Thread by @hlgriffin

If you've been following this Twitter feed since the @ACNAtoo pleas of survivors were released, you have gotten to see a mode that I don't normally turn loose and hope that I never have to turn loose again.

I call it "Salty the Singeing Burn Book" mode.

If your first thought is, "what does that even mean?" I will explain.

If you are an evangelical or ex-evangelical of a certain age, you may have encountered a character called "Psalty the Singing Psalm Book" at Vacation Bible School.

I don't recall ever encountering Psalty as a kid, though my husband does & a lot of my friends do.

I was raised Southern Baptist & some of my earliest memories of church events included puppets- lots of them.

This is probably why, to this day, ventriloquist dummies & puppets of all sorts make me very uncomfortable.

I don't personally have Psaltyphobia, but with a cursory glance from looking at a Google Image search of Psalty, I see some real nightmare fuel:

"Psalty" is a means for me to express what it's like to feel "Salty" about the church right now as a white evangelical, exvangelical, or exChristian in the United States.

If you've never heard the slang term, "salty," it means to feel angry, upset, agitated, irritated.

I am feeling Salty about a lot of things as a white evangelical. You have encountered my saltiness in the past two weeks on Twitter because I am feeling salty about abuse allegations & the way these allegations were handled in a diocese of the denomination, @The_ACNA.

On Jun 26, survivor & advocate @ladyjessicahaze, representing a team of survivors of abuse, took to Twitter to send us a plea for help regarding the behavior of Bishop @StewartRuch of the @MidwestAnglican diocese of the @The_ACNA & his leaders.

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1408916453848346629?s=20

You can read @ladyjessicahaze 's Jun 26 plea here

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1408916453848346629

Followed by her July 3rd plea here

https://twitter.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1411360068583366663

On July 7th, a woman who would now like to be called "Cherin Marie" or CM shared a gut-wrenching statement about how @StewartRuch of @MidwestAnglican & others handled the sexual abuse of her 9yr old daughter by a Lay Catechist.

You can read that thread here:

https://twitter.com/ACNAtoo/status/1412957114620809221?s=20

If you prefer to read the stories of our survivors outside of Twitter, we also have them posted at ACNAtoo.org, where we are pursuing justice together with the survivors, families, & their team.

If you've read the statements of the @ACNAtoo survivors, you know how they did everything they could to avoid this painful public exposure of @StewartRuch & some of the members of the community that he leads as Bishop of @MidwestAnglican .

If you are upset that they have shared their stories & are going around your community saying "What about Matthew 18.15-18?," you need to have a seat, be quiet & listen b/c it is clear that you have NOT read the stories of the @ACNAtoo survivors w/their extensive documentation.

The survivors have reached the Matt 18.17 stage with @StewartRuch & co.

"If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

The survivors' @ACNAtoo statements on Twitter are the only way they have within @The_ACNA to "tell it to church" in a way that they can be confident that the church will actually hear.

We will talk about why that is (spoiler: mostly policy gaps rather than malice) another time.

If you have been following this, you have seen some very aggressive Twitter advocacy. We have been naming names. No one wanted to do that. Every person whose mistakes you are hearing about is still loved by the survivors and by Jesus.

The reason that names are being named is that @StewartRuch has refused to listen.

He is the Pharaoh in this story who has hardened his heart. The independent (I am speaking for myself, as are others) Twitter threads are his plagues.

The people that are suffering exposure of their worst moments are suffering because @StewartRuch refused every opportunity to lead them in the light b/c, contrary to his professions, his track record of interacting w/ the survivors has not demonstrated that he lives in the light.

If the way I have gone about things makes you uncomfortable, just think how uncomfortable it has been to report sexual abuse by a church leader under @StewartRuch’s of Bp Jim Hobby’s leadership and what it has taken for them to be heard at all.

I also want to say a word to people in @MidwestDiocese & @ChurchRez who are hurt by my burn threads and assume that the survivors & their supporters are 100% on board with everything I say and the way I say it.

