Dau - The Logical and Historical Inaccuracies of the Hon. Bourke Cockran

Ken McGuire

What does it mean to be a Christian in our Republican system of government?  This has been a topic of discussion in many elections.  Can a Christian vote for Jefferson even with his questioning of Christianity?  Can we use a mail system that transports mail on the Sabbath?  What about a critique of the "Peculiar Institution" of Slavery?  Recently we asked if we could vote for a Mormon...

In 1908 Teddy Roosevelt stepped down (for a bit...) and picked Taft as a good replacement..  The thing is that Taft was Unitarian, and so some Christians asked if we could vote for him.  The White House responded that we should have no religious test for office - even for Catholics.

A group of New York Lutheran Pastors wrote an open letter questioning if this was wise if the candidate's religious views were against the principles of our Republic, challenging in particular if Catholics would be appropriate for the highest office in the land - referencing the medieval bull Unam Sanctam, as well as the 19th century Syllabus of Errors and some recent encyclicals which appeared to condemn a secular state like ours.

This reading of the Catholic view was challenged by a Catholic US Representative Bourke Cockran, and his response was distributed in the Catholic press.  The thing is that Cockran did not reply exactly to the points of the Lutheran Pastors, and so Dau - the standard English voice of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the time - wrote this reply.

I release this book with more than a bit of hesitation.  I know that Rome has clarified many things since then, and so many of Dau's complaints are no longer relevant.  With hindsight, I know that this clarification had already started in figures like Cardinal Newman as well as Leo XIII and Pius X.  But Dau saw more the papacy's pained relationship with the new Italian state, and some polemic against both German and France, and not the nuances that were starting to show up. And this was definitely written before Vatican 2's statement of Religious Liberty...

But it is still a statement by us Lutherans that the God has given the secular world the ability to take care of itself - a view that seems to be needed when we are all too often politically polarized, and we think we need to bring God in to things on our side for us - something I see both Liberals and Conservatives do.

SDG

Ken McGuire