You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. —Václav Havel—Living in Truth, 1986

The members of Redeemer have been living the unhappy lives of “dissidents” for the last five years. Redeemer members were forging a new ministry, doing what we thought was right (as the most recent judge pointed out to Synod). We were cast out and attacked by the Church to which we were and remain faithful.

The ELCA has created its own little world complete with its own rules—made, revised, and broken with regular and accepted ease. It has claimed immunity from the law, which might force it to follow its own rules. Meanwhile, it uses the law against its members.

It has become a lethargic source of benevolence, existing primarily to support itself, coat-tailing the efforts of secular organizations, with diminished vision and no sense that it actually can be a force for good—if it dares.

ELCA Congregations and their regional bodies are constitutionally interdependent. Consequently, each congregation has its own little culture — which one might think leads to diversity. It doesn’t.

Congregations are in many ways clones of one another. They hold worship services which are similar, become involved in similar causes in the community, acquire professional leadership with the same training. Some are larger than others. Some are more effective than others. Size has little to do with effectiveness.

In the world of the ELCA all is happy — the better to attract new members and create economic stability to attract people to professional service. The relationship between congregations and regional bodies is often little more than employer/employment agency.

When things go wrong, the true character of the Church becomes evident.

The ship of the ELCA has no keel. When rough waters threaten there is no leadership to steady it. Taking a stand might be politically dangerous, threatening a leader’s value to the employment agency.

In recent years, the domination lost 10% of its congregations in a doctrinal dispute. Church leaders remained relatively silent. The response: revise the rules to make it harder for congregations to leave.

Tough economic times have brought out the worst in Church leadership.

In the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) and several others, church leaders have been running roughshod over member churches to acquire property and wealth. Similar stories emerge from several synods.

Congregations have, for the most part, remained silent as their regional bodies attack sister congregations. This may seem like the safe route, but it leaves all church members vulnerable. All the resources of 150 or more congregations are available to attack an individual congregation. The attackers control the forums for appeal making the efforts at democratic involvement ludicrous.

Those who challenge are labeled and attacked personally to discourage others from taking a stand. The attacks continue long after there is any hope of further monetary gain. Hatefulness defies reason.

Havel wrote about this too.

Some people have the souls of collaborators and others the souls of resisters. Collaborators aren’t simply the active supporters of a system’s oppressions. They are everyone who tacitly accepts injustice without a murmur. They confirm the system, fulfill the system, and validate the system; they are the system.

We, the unintentional dissidents of SEPA Synod, visit church after church that voted against their own governing documents to take our property by force. From pulpit after pulpit, we hear Scripture that teaches that treating one another so hatefully is wrong. We listen to sermon after sermon, explaining the scriptures correctly. Failure to seek peace, reconcile and forgive is wrong.

We see no one able to act.