As I said on the ACNAtoo.org website, the people in this movement speak for themselves. Up to this point, the survivors and the new ACNAtoo advocates have NOT been coordinating threads. I take my cues from what the survivors write and I amplify them.

I’ve only been talking this loud and this Salty because the survivors have been talking for a long time and not enough people have been listening.

If you are a member of @StewartRuch's community & are hurt & angry about the ways your people are being called out, you need to ask @StewartRuch why he has refused to listen to what you have seen documented in the survivor's statements.

The problems our @ACNAtoo survivors & their advocates are calling out are problems of a sinful system. We can talk in more depth about how that works another time, or you can learn more by looking at our recommended resources at acnatoo.org/blog-4

The activities of people other than @StewartRuch are part of the story of the pain, trauma, & injustice the @acnatoo survivors have witnessed.

They also need to repent. They have also had chances to do so privately.

I am guessing that most of those named in the survivor's statements from @StewartRuch's community also don't understand what they have done wrong b/c, like their leader, they have also not demonstrated to survivors that they are listening & repenting.

If you read the documentation provided by the survivors carefully, you already know this.

I don't like calling these people out, because internet shame is particularly dangerous.

People are not reducible to their worst moments.

The people defending their leaders in the communities that @StewartRuch leads are doing so because they love them & they can't reconcile the awful (documented) things our survivors are sharing w/everything good about them.

This is not a “well, nobody’s perfect, there but for the grace of God go I” moment of cheap forgiveness bestowed on people who we have no reason to believe are repentant of their treatment of the survivors, because they have given the survivors no reason to believe that.

This is an acknowledgment that we can all get sucked into a vortex of sinful distortion & do awful things that we do not know how to come back from.

When we don’t give people a way back b/c our churches don’t have the capacities to deal w/big shame, people refuse to walk in the light.

I’m not interested in leaving a permanent record of shaming someone on the internet. The internet is forever. I don’t want @StewartRuch‘s children to have to hear the awful things that their father has done or allowed to happen from strangers on the internet.

I want them to hear it from him, because I want @StewartRuch and his wife and everyone in this situation to come into the light & go through a process of repentance, healing, & restitution.

Once people go through this process without bypassing their sin & shame, they come out of it as gentle, humble, loving people that love much because they have also been forgiven much.

When @StewartRuch goes through this process, he will want to tell his children about what happened and about how Jesus made it right. He will love the light so much that he will want to never leave it again for a false light.

That is the future ministry of @StewartRuch and his wife, if they choose to come into the light. We have a world full of people that do horrible things & hide b/c the shame is too great & there is no way back if they tell the truth.

I would love to see the ministry of people who legitimately come back from something like this.

You probably would too if you, like me, have made mistakes with people under your care & harmed them and need a way to make it right. Most of our communities don’t have the capacity to handle some of our big mistakes yet so things can be repaired.

Salty the Singeing Burn Book is taking down her saltiest, burniest tweets (for now) of the individual people who are not @StewartRuch or @MidwestAnglican Diocesan Chancellor Charlie Philbrick.

If you loved Salty’s Lit Saltiness, I am glad, but she has served her purpose for now, though this may change if we don’t see real change from @StewartRuch . We don’t leave people at their worst moments in ACNA2.0. We open up a way for them to come back to the light.

I am not speaking for the survivors. Their concerns have not been fully heard. Nor have mine, really. @The_ACNA leadership who wants to make this right have not earned their trust yet.

We care about what @The_ACNA leaders will DO much more than what they will say or what they sincerely wish they will be able to do.

I personally don’t doubt the sincerity of my bishops, but I also don’t know them. I also don’t think sincerity is worth much if we don’t act on our good intentions in ways that produce good fruit.

But Salty is going away for now because we have *some* movement that is *hopefully* in the right direction. This isn’t over in my mind. @The_ACNA has to do this right if there is going to be an ACNA in the future.

