Don't ask, don't tell. ECLA edition

[Worldslaziestbusker]

I have been asking questions, as is my wont, and some of the answers have been hinting at a certain reticence of congregants and clergy to suss out the strength of one another's faith.
Most recently, I have been in contact with members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. While I have agreed not to publish my correspondent's side of the dialogue, I figure my side of things is fair game and it does give some idea of the shape of the responses I have so far received. Have a read and see if you recognise a pattern in theistic thinking regarding the troubling questions the faithful face regarding the sincerity of co-congregants and the ministers who minister to them.
I can't think how a person might demonstrate that their stated beliefs are genuinely believed, and with the Clergy Project demonstrating that atheists are not rare among the clergy, I am not surprised at this reticence to know the truth, but I do have no sympathy for it.
The first email was sent to a generic address garnered from an ECLA website.

Hello
My name is Matthew McArthur. I am an atheist and I have recently been discussing Lutheran doctrine and worship with a former minister from the ELCA. This person lost their faith at seminary but went on to give sermons for several years. He claims that his atheism was known to his congregation and to his superiors but that no-one had a problem with his not sharing his belief in the salvation he was paid to offer his congregation advice about.
Does this sound reasonable to you? Are his claims of having the full support at all levels valid? It sounds far fetched to me. I come from an Anglican heritage and had faith until my teenage years. Had my vicar been revealed as not sharing the beliefs of the congregants I would have been sorely disappointed, and considered their being paid for services they had provided under false pretences a form of fraud.
I look forward to hearing from someone in your denomination on this matter and will visit some ELCA services to make further enquireies among the congregants themselves.
Kind regards
Matt

The second was addressed directly to the assistant to the presiding bishop, who responded to my email.

Hello Dr XXX
Thank you for your prompt response and its insights into the matter. Is it okay with you if I share them with the audience attending to the matter? This is being discussed at the forum appendix of a podcast called "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe." The thread itself is: http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,42025.180.html
Regarding my use of the label atheist: I consider myself an agnostic atheist, in that if sufficient evidence arises it could sway my belief position regarding the deity in whose favour that evidence falls. Until such time the label atheist has utility as it accurately describes my position regarding belief in deities.
Thanks again for your response.
Regards
Matt


The third was in response to the rebuff I received when I asked for permission to forward the correspondence wholesale.

Hello again, Dr Kunz
Would it be possible for you or someone else in your office to draft a public statement on the matter, please? Information drives such discussions. As my interlocutor has made specific claims about your own church I have long felt implausible, and which your response shows to be at odds with the policies of your church, your input on the matter has considerable value with regard to driving that discussion forward. I dislike fraud at any level, and at a forum in which people claim to have an interest in deciding what is and is not true by vigorous investigation and application of thinking I have been disappointed at how readily people will put up shields to protect their vested interests. I would not have bothered you with my query if a deductive argument would have sufficed.
Regards
Matt


Don't ask, don't tell was a disgraceful gambit in the military and it looks every bit as shoddy in attempts to not rock any boats in religious circles.
Ask and tell. Keep things above board and avoid earning money or other advancement under false pretenses. It shouldn't take a godless atheist with no moral compass to point this out, dammit.

[Sieveboy]

From what I understand, the US military higher ups consider the disposal of DADT to be highly beneficial as the higher ups got rid of a load of political baggage and the lower down the chain types got to stop lying.

[Worldslaziestbusker]

A person who posts at the SGU forum under the name Kwizatz Haderach has attempted to bust my chops every time I’ve criticized Christianity in that space. He formerly only made poorly reasoned arguments as to why Christianity is a force for good in society, but the longer we were engaged on the topic, the more his claims tended toward attempting to speak on the behalf of large numbers of people who aren’t him. Lots of “no true Scotsman” re-definitions of who is and is not part of his club and “the vast majority of moderate Christians believe X” statements came out, none of which came with any supporting evidence.


When pressed for evidence, KH revealed that his insights came from his time spent as a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Pressed further, he revealed that he had questioned the supernatural claims of his faith during his time at the seminary, becoming an atheist. As he continued to study theology and went on to take the pulpit after this change in belief, he claimed to be an atheist Christian, further claiming that this was a perfectly normal and wide spread position in the wider Christian community.
I, and many others, called bullshit on this, pointing most readily to the definitional problem with accepting the Nicene Creed and not accepting the Nicene Creed at the same time. KH remained resolute that he was not oxy-moronic and that his super position was widely recognized among moderate Christians. I called bullshit again and headed off to see if moderate Christians could corroborate his claims.


They didn’t. After six months and around fifty negative responses, the “Bridge Building” moderate Christians at Christian Forums thought that atheist and Christian were mutually exclusive descriptors, many adding that they would pray for the both of us (hooray fuck).

