Pr. Edward Engelbrecht, with whom I have had some online interactions over the years, has recently written an article for Lutheran Forum that is receiving quite a bit of attention for some of its assertions. The piece examines "institutional mobbing" in the LCMS, i.e., the strategy and tactics used by some in that church body to harass and antagonize "troublesome" pastors and professors so that they will eventually leave the denomination.
I learned about Engelbrecht's essay via an East-coast pastor, who reached out to me last summer to see if I could confirm or deny any of the details in Engelbrecht's analysis. This pastor told me that Engelbrecht had told him that I was one of several LCMS pastors and professors to whom he is alluding in the article. (I told this pastor that I have a five-foot long shelf of 5-inch binders that are chock full of documentation that details my experience of being "mobbed" in the LCMS. It began already before my ordination on July 14, 1989, and it has even continued after my expulsion from that church body on July 15, 2015. While I was not the object of every tactic that Engelbrecht describes, I did experience many of them. Certainly the overall strategy of "mobbing" fits with what happened to me, especially between 1997 and 2015.
Earlier this week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article on the article. You can read that P-D story here. For Engelbrecht's essay, go here.
All of my LCMS "memorabilia" will eventually go to the ELCA archives. Perhaps a future doctoral student of church history who is interested in the institutional decline of a church body like the LCMS might find those materials of some interest, if only for a footnote or two.
I was sexually abused by Christian Radio DJ and Deacon of Trinity Lutheran Elementary School in Billings Montana in the 1980's. After his attack I was mobbed by his sons and their friends at Trinity Lutheran School. When I came forward with the abuse in 1998-99 I was chemically balded at Billings West High School. I believe my balding was a retaliatory attack for my openness.
ReplyDeleteI think mobbing is there to cover up a culture o sexual abuse. In the 1980's it came on a wave of Satanic Panic and end of the world fervor. I can't imagine what the church is like now.
Mobbing is there to cover up deeper wickedness.
https://labyrinth.church/narrative-of-lnsy.html