#21 of 54. Letter from Leonie Coffin, May 14, 2007

“I want Adventists to be known as honest people who teach and practice morality, people with the highest ethical standards. . . .” —Jan Paulsen, president of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, to a small group of leaders, as reported by the Adventist News Network, spring 2008.

“I can tell you that in over 30 years as a minister’s wife, the greatest injustice and lack of care and consideration toward us has come from those who preach Christianity the loudest—yet who have an abundant inability to practice what they preach.” —Leonie Coffin, letter dated May 14, 2007.


LETTER

May 14, 2007


Pastor Halvard B. Thomsen, Chair
Liberty Editorial Board
Seventh-day Adventist Church Headquarters
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring , MD 20904-6600

Dear Pastor Thomsen,

I’m not writing this letter to plead and beg for you to take action in response to my brother Lincoln’s defamation of my family; I’m simply going on the record about my feelings concerning your unwillingness to implement the most basic of Christian principles by encouraging him to try to undo his ill-advised actions.

In response to Lincoln’s public defamation of my husband, myself and our sons in August 2006, my husband, Jim, eventually turned to you to ask for specific help. Despite the unbelievable pain Lincoln caused us just after my father’s death, we attempted for weeks to write to him and deal with the matter personally and privately. He made his position abundantly clear when he returned our correspondence and stated (by certified mail) that he had no intention of communicating with us about anything.

Lincoln apparently believes he has the right to throw dirt at people and then run and hide in both a self-righteous and cowardly manner. Unfortunately, that has been his trademark in his relationship with Jim and me for over 30 years. Only when he chose to take his animosity public (to a group of church employees)—and then adamantly refused to communicate with us—did we finally turn to those church administrators he is accountable to. Not only has he tried to publicly destroy my husband’s reputation as a minister, but that of our children and myself. Therefore, we felt we had no choice but to appeal for help.

Your obvious unwillingness to address the very real problem Lincoln has created has not escaped me. Not only have my husband’s letters been ignored as much as possible by those to whom they’ve been addressed at the GC, but your recent response when he yet again asked that the matter be taken seriously and dealt with was, quite frankly, despicable.

Due to my intense desire for privacy and the fact that this problem was originally a family matter—until Lincoln took it public—Jim sought to minimize how much personal information he put on the record to you. He tried to provide only enough background to give a sense of perspective. He knows that anything made public is torturous for me, as all I have ever desired is to live a quiet, peaceful and private life. Yet when my own brother, the editor of Liberty magazine, publicly attempts to destroy our reputations by sending defamatory letters to Jim’s fellow ministers (we don’t know just how many received them), and carrying on equally defamatory conversations with employees at the church’s headquarters (again, we don’t know just how many he has talked to), and when Lincoln has taken on our children in such a hateful and contemptible fashion, my mothering instincts are going to override any need I have for privacy.

The sad truth is that by taking his hatred public through conversations and defamatory letters to Jim’s fellow pastors and the president of the Florida Conference, Lincoln stole that privacy not only from me but from our entire family—and he did so against the specific requests of his mother and other family members when they were together after my father’s death.

When the letters I wrote to Lincoln (in an attempt to bring understanding and perspective) were returned, unopened and marked “Unwanted—Return to Sender,” we chose to seek help. I have spent my life attempting to treat people fairly, to be kind and considerate to others. Sadly, the favour has not always been returned. And I can tell you that in over 30 years as a minister’s wife, the greatest injustice and lack of care and consideration toward us has come from those who preach Christianity the loudest—yet who have an abundant inability to practice what they preach.

Unfortunately, this characteristic has been dramatically more prevalent among the church hierarchy than among the parishioners. So much so, in fact, that several years ago I severed my connection with the Seventh-day Adventist Church —because I did not want my name associated with an organization whose treatment of employees has been so far from what I believe is the essence of Christianity. My decision at that time came after we had been subjected to intensely hurtful, unethical treatment by my husband’s church employers. What you are now doing is simply a tragic replay of what I have experienced and observed over and over again.

