who want to have the gospel and wanted to institute decent preachers, they still could not and should not do so without the will, THE ELECTION, AND CALL OF THE CONGREGATION-except in those cases where need made it necessary so that souls would not perish for lack of the divine word." LW39:312

"Again, we even read in Acts 4 [6:1-6] regarding an even lesser office, that the apostles were not permitted to institute a person as deacon without the knowledge and consent of the congregation. Rather, THE CONGREGATION ELECTED AND CALLED the seven deacons, and the apostles confirmed them." LW39:312

"But the community rights demand that one, or as many as the COMMUNITY CHOOSES, shall be chosen or approved who, in the name of all with these rights, shall perform these functions publicly." LW40:34

"How much more, then, does not a certain community as a whole have both right and command to commit BY COMMON VOTE such an office to one or more, to be exercised in its stead. With the approval of the community these might then delegate the office to others." LW40:36

". . . then it but remains either to let the church perish without the Word or to let those who come together CAST THEIR BALLOTS and elect one or as many as are needed of those who are capable." [2Tim. 2; Acts 18: 24ff; 1Cor.14: 30; Ti.1: 6ff.] LW40: 37