Haters Anonymous

I just visited the website of one of the local Christian radio stations that broadcast where we used to live in WI. This station offers its listeners a steady diet of hyper-conservative talk shows, hyper-conservative sermons, very traditional music and dreary kids programs.

The people who listened to this propaganda tended to be some of the most combative individuals I've ever known. After listening to a steady diet of hate, all it took was the mention of a single word ("Clinton", "Unity", "Contemporary", "Diversity") and a tirade would likely follow. Just like they heard on the air, 24 hours a day.

When I visited the website tonight, I discovered that the station had once again given a conservative (but not conservative enough, apparently) preacher the boot. They do this pretty regularly in an effort to safeguard doctrinal purity. I'm not a huge fan of the preacher in question, and I am a big fan of doctrinal purity, but the muckraking tactics they used to make sure that this man's ministry has been discredited with their listeners was so, so sad.

This station is NOT a church (though many of its listeners use it for their main source of edification), so I'm not quite sure how this heavily documented rant against this man's minsitry fits into the Matthew 18 discussion that begins "if your brother sins against you..." The station doesn't have the biblical authority to undertake disciplinary action - much less slander the man's character - when he hasn't done anything wrong except speak at a conference where non-Christians were also speaking.

The station has the right to change their programming, adding and dropping programs as they see fit. If they drop a long-running program, they do owe their listeners an explanation of some kind. But what I saw on that website wasn't an explanation. It was a hachet job.