Partway through its 2020 series on The Door, the Reformatorisch Dagblad ran a short editorial answering a question some of its own readers were apparently asking. Why was a newspaper serving a Reformed readership spending so much ink on a small international Pentecostal network most subscribers had never heard of? So the paper’s deputy editor gave the answer directly. The underlying claim, that a culture of fear should never reign in any Christian congregation, applies well beyond the one denomination the series was actually about.
Journalism as a watchdog, applied to the church
Good journalism functions as a check on power, the editor wrote, and that function shows most clearly in politics, where reporters routinely put hard questions to ministers and members of parliament. So the same function belongs in other arenas too, including how churches and Christian organizations actually operate. The point of exposing wrongdoing is not that scandal makes good copy. Instead, abuses of power struggle to survive once the public actually sees them. That logic, the editor argued, does not stop at the edge of Reformed church life just because The Door sits outside it.
A culture of fear should never reign
The paper’s central claim is worth stating in full. A culture of fear should never take hold in any Christian congregation. Still, that is exactly what happens when critical voices become suspect before anyone even hears them, and eventually get forbidden outright. The editor grounded that claim in the confessional standard ministers themselves affirm, language stating plainly that church governance must never rest with one person, or with a very small handful of people. Where a council or board leaves no real room for discussion, and no one supervises anyone else, a closed and unhealthy atmosphere follows almost automatically. Manipulation and abuse of power tend to appear soon after. Genuine feedback gets mistaken for an attack on authority, and if financial dependence layers on top of that closed structure, the conditions for real abuse are essentially complete.
A fair process, not an unspiritual fight
The editor also pressed a narrower, practical point: a church association needs its own ecclesiastical legal process in proper working order. The goal is not settling disputes through internal combat. Instead, it is giving every member with a complaint real confidence that an independent party will actually hear it fairly. On pastoral visits specifically, the editor urged ministers to stay alert to the mere appearance of impropriety. So an elder, the editor recommended, should never visit alone without a fellow brother present, a safeguard aimed as much at protecting reputation as at preventing actual wrongdoing.
Why this editorial still matters
What this short piece adds to the series around it is intent. Readers could easily treat an investigation into an unfamiliar church as something confined to that one denomination. But the editor refused that comfort. The real subject was never The Door alone. Instead, it was the structural conditions, concentrated authority paired with an absence of real oversight, that make abuse possible in any closed institution, whatever name or denomination happens to sit on the sign outside. You can read the original Dutch editorial here.
Sources and further reading
- “In christelijke gemeente of organisatie mag nooit angstcultuur heersen” (published in English as “A culture of fear should never reign in Christian congregation or organization”), Reformatorisch Dagblad, October 3, 2020; translated and published with the author’s permission
- On the series this editorial accompanies, see the reporting on The Door