Not only did you make it perfectly clear in your letter of March 30 that you were refusing to deal with a very clear and well-documented case of one employee’s public defamation of another, you suggest that nobody would even know about the problem if it weren’t for Jim’s letters (at least not at the only place where it seems to count from your perspective—at the GC headquarters). You hide behind your contention that Lincoln’s public assault is a private matter. Quite frankly, I feel sick to my stomach with the cowardice, callousness and dismissiveness you have shown toward your fellow human beings. You are absolutely wrong in your contention that this is just a family issue. It ceased to be so the moment Lincoln went public with it.

You are the ones attempting to portray as a private matter what is in reality a deliberate public defamation by one church employee against another (and his wife and children). It is not a private issue now. Not since it has been made public. But you seem determined to misrepresent reality. And, contrary to Lincoln’s later contention that he wrote what he did only so I would gain a sense of my need to be reconciled with my mother, he never even sent me a copy of the deplorable letters he circulated—not to me or to any of our three sons. The very tone of his letter, even if you knew nothing else, should have caused you grave concern. But it doesn’t seem to have done so.

I know I should be used to such indifference from church administrators by now, but I always somehow hope for better. Unfortunately, I am consistently disappointed by those who legislate and judge about how I should act as a Christian—but somehow never seem to feel that those same principles apply to their own behaviour.

My husband—and indirectly myself and our sons—has given over 30 years of service to this church. Jim has served with a commitment and care that has been genuine and time-consuming. He always goes beyond the call of duty. His ministry both as a pastor and as an editor has been greatly appreciated. In both his financial and time commitment he has given to the church beyond what our family could really afford––we went without for the good of the church. So as his wife, I say, How dare you be so callous and cavalier in your attitude toward such a loyal employee and his entire family.

You didn’t bother to offer even one word of support and respect for Jim’s loyalty and commitment. Rather, you curtly dismiss his requests and then insinuate that he is at fault for having even raised the issue. Do you have any idea how that makes a person feel? Do you even care? Your replies to Jim’s very reasonable and clearly written letters suggest that the answer is a hellish No! Unfortunately, in my experience, this is how the church consistently treats its employees. And if you feel you are sensing a lifetime of frustration on my part, you certainly are.

Obviously, I’m not writing to you because I think that anything I say will make a difference. (It’s doubtful anyone will even bother to read this.) Nor am I trying to supplement Jim’s appeals. He is more than capable of writing in a manner that is clear, fair and considerate toward all concerned. He has more than excelled at apprising you of the problem at hand. He has already said it all. I, on the other hand, no longer have any intention of keeping my thoughts to myself concerning the disgust I feel in how you have responded to an eminently reasonable plea for help.

In one fell swoop, your reply has put into my brother’s hands the ammunition to make any private reconciliation within our family virtually impossible. You could have provided moral perspective. Instead, you did what my parents have consistently done: You condoned his bad behaviour. You didn’t state that it was unchristian and unwarranted to go after another employee—and his entire family—in the manner Lincoln did. No, you managed to dismiss the issue in such a way as to attempt to make Jim look like he is causing the problem, to make it look like he is somehow the one who is out of line and unreasonable. I don’t know how you could have any more effectively helped perpetuate a pattern of bad behaviour.

You not only didn’t help us, you further hurt us by your statements—few though they were. Jim made it very clear he did not expect you to try to deal with our family’s personal and private issues. Jim outlined with great clarity the public nature of Lincoln’s defamation, and he asked you to take certain steps—which were his right to expect from Lincoln’s bosses—that would help to ensure that the allegations Lincoln sent to Jim’s ministerial colleagues would not be left
to haunt us.

Instead, you have made the family discord even harder to deal with. And we are still left with the real issue that you should be concerned with: Your employee has attacked—publicly—another church employee and his family. While Jim and I have tolerated Lincoln’s unchristian attitude toward us for years, we have finally had enough. He has stepped way over the line in publicly defaming us—and, believe me, his public attack on our sons will not be tolerated. Amazingly, though, you seem quite willing to tolerate it.

