This was done while ignoring the plain teachings and affirmations concerning the great truths of the Christian faith found throughout Lee’s writings. As I began to check the quotes of Witness Lee used in Duddy’s book, I found that The God-Men had consistently taken sentences from Lee’s writings and, by placing them in a foreign context, made them to say just the opposite of what Lee intended.
The experience proved among the more painful of my Christian life. Part of my study of the Local Church involved the reading of most of the published writings of Witness Lee and the lengthy depositions of Neil T. I commenced that investigation in 1984, and some of the findings are embodied in the enclosed paper which I offer for your consideration. Recently, I was asked by the Local Church to begin a more rigorous investigation of its life and belief than I had been able to in previous years while working on my Encyclopedia of American Religions. I was at first concerned that a Christian body, i.e., the Local Church, would take fellow Christians to court, until I discovered that the leaders in the Church had exhausted all less severe means to have the book withdrawn and its errors acknowledged. Duddy and the publisher of their book, The God-Men. Melton, who previously had been an advocate of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project and was still not ready to write it off, began the open letter portion of his booklet by reporting:ĭuring the past year, I, like many of you have become concerned about the lawsuit between the Local Church led by Witness Lee and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP), Neil T. Gordon Melton, founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, published An Open Letter concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and The God-Men Controversy. Again, I know this from experience, and it is not something I am proud of. We who are members of the evangelical countercult and apologetics communities have responded with righteous indignation to the LC’s attempts to “muzzle our constitutional rights to freedom of religion and speech,” but we have been shamefully slow to respond to documentable instances of defamation committed in our own ranks. Since I have been an active member of the countercult community during this entire period, have interacted broadly with other members regarding this matter, and for decades was of one mind with those members about the LC, I believe I know whereof I speak.
As I stated previously, I believe that, in addition to the mere fact that they are different, the LC’s initially contentious and ultimately litigious response to their critics has generated such animus that it helps explain the lack of fairness and careful scholarship that an otherwise able group of scholars and researchers have demonstrated in the three preceding sections of the Open Letter. The importance of this final section needs to be clearly understood. In either case, we respectfully request that the leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the “local churches” discontinue their practice of using litigation and threatened litigation to answer criticisms or settle disputes with Christian organizations and individuals. If the leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the “local churches” do not regard evangelical Christian churches, organizations, and ministries as legitimate Christian entities, we ask that they publicly resign their membership in all associations of evangelical churches and ministries. The New Testament strongly discourages the use of lawsuits to settle disputes among Christians (see 1 Corinthians 6:1–8). If the leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the “local churches” regard evangelical Christians as fellow believers, we request that they publicly renounce the use of lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits against evangelical Christians to answer criticisms or resolve conflicts.
The following three paragraphs include the entire text of this request and bring the Open Letter to a close: The Open Letter’s final request of the LC and LSM leadership pertains to their history of resorting to litigation to clear themselves of charges made against them in evangelical countercult books.
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