We discovered something quite amazing this week. There are people all over the country visiting this site!
We've seen unusual episodes of increased traffic to the site this last week. One day 44 visitors, out of the blue. Very few people who have visited the site have been in contact with us, although it is easy to get in touch via a form on the contact page. We've chosen not to enable the comments feature of the site, since as we all know, trolling is a popular pastime these days, and we'd prefer to curate the feedback and publish our responses to it.
L has been much more proactive about studying the traffic patterns of the site and she discovered a feature in Google analytics that shows where visitors are coming from. It turns out, they are coming from many, many states, all over. In fact, besides Oregon, the biggest concentration of visitors to the site have been from Tennessee. Actually, Lebanon, Tennessee.
First of all, we welcome all of you who are reading this site. Our experience at Ashland UCC was that all are not actually welcome ( even though they want you to believe the opposite). By contrast, one of the main reasons we wanted to put up this site is to foster a conversation about abuse of power in churches, and how these institutions which are supposed to serve the spiritual life of their communities become corrupt and actually end up having the opposite effect: corroding the values of decent people by modeling absolutely awful behavior like hypocrisy and lying.
We not only welcome your visits to the site, but we want to invite you to get in touch and share any stories or thoughts you have on this big topic. Maybe you are exploring this because something similar or related has happened at your church. We'd love to hear about it. Almost the only way we know of to sort these kinds of problems out is through dialogue. And most people are not brave enough to have the conversations needed to address the issues involved. If you have things to say, or ideas you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.
Secondly, we have always thought that, at least perhaps, if folks at the church we used to love and attend became more familiar with what actually happened, rather than continuing to believe the insidious storyline that they have been fed by the leaders of the church, maybe they would like to be in touch and express something about how they felt being involved in a church that engages in such subterfuge. There has been so much broken, but it isn't as if it is entirely beyond repair. Every relationship matters, and that is, it seems to me the whole point. Jesus, as far as we know, wasn't an exclusive human being. He did not preach exclusion. And God, as far as we believe, isn't unmerciful, as the church has been.
If the church, Christina, Paula, the Council, still wants to claim to be merciful - and I don't know that they do! - I am going to claim to be a unicorn! They may try to point to things they have done as merciful, but any of those things they may claim ( mediation, some notional idea of due process) have all been found to be merciless; a pretense, hollow and false. The biggest proof of that is the very fact that they have refused to speak to us, even when we have attempted in so many ways, in good faith, to engage a conversation with them all.
Just in case the leaders of the church wants to use the pretense that " L and Daniel spoke words in anger" and that caused "harm", let's remember that Jesus spoke words in anger many times. Jesus was not angered by much, other than the pretentiousness and hypocrisy of the leaders of the church of His time.
Maybe you have had the experience in your own life that when you are having a difficulty with someone who is angry about your behavior towards them, if you talk to them and treat them as if they are a person like yourself, who has feelings, just like you, and must have some reason for feeling as they do - in other words, if you take them seriously - you find they settle down and you begin to find common ground and avenues for repair.
This is pretty basic human psychology. We think we have valid thoughts and justifications for the actions we are taking, but until we have brought our thoughts into the arena of dialogue and given others the chance to examine them and consider them and walk through our reasoning with them, we can't really know whether we are on solid ground - the kind of ground that would make life better for us and others, not just now, but out into the future.
Here is what we have now. If you Google Christina Kukuk, one of the first results you get is "the corruption of Christina Kukuk and the Ashland UCC Church". Meanwhile, over 600 people around the country have visited this site and more new visitors every day. People in New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Iowa, Ohio, Washington State and California, and many more states, are all exploring what this story means to them
I have to imagine that this is not the result that the leaders of the church were hoping for, but let's think of it this way: We want the world around us to be a better place. We have to start as close to home as possible. We know that lifting up our voices about what we believe to be true, and inviting dialog about these ideas is a good place to start.
Maybe it seems, to some who may visit these pages, "negative" or even "harmful" that we have chosen to speak out. Maybe, though, it is truly a message that resonates with many people around the country who are tired of being betrayed by their spiritual leaders and intend to take a more active role in their own spiritual life.
Our thanks, again, to all of you who have chosen to examine these questions. "Wherever you are on your journey of faith", please let us hear from you if you have thoughts to share.