[Vision2020] An Open Letter to Dave Johnson, the Daily News,
and Lewiston Tribune
Donovan Arnold
donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 8 07:08:19 PDT 2006
Joe,
You wrote:
"Two members of your group committed unspeakable sins, sins that put several members of the community at risk."
They are members of your community too, Joe.
Please don't use the victimization of children to score points against others that were not involved in the crime. If you have evidence that they were involved, please report it to the police, not Vision 2020.
Best Regards,
_DJA
Joe Campbell <joekc at adelphia.net> wrote: Dear Doug,
I hope you don't mind me addressing you by your first name. I prefer to be called 'Joe.'
I'm having a difficult time understanding your point. Joan's point made a lot of sense to me. Two members of your group committed unspeakable sins, sins that put several members of the community at risk. As far as I can tell the fact that these acts occurred was hidden from the community.
Nor was this the first time something like this happened. There is the notorious gambling incident: several violations of the law yet no charges filed. If you put it all together you seem to have introduced a frightening element into the community, where members of your congregation are allowed to commit whatever crimes they wish and we can only hope that you'll handle the situation correctly. Coupled with the zoning violations and illegal boarding houses hovering around your various organizations, it at least appears as if you think that you are above and beyond the laws of our community.
Can you at least understand that, from the perspective of many of us, there is reason for concern? Yet when folks like Joan and Michael voice their concern, they are publicly attacked.
What is the cause for this apparent double standard -- the public humiliation of your critics and the deadening silence of sins performed by your own?
Best, Joe
---- Douglas Wilson wrote:
=============
Visionaries,
When people sin, other people suffer. Sin destroys. When people within
the Christian community sin hypocrtically and with a high hand, their
fellow Christians suffer. And whenever this happens, unbelievers are
given free rein (by God Himself) to gloat about it. When King David
sinned like this, he became the object of scorn in the songs of
drunkards, and, it has to be said, he deserved every stanza. So we do
not protest the chortling at our expense -- God is delivering no
injustice to us. All His ways are good. If a Greyfriar student does
something sexually grotesque, like Jamin did, or goes off on a
pharisaical jag like Michael Metzler, it is certainly a personal
embarrassment to me, as well as an embarrassment to the whole program.
But ministerial training programs can survive embarrassments -- what
they will not survive is a lack of integrity which refuses to discipline
for such things.
But when we discipline for such things, we try (as much as possible) to
keep the discipline surgical, and limited to the offender. We try to
avoid the approach taken by Jackie and Joan, Tom and Michael, which is
to dump Agent Orange on the whole jungle. "Remember, only you can
prevent forests." You, Joan, because of these juicy morsels just
delivered to us all, are in a position to demand that we nuke the whole
jungle, that we tell the whole story. Now, when we tell the whole story
here, do you want us to tell the /whole /story? Do you care if anyone
else gets hurt? If not, and I hope not, we might be able to come to an
agreement. If your only purpose is to get me to agree that Jamin was a
hypocritical Christian while in the Greyfriars program, I grant your
point readily. You are quite right.
And for the sake of accuracy, if anybody still cares, Jamin left the
Greyfriars program on his own before we discovered what he had been
doing. But when he was discovered later, we placed a letter in his file
noting that he would have been dismissed immediately had the information
come out while he was still enrolled. Although he has repented, he has
still disqualified himself from ministry. Now if he had only had the
sense to have a sexual affair with another man, Joan might currently be
agitating for his reinstatement. What a strange world we live in.
Joan, anything else you want?
Douglas Wilson
Bill London wrote:
>The following is from Joan Opyr, posted to V2020 with her approval:
>
>
>
>>>>Dear Dave,
>>>>
>>>>I've known about the Sitler story now for nearly two months. I'm an
>>>>opinion columnist, so I didn't feel that it was something I could or
>>>>should break in New West Magazine. I'd be interested to know,
>>>>however, why the Daily News and the Lewiston Tribune either didn't
>>>>know about it or chose not to report about it until now. Also, why
>>>>did yesterday's story focus on Internet rumors and Vision 2020
>>>>nonsense? What Sitler did is terrible, and it has grave consequences
>>>>for the community. He was a boarder in one of NSA's many illegal
>>>>boarding houses, almost all of which are run by families with small
>>>>children who rely on the NSA money to pay their enormous mortgages.
>>>>That's interesting. Here's something else: I have complete copies of
>>>>both the Sitler and Jamin Wight court files, and I attended Wight's
>>>>sentencing hearing. Wight is the Greyfriars Seminary student who, at
>>>>age 24, had a year and 1/2 long sexual relationship with a 14-year
>>>>old girl in his illegal boarding house. He got a 4-year sentence
>>>>from the judge and is currently serving 4-6 months in Cottonwood.
>>>>
>>>>Two child sex scandals associated with Doug Wilson and Christ Church?
>>>> I would not allege a cover-up; that's not what reasonable people are
>>>>thinking. I would note, however, that Doug warned the elders of CC
>>>>about Sitler but he did not warn the greater Moscow community. While
>>>>the authorities dragged their feet, Steven Sitler was free as a bird,
>>>>driving himself back and forth to counseling sessions with Pastor
>>>>Wilson. What counseling qualifications does Wilson have? Is this
>>>>the only counseling Sitler received before he was sentenced?
>>>>Wilson's letter in Sitler's court file is a classic in
>>>>Cover-Your-Ass. The other letters in the file (bar one, from the
>>>>parents of a two-year old Sitler molested) are unbelievable. They
>>>>all declare that Sitler is a "good Christian" and properly repentant.
>>>> This isn't a criminal matter for most of the letter writers; it's a
>>>>matter of sin and redemption. One woman goes so far as to blame
>>>>Sitler's actions on his exposure to the evil, secular world of
>>>>Internet pornography. Passing the buck? You bet.
>>>>
>>>>There's a bigger story here than Doug Wilson and Roy Atwood spinning
>>>>like a pair of tops. There's a sad and sorry tale of pastoral
>>>>negligence and, I think, newspaper negligence. Why do we not read
>>>>about these sorts of things in the Daily News before they reach the
>>>>rumor mills on Vision 2020? I can think of several important stories
>>>>the Daily News has failed to cover, from Moscow's massage therapist
>>>>molester to the prominent attorney who was a car stereo kleptomaniac.
>>>> Will the Daily News or the Tribune be writing anything about Jamin
>>>>Wight, who pled guilty to one count (pled down from three) of felony
>>>>injury to a child? Surely Wight's story is just as interesting as
>>>>that of Chris Morris, Wight's classmate at Greyfriars.
>>>>
>>>>By the way, you might have asked Morris why it took him four years to
>>>>graduate from a three-year seminary program. You might also speak
>>>>with the management at Winger's. It's my understanding that future
>>>>Pastor Morris was fired from that restaurant with cause -- a cause
>>>>that suggests Morris might model his religious career on the likes of
>>>>Jim Bakker rather than Fred Rogers.
>>>>
>>>>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
>>>>www.joanopyr.com
>>>>
>
>_____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________
List services made available by First Step Internet,
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
http://www.fsr.net
mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
_____________________________________________________
List services made available by First Step Internet,
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
http://www.fsr.net
mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20060608/221c6c26/attachment-0001.htm
More information about the Vision2020
mailing list