Exposing "Exposing the ELCA"

Meet Dan Skogen. He's the voice and face behind a blog titled "Exposing the ELCA." Well, he does more than blog. He tweets, trolls Facebook groups, and in particular, visits the web sites and Facebook pages of congregations of our denomination and gives them a negative review, along with a long diatribe about the evils of "the ELCA."

This is about the only photo I could find of Dan online. He's pictured with his wife, who is an intern pastor at an LCMC congregation in Marion, Iowa, just outside of Cedar Rapids.

I started paying attention to Dan (I remember seeing his blog sometimes over the years but it never caught my attention, and/or I decided to intentionally ignore it) when he posted a rather long and flattering blog article about me at his web site. I won't link to it here, but I'm sure you can find it. Just google Clint Schnekloth and "Exposing the ELCA." Dan will be super pleased by the additional traffic he gets to his blog, so go for it.

Now, here's the awkward part about all of this. It's not exactly clear what you are supposed to do in the new media era about "trolls." The more I've done the research, the more I realize that almost every denomination, product, or famous individual has at least one person who has decided it is their purpose in life to "expose" them. You can find blogs exposing Ronnie Floyd (a mega-church pastor here in our part of Northwest Arkansas and the current head of the SBC). You can find exposers literally everywhere you look. They are busy, they are noisy, and they are notoriously immune to rational dialog of any kind.

Because this is true, there's even a kind of famous flow chart published by the United States Air Force. I share it here, because I have a feeling it might help church leaders in their online discernment on how to engage social media commentary about themselves or their organizations.

 I am confessing here to my Lutheran Confessions readers that I violated the guidelines in this flow chart recently when I decided not to take the "green" route suggested above. What you're supposed to do is "monitor only." Instead, last week I decided to engage Dan specifically on Twitter and see how the dialogue would proceed. It was revealing on many levels. It revealed to me how frustrating it can be to dialogue with someone so gifted at gas lighting. I decided, since I consider Dan to be a bully who preys on many vulnerable pastors and congregations, to actually push back in precisely the way I might push back if I were another child on the school play ground. I engaged in some snark. I offered some choice labels for him. My favorite right now is "snake," which I chose specifically because I think that is exactly how he acts via his online presence. He hides behind his "Exposing the ELCA" moniker, is very, very sneaky and manipulative, and will never ever respond to direct and responsible dialogue. He flees it like the plague.

In the course of this Twitter dialogue, which I'm sure you can look up if you wish (and if you do, be ready.... I wasn't always nice, you get to meet the snarky and fierce Clint), I was able to outline a flow chart of the way Dan Skogen communicates. Here it is:

When I shared this flow chart with my colleagues, some of them liked it. Others felt I was failing at the Lutheran understanding of the 8th commandment, to portray your neighbor's actions in the best possible light. Others articulated concerns basically along the lines of the U.S. Air Force Flow Chart. Monitor only.

My only problem with monitoring is simple: Dan has been, I've learned, doing the "exposing" work for about six years, and shows no signs of stopping. He's a failed and bitter seminarian. He's relying on silence on the other side to do his nasty work. He considers it a ministry. He believes our denomination, because of some specific theological and/or ethical differences he has with us, is leading people to hell, and he wants to make people aware of how horrible the ELCA is.

So then I remembered that one of my favorite theologians, Martin Luther, often would offer a written and public response to public figures he disagreed with. One of the more famous dialogues is the correspondence between Lutheran and Erasmus on the bondage of the will. They have some choice words for each other. I'm not sure either ever convinced the other of anything. But the dialogue itself was of enduring significance for subsequent generations because the articles clarified some things about the freedom and bondage of the will. 

Now, I'm no Erasmus, and Dan is no Luther, so you'll have to take all of this at a different level than that amazing correspondence (and some of you will wisely bail on this blog post and go back to reading Luther himself), but if you find this helpful, allow me to proceed, and offer a theological response to Dan Skogen. 

Since Dan regularly posts reviews of churches he has never visited on their Facebook pages (in fact he spent a chunk of Christmas Eve doing so), I'm sharing his content here, and then offer responses to each point.

First Paragraph: Yep, he's right. Often human thinking gets woven into the way we interpret Scripture. He's right. The only thing is Dan thinks his human thinking doesn't influence his own interpretation of Scripture. He thinks he can read the Bible "purely." This is what you call fundamentalism. It's not Lutheran.

Universal Salvation: I don't know anywhere that the ELCA promotes universal salvation. This is actually one of Dan's shibboleths. He is confused and thinks there is a monolithic "ELCA" that has a teaching office that hands down specific teachings. There isn't. We're largely congregational in our polity, and on the issue of universal salvation you have a range of beliefs in the ELCA loosely consonant with the teachings in the Bible and confessions. I'd also add, since Dan cares about the Bible, that "Jesus includes in salvation people who do not believe in him or even know about him" is not a non-biblical concept. See for example John 10:16. Or Romans.

Homosexuality: Well, the ELCA adopted a social statement on human sexuality in 2009, and you can read it here: http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/SexualitySS.pdf Dan has his shorts in a knot over the homosexuality issue in particular. It really, really bothers him. I think this one is an example of Dan's confusion about the relative weight of doctrinal and ethical matters. I think he thinks that believing in a literal 24 hour six day creation is as important to Christian faith as trust in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the flesh. So, because he elevates certain things far above what is warranted, you can imagine how apostate he thinks a church is who believes something different than him. But, on the other hand, Dan is right, there are some of us in the ELCA who not only tolerate but affirm people with other orientations than hetero- to live out their sexuality in lives of fidelity and trust with a partner, and to seek out the highest level of blessing for those relationships as they can. So we marry people in same-gender relationships, and we love and welcome them. He's right about that.

