There's Just One Bucket

I had a helpful conversation with a friend who connected two things I had thought were totally separate.  As Mickey and I have waded through all the issues at Bethlehem, I've been trying hard to keep 2 groups of issues separate.  I've mentally sorted them into 2 buckets, which I'll call "culture wars" and "problematic behavior."  The culture wars bucket includes things like people's views on gender and race, who they voted for, views on Covid, etc.  The problematic behavior bucket includes things like misuse of power, misuse of authority, domineering, cover-up, and deception.

I've tried really hard to keep the 2 buckets separate.  Here are three examples.

First, when we wrote our open letter, we intentionally left out anything from the culture wars bucket.  We didn't want to get into neo-fundamentalist vs. neo-evangelical church discussion (these are categories from this article)  Pastor Jason said you could have healthy churches of both types, and that seemed reasonable.  Mickey and I have opinions about these issues, but we believed these issues were less important than our concerns about problematic behavior.  We also didn't want to alienate people who held different views.  Someone might have different views from us on culture wars issues, yet be equally concerned about the unethical behavior we were writing about.

Second, I've worked hard to separate the 2 buckets as I evaluate people's actions.  I try not to let people's political views sway how I see their actions.  For example, there is a BCS leader who voted differently than I did, but I tried not to let that influence how I evaluated specific actions he took at BCS.  Likewise, there's a BCS leader who thinks differently than me about Covid, but I tried not to hold that against him as I considered his actions.  This was my attempt to be fair to people.

Third, as I studied Pastor Jason's resignation letter, I tried to sort his points into the appropriate bucket.  So his Point #1 (neo-fundamentalist vs. neo-evangelical churches) went in the "culture wars" bucket.  Point #3 (Unity Culture) I put in the "problematic behavior" bucket.   His Point #2 (Culture of Charges, e.g. subordinating the gospel) was harder.  I still don't know how to rightly categorize that one (it seems like it could fit in both buckets), and that probably should have made me realize these issues overlap a bit.

To me, the issues in the problematic behavior bucket are so concerning:  Silencing people.  Bullying.  Domineering.  Misuse of power.  Cover-up.  I kept wondering, "Why don't leaders at Bethlehem listen when people raise concerns about these things?"

My friend provided one possible answer.  His diagnosis is that for many Bethlehem leaders, there's just one bucket.  On culture wars issues, they see the threat of radical, secular ideas creeping into the church, and they believe we must hold the line against these dangerous views.  They fear secular encroachment.  But then, when people at church raise concerns about things like domineering, bullying, misuse of authority, etc., these concerns get lumped into that exact same bucket.  These concerns get written off as radical, secular ideas creeping into the church, and are seen as a dangerous threat.  One example of this is when a pastor raised concerns about bullying and domineering, the elders responded by talking about the danger of "concept creep." (see World article )  The net effect is that people's concerns about problematic behavior get dismissed, rather than listened to.

If this diagnosis of "there's just one bucket" is true, people can't even get a real hearing for their concerns, because the concerns are automatically put in this one bucket that is deemed a threat and then dismissed altogether as secular encroachment.  This is extremely concerning.  

There may be many, many other reasons that people's concerns don't get a hearing.  Those are beyond the scope of this post.  But dismissing concerns as secular encroachment is not a reason that I had even considered.  This friend's diagnosis opened up a new way of understanding the elders' actions for me.  One that gave a reasonable (albeit sad) explanation.  

In a way I've come full circle.  Last summer I didn't understand why the articles about Bethlehem by the Star Tribune, Christianity Today, and World focused on the culture wars issues (e.g. Sin of Empathy, cancel culture, coddling).  But now I can kind of understand; that's what the elders keep talking about because for them, "there's just one bucket."

To the extent this diagnosis is true, I think the question would be:  how can we convince the elders to listen to people's concerns, rather than dismiss them as secular encroachment?

I don't know what the answer is.  But at least I now have a clearer idea of the question.

[Note:  writing this post feels way above my paygrade.  I can't quite connect all the dots.  Culture wars issues are confusing.  I don't have a good pulse on broad cultural trends.  I don't even personally know all the elders, much less what views they each hold on various issues.  And even the elders I thought I knew, I now wonder if I really knew them at all.  I'm not writing because I have a handle on these things; I'm writing as a sad, confused person in the pew trying to make sense of what happened to my beloved church.]