[Worldslaziestbusker]

In the interim, KH and his sidekick Irishjazz started throwing out the names of prominent atheist Christian theologians, but unfortunately for their case, neither Bishop Spong nor the Death of God squad are popular popularisers of an atheist Christian concept. Spong is engaged in a death of a thousand cuts re-hashing of Christianity from the ground up, and most Christians recognize this for the long way round to secularity that it is and want little to do with it. Death of God theology, the idea that God literally died on the cross, leaving us without a deity, suffers from the same burden of evidence problem that a living god religion faces with the added problem that it can’t hope for personal revelations or intercession from the deity that is no longer there. While they claim only they can use the term atheist with validity, I think they are barking mad and refuse to give KH credit for citing them as his backing band.


KH went quiet for about four months after a thread in which he tried to stick it to Brian Dunning went south. Brian Dunning turned up to defend himself and KH’s balls shrank to Planck dimensions before he disappeared, leaving many follow up questions unanswered. On his return I necromanced the threads in which unanswered questions remained hanging in the air like stale farts. Most remain unanswered to dtae, but it turns out that he did receive payment for his services as a clergyman in the ELCA and he further claimed that both his congregations and his superiors knew that he did not share their beliefs regarding the divinity of Jesus and the salvation alleged to be on offer through his crucifixion. Quick as a flash, because I saw the cockerel was doing his vocal warm up exercises, I called bullshit a third time.



I did not know much about the ELCA, but I knew from my days among the cake-or-death lameness of the Anglican fold that even my tepid former congregation would not have tolerated an overt atheist in the pulpit. I wanted to know more and asked for the contact details of his former congregation. He didn’t want to provide this information and I had no leverage to compel him to give it to me, but this did not stop the buffoon who posts as Neon Genesis from trying to call me a stalker. I have been cyberstalked and the first I knew about it was when my stalkers, one of whom has made death threats against me in the past, attempted to use the information they’d gathered about me against me in the lamest blackmail gambit in history. The people involved got the internet equivalent of a big black dog up them, as the information they’d gathered is only blackmail material if you live in a bronze age morality allegedly imposed by a narcissistic mythical being, and the acts of stalking and attempting to blackmail someone, while not explicitly proscribed by the doctrine to which they subscribe, are generally frowned upon in western society and are illegal in many nations. Fucking self righteous theistic douchebags.



But I digress: I was not stalking KH, I was asking him for information up front and in a public space. Stalking is called stalking because of the parallels between stealthy pursuit of an animal and examination of its tracks and spoor and the shadowy pursuit of a person and examination of their bus ticket stubs and bin contents. If I am a stalker, I have a unique, out in the open approach that I doubt will catch on.

[Worldslaziestbusker]

Irishjazz poo-poohed my proposed interaction with the congregation as impossible due to my ornery nature, but his impression of me is based only on our interactions at the SGU forum where I have, for the last year and a half, dealt with sufficient douchery that I am not surprised that I come across to the members there as a particularly blunt and tactless person. I started looking up local ELCA churches. The primary website for the ELCA featured a generic contact email and I posed my question there. Can atheists serve as clergy in the ELCA? The answer came back from one Dr Kuntz. At his request I cannot quote his response directly, but the essence of the message, while not a policy statement, was “No.” Thinking that it might be fairly important, what with the congregations eternal souls allegedly in their care, I asked if a policy statement could be drafted. That was two weeks ago and I still haven’t heard back. I found the presiding bishop’s email and asked him, but he and Dr Kuntz must be working on the policy statement so hard that neither of them have had time to fire me an email. Either that or there is some kind of theological “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy coming in to play in the church hierarchy.


With the official channels run dry, and being on holiday in the mid-west USA, there were plenty of ELCA churches at hand. I attended the Sunday morning service at the King of Kings church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The church itself, built in 2002, is a pleasantly proportioned edifice, thus breaking with the tendency for modern church architecture to act as a playground for all the ideas architects want to play with but don’t usually get afforded a chance to do so unless dealing with a poorly structured committee. I turned up in time to have coffee with some of the congregation, but congruent with Dr Kuntz’ express request, did not ask my questions regarding their expectations regarding the sincerity of their clergy. They seemed nice, earnest people. The ceremony, while different to anything I experienced in the various Anglican churches I formerly attended, seemed familiar enough. The programme featured several confessions of faith and a session of intercessory prayer. Not a lot of room for an atheist to sincerely lead that sort of show, I thought.
I could only stay for half an hour as a family trip to the zoo beckoned, but the congregation seemed to take the articles of their faith seriously. You would have to be sincere to sing that badly, and to put up with others singing that badly, without a sizeable remuneration the coffee, while better than most I’ve had in church, could not match. Note to all: vibrato is a skill best used sparingly. Hitting all the notes cannot be used as an auditory fudge to hide the fact that you can’t find the note everyone else is using.

[Worldslaziestbusker]

I returned a couple of days later to speak to the pastor. I did tell him my position and gave a brief background of my interaction with KH before asking him my question: do the ELCA and its congregations expect the person in the pulpit (no actual pulpit to speak of at the King of Kings) to be sincere in their faith. Short answer came there – “Yes.” Pastor Michael also mentioned that while he could not answer on the behalf of all congregations, the ELCA is a confessional faith and that its clergy swore fidelity to its creeds (Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian) during their ordination ceremony, leaving little or no room for an atheist to receive payment for performing leadership duties without using false pretences.