I am also not taking the Burn tweets down because I know of any movement of repentance from the people named by the survivors. I hope that they are repenting because Jesus can give them a way back from this if they tell the truth.

We have your attention, @The_ACNA.

Thank you for listening.

I also want all of the bishops and priests to know that the full Salty nuclear option you have seen from me in response to the survivors’ pleas for people to listen is not how I see ACNA2.0 coming about.

Salty was there to help them make their voices heard against people who have hardened their hearts & blinded their eyes & deafened their ears.

Salty Protest Theater & publicly naming names is not how I think we need to deal with the vast majority of problems in @The_ACNA

If the way I have gone about things makes you uncomfortable, just think how uncomfortable it has been to report sexual abuse by a church leader under @StewartRuch or Bp. Jim Hobby’s leadership and what it has taken for them to be heard at all.

@StewartRuch & @THe_ACNA could have ignored survivor’s threads if enough people hadn’t picked them up and amplified them.

That possibility makes me uncomfortable enough to do some Protest Theatre with a Salty Burn Book puppet.

We can deal with problems gently and mercifully as long as you choose to become people who can listen to survivors of abuse in your churches, especially those who were abused by your leaders or in your churches.

I will not help people cover up things, but I’m also not interested in public shame or “canceling” people so they can never have a place of being loved in the community again when they become someone who doesn’t harm their communities.

The survivors’ statements stay up as long as they want them to. They never have to take down the record of the names that were named if they don’t want to. They can release more if they want if they do not see repentance and commitment to change.

You and I don’t get to tell the survivors to stop talking, especially when most of us haven’t really begun to listen.

I also want to say a word to people in @MidwestDiocese & @ChurchRez who are hurt by my burn threads and assume that the survivors & their supporters are 100% on board with everything I say and the way I say it.

As I said in my *normal,* non- strategic-Protest -Theatre voice on the ACNAtoo.org website, the people in this movement speak for themselves. Up to this point, the survivors and the new ACNAtoo advocates have NOT been coordinating threads.

I take my cues from what the survivors write and I amplify them. They aren’t telling me what to write or agreeing with the tone.

We have the same goals, but we all leverage different strategies to reach them.

The survivors and their team love you, have mercy on you, have hope for you, and care about your feelings. If I hurt your feelings, come at me, don’t come at them. I’m not interested in burning anyone who is hurting & not a key player in this drama.

If you are still at @ChurchRez, Salty’s threads are not for you. Don’t choose to put yourself through this. I’m not asking you to. Your therapist should be asking you not to. It’s counterproductive for your healing.

That doesn’t mean it’s counterproductive for making sure @The_ACNA knows that they are on notice & are not going to be allowed to accidentally, unintentionally drift back into business as usual.

My Salty threads are for people that have left the church because we weren’t telling the truth about how bad things are and taking steps to repair it.

I think a lot of us are starving for the most vocal people in the church to be people who tell the truth loudly and not people who feel the need to share conspiracy theories.

My Salty threads are for people who are tired of the most vocal people in the church being those who are always talking about what is wrong with people outside the church.

They left or aren't interested in Jesus and/or church b/c we don't tell clearly tell the truth about what is inside the church-- or about what needs to change.

We have to do that before we have any expectation that people take us as seriously as we insist on taking ourselves.

I am not here to make you comfortable.

I am here to comfort the survivors and walk in the light.

I invite those who are sinning against them to walk in the light as well.

It is time to come into the light so we can build ACNA2.0. The survivors are not seeking revenge. They love you. They are seeking justice & truth. They are seeking light that is from Jesus and not the false light of managing @StewartRuch’s image of who he wishes he was.

Walk in the light.

*puts Salty the Singeing Burn Book puppet in a box with a padlock & walks away

...even though that puppet is making more noise inside that box than a couple of angry She Bears.

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock --

...to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”- Flannery O'Connor- Mystery and Manners