I've been stonewalled in conversations with people many times in my life, and I've seen it happen between journalists and politicians. I'm sure you have too.
What is stonewalling?
Basically, it's a refusal to answer questions, cooperate, or communicate in an effort to avoid confrontation or open and honest discussion about something.
In politics, journalists will oftentimes ask politicians difficult questions, controversial questions, questions that make them feel uncomfortable.
In response to these kinds of questions, many times politicians will stonewall the journalist by changing the subject, deflecting, or evading the question with vague non-answers.
Politicians are in the business of looking good, acting perfectly, and appearing a certain way to the public. Why? Well to get votes of course! To appeal to the masses. To win that seat at the top. To get into that position of power and authority. To get the approval of the public, you have to appear a certain way, or you risk being unpopular, and unpopularity means losing.
Religious leaders aren't much different, depending on their ultimate aim. For many churches these days, the ultimate aim is to grow into a megachurch. I would even argue that some Christian churches and pastors sometimes operate under the same guise as politicians do, fighting to keep a certain image regardless of how dishonest and manipulative they must be in order to do that.
The more members a church has, the more money it makes. It's sad to say that this has become the true goal of many churches, but it's becoming more and more clear to me with each church that I check.
The Stonewalling Church
As most of our readers should know at this point, we've made some big changes to the way we check churches over the past few months. As a result of that, I've also decided to adjust how I report on churches that stonewall.
Instead of compiling the interactions and the names of the churches that stonewall in this post, I'll be pinning my attempts to contact the pastors of stonewalling churches on my Twitter account.
I will keep this post up for those of you who continue to come here looking for the interactions, but in addition to the public Twitter contact attempts, I will be posting my interactions with all churches regarding the Questionnaire on each Church Check from now on.
This will tell curious churchgoers just how each church responds or reacts to being asked questions, and will help them avoid the ones that aren't willing to take the time and love to answer them.
Until next time!
For Christ and His Kingdom
Sarah Young