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