Goddess worship: Yes, there's one ELCA church in California called Herchurch that offers a prophetic counter-point to the traditionally male-gendered language for God. There's is a powerful witness, and I hope Dan gets to visit their church some day. But it is an extreme outlier in our denomination, something they themselves recognize on their web site, and I think 99.9% of ELCA clergy would be very surprised to learn that goddess worship is "growing more and more common with ELCA ranks." Clergy and churches would, however, very commonly attempt to get beyond too frequent masculine and patriarchal portrayals of God.

Abortion: I think this is the other one that Dan and others who read his blog care about. I do too. I'm pro-life. I'd like to see public policies that make abortions, as the Democratic party used to say, safe, legal, and rare. Since medical decisions are private, I don't think I can speak to the truthfulness of Dan's point here, but I would encourage anyone who cares about our position on the matter to read the ELCA social statement on abortion.

Masculine language: Not completely remove. I keep seeing it, because our creeds call God Father, and since Jesus was a dude, well, there's always going to be male language. But more diverse language for God is good and biblical. Since God is beyond gender, the most heretical position possible would be to ascribe gender to God (if you want to have a conversation about X and Y chromosomes and the virgin birth, be my guest--it gets interesting). 

Sex change: I'm glad we do this. Some of our best pastors are members of the trans community.

Denying God's authorship of the Bible: Bogus. Just bogus. If you want the official language, here it is from our church constitution:

What the ELCA Constitution says about the Word of God (2.02):

This church confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the Gospel as the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.
a. Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, through whom everything was made and through whose life, death, and resurrection God fashions a new creation.
b. The proclamation of God’s message to us as both Law and Gospel is the Word of God, revealing judgment and mercy through word and deed, beginning with the Word in creation, continuing in the history of Israel, and centering in all its fullness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
c. The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the written Word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.

What the ELCA Constitution says about the Bible (2.03):
This church accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life. 

Israel: Here's where Dan exits reality and enters his own alternative universe. It is true that because there is a large Lutheran community among Palestinians, Lutherans have a different perspective on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but it isn't really anything like what Dan is describing. The ELCA has clergy stationed in Israel, and a close relationship with the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. You can read one example of the current ELCA strategy on Israel and Palestine here. 

Genesis stories as myth: Dan wants people to read Scripture against the way those texts would have been originally read. Some of the Old Testament is closer to the kind of history we write today. Other, not so much. The Lutheran approach, which is a long-standing tradition in the Christian church universal, is to respect the genre of the texts themselves, and read them at that level. I might also add that Dan must not read the Bible literally himself, because he is part of a denomination (the LCMC) that doesn't read the Bible literally, including women serving as clergy. The ELCA celebrates the public ministry of women in pastoral ministry, but you can't get to support of that through a literal reading of Scripture. You get there through a more faithful and nuanced theological reading of Scripture. That's not denial. That's faithfulness.

Federal Marriage Amendment: I had to look this one up, because I hadn't ever heard of the Federal Marriage Amendment. But inasmuch as I speak as a pastor in the ELCA, yes, he's correct, I actively would oppose an amendment like that.

Dan's overall goal is schismatic. He ends his rant with an appeal to members of ELCA congregations to organize and have their church leave the ELCA. Barring that, just leave individually and join a Bible-believing church.

It's not quite clear to me what church Dan would want people to join. He himself holds a variety of theological views, as far as I can tell. On the issue of salvation, he seems to be a TULIP Calvinist. On the Bible, he's fundamentalist. On Israel, he's Evangelical. On marriage and homosexuality he's disturbed and creepy. On the balance between adiaphora and doctrine, he's heretical. I find very little in anything that he writes that is specifically Lutheran.

I don't quite know how to proceed in dialogue with him. Some of my colleagues want me to be kinder to him, or ignore him. But I've begun to feel that inactivity on my part allows him to conduct his very destructive work, often targeting small communities of faith and harried pastors who may have few resources or much time to leverage. So although ideally I'd like to ignore him and move on, I feel like this one rises to the level of, "If there's a bully in your classroom, and you're the teacher, you need to do something about it."

That being said, I do still believe in the idea of "love your enemy and do good to those who hate you." I just happen to think that teaching of Jesus came along with another teaching of Jesus, to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. Jesus himself had a variety of rhetorical approaches to his public communication with those he disagreed with. I hardly think that it is "Christian" to just play nice and ignore hate. That's not active peace-making. That's pathetic passivism. I'm certainly not the perfect model of peace-making. Far, far from it. But I'm at least confessing my failures thus far, analyzing both the form of social media communication, Dan's public content in particular, and asking, "Is there any way forward that stops hurting so many people? On that point, the ball is completely in Dan's court.

Update:

If you'd like to see the depth and breadth of how much Dan Skogen is organizing to hurt our denomination, I suggest you look at this: http://domainbigdata.com/name/dan%20skogen

Here's what you see if you click through the link that acts as if it were the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod. Dan's goal is nothing less than to trick people into buying into false, scaremongering communication about our denomination.