The following is a letter I wrote to denominational and classis officials in the Christian Reformed Church in 2012, alerting them to a CRC pastor who was teaching a form of racist ideology called “Kinism.” He was a pastor who used the overly large loopholes in our church polity to get into ministry without theological education or proper vetting, on the basis of “extraordinary gifts,” which in this case turned out to be the gift of preaching racism and rabid Christian nationalism. I contacted Executive Director Joel Boot, Peter Borgdorff who was also still acting like the Executive Director for some reason, and I also sent the letter to the Stated Clerk of Classis Lake Erie, Robert Arbogast. In addition, I spoke on the telephone to and forwarded the letter to Rev. Esteban Lugo, Director of Race Relations at the time. Finally, I also sent this information to Robert DeMoor and Gayla Postma of The Banner.
This “pastor” and his congregation are in the news again because they have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center
The links that I cite do not work anymore, because the formerly Reverend Brett McAtee seems to have deleted a lot and he now goes by pseudonyms like “Perry Wilkins.” But you may be able to find some of these articles on his the site where I first found his racist rants, faithandheritage dot com, or by searching Internet Archive for now-deleted posts from his Nazi-like blog called Iron Ink.
As far as I can tell, my concerns in the letter were completely ignored. I received a few emails from denominational leaders that expressed concern worthy of Susan Collins at an impeachment hearing, but that was it.
It wasn’t until 2019 that this “pastor” was dismissed from the denomination, and his ideology rejected as heresy.
For the record, they were told.
I told them. I warned them.
Others did, too.