The Collapse of Institutional Trust

Many churches, including my own, use the month of November as pledge month. It’s that time of year for all of that ungodly stuff like budgets and salaries and denomination assessments. My church is large church by local Protestant standards, with previous budgets sometimes topping out the high six figure range. This year, the drive didn’t go so well. It surfaced in church this morning.

The obvious answer is the economy is bad. But this year my church faced other problems. It started when our minister was accused of several counts of rape (trumped up); and ended with him pleading guilty to a lesser charge of assault (the guy fooled around). Either way, testimony was graphic, and obviously it had a profound effect on our church.

Then ELCA (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and my church’s national affiliation) passed resolutions to allow for actively practicing gay ministers. This is in line with various other Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. Of course, we were told that our congregation had a role in the decision making process. I don’t remember one, and neither did anyone else. It just sort of appeared in the paper one day.

Both of the above events led to a churning in the nature of the church membership, with many faithful members of the church either moving to different Lutheran churches because of our minister’s peccadilloes, or leaving our ELCA affiliated church altogether because of the gay rights issue.

It also didn’t help that our local Bishop, an interesting woman, is not particularly well liked in our church because of her bully tactics in the philandering minister affair. It wasn’t pretty.

So is it any surprise that our pledge efforts fell substantially short of our budget needs this year? Our new minister, who is a fine man but in a difficult position, did an outstanding job of explaining the church financial issues this morning in his sermon. For the first time in my memory, they handed out copies of the budget in the church service, with specificity. This is something I know that members have been asking about for years. The information was always there for the members to review, but it took a little bit of effort to find it. It should help. I just don’t know how much.

What Pastor Dave failed to realize is this is not simply not a “church” issue. It is a national issue. The problem of lack of trust in our institutions is rising dramatically. Just turn on the news. Look at the disgusting bargaining over the health care reform efforts taking place in our Congress, all held behind closed doors. How unseemly watching billions of dollars passed around to the new Democratic elite in this country, while the rest of us are left to pay…all behind closed doors. Couple that with the Wall Street bailouts and the GM/Chrysler bailouts and the TARP funds and the non-stimulus stimulus package, is it any wonder that trust in our legislative process is not only low…but non-existent.

And the anger is being directed at both political parties, although the antics of the Dems seem to have risen to the forefront. Witness the close race in the Massachusetts’s senatorial race. But comments made to me by my Republican friends reflect a frustration with the political process generally, and the national institutions that support it. They are willing to give money, but not to political parties. Donations are going to ad hoc groups rapidly forming to fill in the void resulting from failure of honest leadership. Bush was bad. Obama is off the charts. A pox on both your houses!

That brings me back to my church. People who are running our institutions need to learn that we are a Democracy. We aren’t here to serve them. They are here to serve us. Whether it is Congress distributing favors to special interest groups at our expense in the health care debate; or a trusted minister getting caught in flagrante delicto with a parishioner; or my church moving away from the conventional wisdom of the membership relating to gay rights (no matter how right or wrong that action may be), if the body politic is opposed to the action, don’t expect their votes or their money.

The arrogance of the squeaky wheels running our institutions is staggering. Don’t spit in the eye of the people you are supposed to serve and expect them to thank you for the honor. It just isn’t going to happen.