Lincoln may want to move on and just ignore what he has done. You very obviously want to ignore what he has done. But we can’t ignore what he has done—or your part in aiding and abetting his behaviour—because it is defamation. It has implications. It is my family—our lives—he has so callously attempted to destroy. We have been unjustly accused. And we won’t allow such accusations to stand as if they were truthful—because they are not.

Nobody deserves to be publicly maligned and denigrated in the manner Lincoln attacked our children—declaring them guilty of “a systemic inhumanity . . . that defies all norms of Christianity and human decency.” Yet your willingness not only to tolerate his public defamation but to add to it by your letter that seeks to throw the blame back on Jim makes you complicit in Lincoln’s wrongdoing. I hold all of you at the GC with whom my husband has corresponded to be guilty of not only enabling Lincoln to do wrong but guilty of doing wrong yourselves in dismissing us so summarily.

I haven’t attempted to counter the details of Lincoln’s accusations, as I do wish to retain as much privacy as possible. But for the record, I can assure you that you have not heard and do not know the sad truth. Lincoln’s actions are unbelievably hurtful and humiliating to me. And the manner in which you so flippantly discount my life, my pain and the distress that Lincoln’s public defamation of my family causes us is an additional slap I don’t need—and, quite frankly, won’t accept quietly. Your refusal to acknowledge Lincoln’s actions as inappropriate and your unwillingness to take the simple steps necessary to help undo the damage your employee has caused another employee is reprehensible.

Lincoln is all the more to be damned—not to be held less accountable—for being so callous as to publicly treat his own flesh and blood the way he has. You apparently see it otherwise. The fact that it is his sister’s family he is attempting to destroy is just fine and dandy with you. The family connection automatically lets you off the hook. Because we’re part of Lincoln’s family, you seem to think you no longer have any administrative or moral obligations. He can act with impunity. You tell us we “must” work it out on our own, even though Jim has explained very clearly that we have already tried to do that—but Lincoln refused to even discuss the matter with us.

Our major mistake in dealing with Lincoln over the years has been turning the other cheek again and again and again. When repeatedly he has chosen to believe falsehood—despite having the facts clearly presented to him—we too quickly have dropped the matter in the pursuit of peace. Instead of emphatically and resoundingly denouncing his bad behaviour and false accusations for what they were, we inadvertently aided and abetted by dropping the matter rather than forcing him to face the facts.

It takes some of us nearly a lifetime to clue in to the fact that being nice will not ever win some people over—it will never make them what they intrinsically are not. So it is ridiculous for me to entertain the possibility that Lincoln might ever apologize and make any attempt to “undo, to the degree possible,” (to quote Jim’s letters) the harm he has done to my family. Sadly, in my entire lifetime I don’t recall ever seeing Lincoln (or my father) truly apologize to anyone for anything. It would be totally out of character. It is indeed most unfortunate that you have helped cement Lincoln’s attitude by calling our behaviour into question for having had the audacity to expect your assistance.

Likewise, I have come to the sad conclusion that it is also ridiculous for me to expect any administrator in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, my husband’s employer, to act other than you have. A lifetime of being a preacher’s daughter and a preacher’s wife has left me in despair and convinced me that expecting the church to act with integrity would, very sadly, be out of character from what I have consistently witnessed throughout my life.

I make no apologies for my forthrightness. And I am under no illusions whatsoever that anything I say will move you in the least to practice what you preach. But if I can claim back a smidgen of self-esteem by being willing to stand up to this organization that over many years has so consistently caused so much hurt to my husband, myself and my children—and countless others—with its inability to act on principle and treat its employees fairly, I will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that my own integrity is intact.

Sincerely,


Leonie Coffin
[Address provided]

Copies to:
Eugene Hsu, Consulting Editor, Liberty
Jan Paulsen, Consulting Editor, Liberty
Don Schneider, Consulting Editor, Liberty
John Graz, Consulting Editor, Liberty
Robert Kyte, Office of General Counsel
Mike Cauley, President, Florida Conference
Lincoln E. Steed

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