Joe Rigney's Resignation

Joe Rigney resigned as president of Bethlehem College & Seminary on April 3.  I found many of the online responses helpful.  I'm linking here to capture them in one place:

Bob Smietana's article for Religion News Service - helpful overview, with links to lots of background info

Daniel Kleven's response to the resignation, pointing out the distinction between substance issues and culture/ethics issues.  Very helpful.

Janette Takata's perspective:

• Describing how so many people at Bethlehem had raised these concerns years ago, before Rigney was appointed president (I found many of the comments to this post helpful as well).

• On the use of terms like "cancel culture" and "threat"

• On being compared to a terrorist:

• Reaction to Joe Rigney's moving to Douglas Wilson's church and school in Idaho (comments here were also helpful)

Steve Takata's perspective

Two other reflections:

First, while Naselli and Rigney have some problematic views, at least they are upfront about them.  You know exactly what you're getting.  Whereas leaders like Kenny Stokes and Brian Tabb are much more slippery - they will say one thing to your face and something different in another context.  In some ways this makes them even more dangerous.

Second, one of the things I found most demoralizing about Rigney's resignation was learning that Tom Lutz and Brian Tabb are still in leadership.  (Granted, this was not related to Rigney's resignation; it just happened to be when I found out about their new roles.)  Lutz and Tabb were some of the worst offenders in all the upheaval at Bethlehem in 2021.  In December 2021, they both stepped off the elder board for a year.  I hoped that that meant that other leaders at Bethlehem had seen their bad actions and wanted to discreetly pull them out of leadership without shaming them.  I wished the elders had dealt with the issues more publicly (acknowledging what those two had done wrong and explaining that's why they were stepping down), but I still took their removal from eldership as a very small hopeful, positive sign.  

But no, Brian Tabb is now the Interim President of BCS, and Tom Lutz is now chair of the board of BCS.  They were given even more power.  This is so discouraging to me and confirms my sense that nothing has changed at Bethlehem.