This is the fourth in a series of correspondence between Professor Kurt Marquart and Pastor Jack Cascione on the question of whether or not the LCMS practices Voter Supremacy in its congregations.

We thank Professor Marquart for another reply. As the reader examines his letter, I for one cannot find any support for Walther's Voter Supremacy.

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The Editor
Christian News
3277 Boeuf Lutheran Road
New Haven MO 63068-2213

Sir,

Thank you for sending me Pastor Cascione's response to my letter of the 22nd. I really wish he would have taken the time to digest the points made before rushing into print. He would then have noticed a number of things.

First, I have never disagreed that polity is important. It is very important. And I have always defended our traditional polity. I would ask Pastor Cascione to re-read the last paragraph of my letter, to which he is supposed to be responding. It is the political ideology lately and falsely invented to support our polity that I oppose!

Second, Pastor Cascione writes; "Once again Marquart does not tell us what spiritual gifts the pastor receives at his ordination through the laying on of hands, etc." My whole point was to correct a one-sided misrepresentation of Walther, so I quoted Walther. It was not I who was making the claims. And did not Pastor Cascione noticed that Walther, and for good measure I too, made it quite clear that the gifts are not attributed to the "laying on of hands"? Or is this chronic representation simply part of the desperate urge to present one's opponents as elitists who despise ordinary people? That kind of playing to the galleries is cheap and ugly.

Third, the issue about "Synod as Church" is just that-not about who governs what. The whole point has been evaded with irrelevant rhetoric.

Fourth, I am well aware of the passages in the Treatise of the Power and Primacy of the Pope, and vigorously assert them. And I have already explained the "final and highest the court."

Fifth, it is a total fiction that "Marquart makes adiaphora the major work of the Voters' Assembly." Please consult the text.

Sixth, I was citing Walther and Pieper on congregational meetings, not making up my own story. So why does not Pr. Cascione attack them, since he doesn't like their arguments?

I trust that your readers will know the difference between serious argument and erratic sloganeering. The Peace of Easter overcome the strife of tongues!

Yours faithfully,

K. 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.

May 10, 2000

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