In the left-hand, top corner of the trifold mailing, The Bulletin Board was printed in bold letters. The return address was a post office box in Columbus. Although it was clearly a newsletter, it had been sent first class. I figured that it was some sort of advertisement and lazily tore the seal to glance at the contents before throwing it away.
On opening it, I learned that I was looking at the second issue of a four-page document that billed itself, “An Occasional Publication For the Congregations of the Southern Ohio Synod.” I’m a pastor in that synod (a synod is like a district or diocese), a regional grouping of congregations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In my fourteen years of service as a pastor here, I’d never heard of The Bulletin Board and wondered what this was about.
It turns out that someone or some group of someones has a burr in their saddles and so, has decided to publish The Bulletin Board both independently (I have no problem with that) and anonymously. I’m not exactly sure what the motivating burr is, but I can tell that whoever is behind The Bulletin Board is ticked off...really ticked off.
As I say, this was the second edition of the newsletter and it featured a number of letters from readers of the first epistle. Some, in the spirit of The Bulletin Board, I suppose, wrote anonymously. Others wanted their names printed. Most of the anonymous folks complained about various grievances they have with the synod and, by extension, with the ELCA. Most of those who gave their names were upset by the anonymity of The Bulletin Board and challenged its editor(s) to come out into the open.
Frankly, our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is one big dysfunctional family. (Although, when one compares our size to that of other Christian bodies in America like the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, or the United Methodist Church, we’re a small dysfunctional family.) The Bulletin Board is no doubt one more indication of how dysfunctional we are.
Of course, dysfunctionality doesn’t mean we should necessarily be written off as unholy or unchristian. After all, the family from which God built His people Israel, the spiritual ancestors of all Christians, included a wife-swapper (Abraham), a thief (Jacob stole the inheritance from his brother), a drunken incestuous father (Noah), a murderer (Moses), a guy who was both adulterer and murderer and is described as a man after God’s heart (David), and so on. The Bible shows that the only sorts of people God loves are dysfunctional ones...which comes as a huge relief to me. But the ELCA does seem to be in the middle of a major meltdown of mass dysfunctionality.
Our denominational grouping is the result of a January 1, 1989 marriage of three Lutheran bodies (the late Lutheran Church in America, Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, and the American Lutheran Church). I certainly thought that things were going to work out well when we all moved in together. But a clash of different pieties has been more recently followed by a series of disputes revolving around the authority of the Bible in the Church and just exactly what the nature of that authority is.
An early flashpoint of this dispute came over an ecumenical accord with the Episcopal Church-USA which seemed to many Lutherans to subordinate the Bible to the offices of bishops.
Since then, an enormous dispute and great uneasiness has resulted from sexuality studies scheduled to come before the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in 2005. Many fear that the Church will vote to ordain practicing homosexuals, grant church legitimization to homosexual unions, or give individual churches the option to take these steps. Many, including me, would regard any of these steps as clear departures from Scripture. My desire is that as a Church we will welcome all people and invite all to turn from what God calls sin to embrace the life-renewing forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ. But I do not favor labeling what God calls sin as "acceptable."
In our denomination, it has become increasingly uncomfortable for people who adhere to my views on this subject to speak up. We tend to be dismissed as conservatives, a real epithet in our circles. At the very least, we get looks like those made by Cary Grant toward his looney aunts and uncle in Arsenic and Old Lace. (In other circles, on other issues, I get the same looks from people who regard me as a liberal, by the way.) When encountering such reactions, the first impulse of anyone with a half an ounce of brains is to shut up and be pleasant. I do have just a bit more than a half an ounce of brains and so, most of the time, in spite of my big mouth, I shut up and stay pleasant.
So, I can understand the impulse to present one’s views anonymously. There have been times when I’ve been tempted to do just that myself. If it didn’t feel so cowardly, I would do that myself. But even I occasionally ask God to help me ignore my fears and with trepidation, toss in my two cents.
What’s interesting to me though, is that the editors of The Bulletin Board aren’t apparently exercised over the sexuality debate or the deeper underlying issue of the authority of Scripture over the life, faith, and practice of the Church and of Christians.
As far as I can tell, their big beef is with our synodical bishop, Cal Holloway. They don't like him. In our body, the synodical bishop serves a six-year term. Two synod assemblies ago, Bishop Holloway was up for re-election and faced a stiff challenge mounted on behalf of a pastor in Columbus. The opponent’s backers apparently felt that the bishop has been a power-monger and wasteful of synodical monies. The evidence that has been presented publicly though, seems to vindicate him.
Be that as it may, I recoil at anonymous publications, except in the most extreme circumstances. You know, circumstances like those confronting the American colonists in the face of British tyranny in the 1770s. Or those dealt with by underground movements in Nazi-occupied territory during World War Two. While a person may get those Cary Grant-looks during church debates in the ELCA, no agent of the Gestapo is going to make an arrest if we slip into political incorrectness. Anonymity is unnecessary.
But I can't help suspecting another motive for The Bulletin Board's decision to be anonymous. I want to believe that they have positive motives and have simply gone awry. But because they never seem to make a cause or a reason d'etre plain, it appears to me that a person or group of persons only desire to be verbal terrorists. They seem to want to fire volleys of sarcasm and unkindness from the dark and slink away, tearing at others' reputations without being accountable for their actions.
None of us is perfect, of course, least of all a sinner like me. But The Bulletin Board seems a clear and unrepentant violation of the Eighth Commandment, where God says, "You shall not bear false witness." Martin Luther, in The Small Catechism, of course, shows the "positive spin" of this directive, saying that it entails putting the most charitable construction on the actions of others.
Anonymity and a smart alecky attitude appear to be the trademarks of this little publication. Neither are the postures of people who genuinely want to create dialog, as The Bulletin Board insists it does. Nor are they the trademarks of Christians who want to resolve an apparent dispute. (Matthew 18:15-20)
You can't dialog with a cipher in the dark. If the editors of The Bulletin Board really want to discuss the issues facing our Church, they should come out into the light and take full responsibility for every word.
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