So, there you have it. Unless further information comes to hand from the congregation and immediate superiors of the man in question, I’m going on record as saying that KH lied through his teeth regarding his acceptance as an atheist preacher, and that by receiving payment for acting as a religious leader when he did not believe the articles of faith explicitly required by that religion he acted in a fraudulent manner.


While finding this stuff out required effort on my part, it was not a lot of effort and at each step far less onerous than dealing with KH himself, who is quite a nasty piece of work, using personal attacks against the people he disagrees with and then trying to pretend to be nice and reasonable while lying to cover his arse against accusations of insincerity or inconsistency. Researching the likelihood that KH’s claims were true was orders of magnitude less onerous than dealing with the alleged skeptics who closed ranks around their friend and used spurious accusations of bullying and stalking in attempts to get me to drop the subject. Fuck them in the ear. If you are willing to put up with people lying about religious belief and practice, why not accept the claims of Meryl Dorey that vaccinations are a conspiracy against our society?


Fuck not asking. If I am vilified for giving KH a hard time it is because the members of the SGU forum have fallen into the well worn ruts of giving religious claims special privilege regarding questioning. If the efforts I have made in researching this topic were applied to revealing inconsistency or insincerity in a homeopath the forum members there would wet their pants to congratulate me. That I have been pilloried for my efforts shows another form of incosistency.

That I received support in the form of PMs from people who thought my efforts had merit but who were sufficiently concerned that overt support would lead to their ostracism is indicative of bullying at that site, but not by me.

[Sieveboy]

Jeebus (auto correct wanted to spell that as "hernia") WLB, you sure know how to eviscerate someone. Pity the "skeptics" are too busy indulging in some sort of tribal closed ranks group think bullshit.

[wearestardust]

The name "SGU" really does seem to be three misnomers in one. The PMs from people not wanting to support you in the open are telling.

Sometimes it is not a fallacy to claim that someone is no true Scotsman. Neither Kermit the Frog nor Bhorat nor Tony Abbott are true Scotsmen. I also think that despite the frequent use of the terminology against theists, I do tend to the view that someone who doesn't believe in God is probably no true Christian - even if they do argue that Christianity is a jolly good thing in social terms.

In my (extensive, even if I say so myself) experience in monitoring and enforcing compliance with various obligations (statutory or contractual), taking people's word on it, even if they really really promise, is rarely an adequate control mechanism. The people who you can trust are not the ones you need to worry about.

[Worldslaziestbusker]

Originally Posted by Sieveboy

Jeebus (auto correct wanted to spell that as "hernia") WLB, you sure know how to eviscerate someone.

I don't feel good about being good at tearing strips off the people who rile me, and I don't enjoy being generally ornery, but that dickhead and his ilk make what could be a good forum appended to a good podcast a fairly unpleasant place to contribute to. I've only stuck around there as long as I have because I noticed improvements in my rhetoric from all the practice I got dealing with hypocrisy and logical fallacies first hand.

I'm getting additional calls to play nice, because my efforts shouldn't be allowed to make the forum look bad to outsiders. The forum features much sexism and much rigorous defence of the right to be sexist, and closes ranks with calls to play nice whenever one of the inner circle jerkers is criticised. Short of an active puppy kicking campaign, it's hard to imagine what more they could do to make the forum look bad.

[Sieveboy]

Originally Posted by Worldslaziestbusker

I don't feel good about being good at tearing strips off the people who rile me, and I don't enjoy being generally ornery, but that dickhead and his ilk make what could be a good forum appended to a good podcast a fairly unpleasant place to contribute to. I've only stuck around there as long as I have because I noticed improvements in my rhetoric from all the practice I got dealing with hypocrisy and logical fallacies first hand.

I'm getting additional calls to play nice, because my efforts shouldn't be allowed to make the forum look bad to outsiders. The forum features much sexism and much rigorous defence of the right to be sexist, and closes ranks with calls to play nice whenever one of the inner circle jerkers is criticised. Short of an active puppy kicking campaign, it's hard to imagine what more they could do to make the forum look bad.

Happy or not, allowing someone's hypocrisy, lies, self inflation, self promotion, manipulatation, general bullshitting etc to go on uncalled, especially when in dialogue with you, only belittles you.

As you noted ineffective moderation and unchecked bullshit have ruined that forum. Sure you could say something like "I disagree with you" and play nice. But it seems to self defeat the purpose of being a skeptic if you disagree, but don't state why. As such you might as well circle jerk. I think you are correct in your actions and we all experience unpleasant moments in our lives, the key, as I see it, is to take something positive out of it (i.e. the improvement in rhetoric and debatong skills you got from this forum) and once it's over blow off the steam as you see fit.