The Sound of Silence
by Carsten Thomsen | 9 May 2024 |
Hello darkness, my old friend…
Silence is a powerful tool. Powerful, because it protects private or corporate interests. The church likes silence—particularly when it wants to control difficult situations.
But silence also raises questions about what’s happening behind the scenes.
Silent terminations
It is a widely accepted practice for a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to be used at the termination of someone’s employment. The reasons include unacceptable or publicly embarrassing behavior on behalf of the employer or employee.
Sometimes that implies financial incentives for ending the embarrassing situation. If the employing organization has misbehaved—or could potentially be accused of it—an NDA could save it millions of dollars of damage to its reputation. Likewise, if the employee, by action or words, puts the employer in an uncomfortable situation, money and an NDA can help.
During COVID the company I worked for needed to reduce costs. It asked senior employees to voluntarily come forward and sign up for an attractive exit bonus. No one was fired or threatened to be fired—but the contract had a non-disclosure clause in it which I, along with several others, refused to accept. There was nothing odious to cover up, but the company failed to recognize that such a clause could create distrust and rumor.
We know very little about the situation with bisexual German pastor Saša Gunjević in the German Hanseatic Conference. We know that the issue was so important that it escalated to the top leadership in the church. Public statements and detailed web sites on the general subject of sexuality were created.
Clearly the church saw this as a critical issue, one that had to be resolved, or could cause irreparable damage—perhaps even a schism in the church. The only solution was that the pastor no longer work for the church.
The letter that announced his retirement admitted that his conference couldn’t tell us the whole story. We don’t need to know the terms of Saša Gunjević’s termination.
While the conditions and settlement (if any) of this particular situation may or may not be appropriate to disclose, it remains a fact that silence can create distrust, rumor, and speculation. One can’t help but wonder: how much is spent worldwide on termination agreements and legal settlements, whether covered by insurance or not?
This is the members’ money, freely and trustingly given. Stewardship requires transparency.
Silent changes
The local pastor’s job can be extremely frustrating, having to deal with demands from above, as well as from all-knowing church members who can always find a quote to show that the pastor is doing things wrongly—or worse, engage in whisper and rumor-mongering behind the pastor’s back. And if an influential member has the ear of the conference or union president, it can put the pastor in an untenable position.
This is why we have due process: to ensure that complaints are handled fairly. Without due process (and sometimes with it) the result can be rumors and innuendo. It seems to me that church leaders should proactively protect local pastors when there is a complaint, by at least following an open and fair process.
I’ve also seen situations where teachers, pastors, or other church employees misbehave—infidelity, bribery, financial mismanagement, or sexual harassment or abuse—and a call is arranged to another church or place of employment, with the receiving entity seldom knowing why this person was brought in.
Though conferences have become more careful as litigation has cost them massive amounts of money, it has happened that child abusers were transferred without a word being said. This is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand—and the members or their children paying the price.
Silent donors
Some people are glad to make their donations known. You’ve seen the donors’ names on church pews, organs, or pianos, on sidewalk or patio bricks; colleges give donors’ names to buildings. Some issue press releases specifying the donor, the amount and size of the gift.
But not always.
Recently we learned of a $5 million anonymous gift given to the General Conference in 2021, to be used over multiple years. Although there are extensive details about the use of the funds, there is no mention of the donor.
I’m sure that church leaders felt that this was best handled discreetly. Anonymity can be good—not everyone wants attention for their generosity.
Yet it also raises questions. Wealthy donors have been known to discreetly befriend church leaders, while dropping subtle hints about policies or people they want to see changed. This can create a hidden power structure outside of the view of the members, which diminishes accountability. Threats aren’t necessary: money speaks silently.
This is why in most countries there are strict disclosure rules regarding political campaign contributions. (Wealthy individuals try to circumvent these—Sam Bankman-Fried of cryptocurrency fame was skilled at this.) When I worked in the corporate world in the United States I was required, as an officer of the company, to sign an inch-thick set of forms of quarterly conflict-of-interest disclosures.
The Adventist church, from what I have seen, is fairly loose in the matter of conflict of interest. There are forms to sign, but the terms are rarely if ever enforced.
Would it not be better for the Adventist church to rise above the world’s standards, and have policies that donations above a certain threshold will not be accepted without being disclosed, along with potential conflicts of interest?
Here the question is not about the stewardship of the members, but of the leadership. Their easy answer is: “It is the Lord’s money,” with the organization escalating itself to a privileged position of knowing what to do with it—“Trust us.” The General Conference seems not infrequently to operate in the darkness of silence as its old friend.
Remember: “He who pays the piper picks the tune.”
Silent members
In the early 1990s, Scandinavia saw a cascade of multi-million-dollar reorganizations to avert bankruptcy. Leaders, it was clear, had ignored the flashing warning signs for years.
It brought down our food factories in Norway and Denmark, as well as the Skodsborg Sanitarium, and finally the West Nordic Union. Local conferences were saddled with debts of about twenty million dollars to cover the sustentation obligations of the defunct institutions.
Though frustrated and discouraged, many members faithfully continued to contribute to the church as it struggled for over 30 years under a load of debt. (It is now fully paid off.) It was impressive to see the members’ faithfulness, their implicit forgiveness of the failure of the leadership.
I understand our attraction to silence and ignorance: we want to enjoy the good things our faith brings us, and don’t want to be distracted by bad news. We want to trust! We want to believe!
But are we then complicit with our trust and our silence? Is there a legitimate role for lay activism? Aren’t we ultimately responsible for the conduct of our church?
Through its convoluted and ex-officio representation, the church keeps a strong grip on its pseudo-democratic organization. Its working policies require that subsidiary organizations such as unions and conferences follow model constitutions.
There remains just enough democracy to keep most members silent.
Silent control
At a constituency meeting in the Danish Union during COVID, a well-reasoned document was presented, proposing that the role of the union treasurer should be decoupled from the normal constituency election process, hence shielding the treasurer (who is a layperson) from the risk of being fired without due process at a constituency meeting.
When I was asked to present this proposal to the working committee, the division president, participating via Zoom, immediately quashed it by arguing that this was a fundamental constitutional change and required much study and deliberation. Even though our local constitution required only a 6-hour waiting period before voting on constitutional changes, the laymen who were behind the proposal were effectively silenced.
For constituency meetings, pre-meeting collusion among delegates is strongly discouraged, whether proposals and officer selection. This enforced silence reduces the influence of church members—but it doesn’t stop carefully orchestrated political planning in the corridors of power.
In addition, the actual nominating committees are bound by requirements for silence. Despite this, information leaks out. We know that the president-elect comes into the committee to select his favorites.
Collusion is fine, apparently, as long as the leaders do it.
Silencing dissent
As I write this article, I can’t help but think of the contrast with the Bible’s narrative, where the multiple failures of the great men of faith are openly admitted. As an authoritarian church leadership style has taken hold, church leaders have slowly but firmly restricted the expression of differing opinions, both in churches and educational institutions.
The risk, it seems to me, is that we kill the entrepreneurial and creative spirit that built the early Adventist church. Simon and Garfunkel sang, “Silence like a cancer grows.” The silence of the church gives the appearance that all is well. But the silence quietly and invisibly grows, as do risks killing the very church that fostered that silence.
We need truth-tellers. Perhaps that’s what Paul Simon meant when he wrote,
The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence
Carsten Thomsen is a retired engineer, who is a member in the Nærum church in Denmark.
