Your Majesty!
The Church minister Marianne Jelved/ Church Ministry
Justice minister Karen Haekkerup/ Ministry Of Justice
Bishop Karsten Nissen
Provost Carsten Hoffmann
Episcopal candidates Henrik Stubkjær and Peter Hedegaard
Pastors in Frikirkenet
Pastors in the Danish Retreat
Journalist and editor of "Udfordringen, Hele Kirkens Ugeavis" Henri Nissen.
I, the undersigned, Lars Skov Krøgholt, and Daniela Skov have been enrolled in the Danish state church by the then Pastor of the church “Kolding Valgmenighed” Jonas Serner-Pedersen without our wish and consent.
We have posted police report against Jonas Serner-Pedersen to enroll us in the state church, because we have no wish to be a member of the state church of Denmark and pay church tax. On the contrary, we are both after our child christening baptized with baptism of faith in a free church. That is why our membership, after what we've learned from various sources, is not legal. One cannot be a member of the state church and be baptized twice.
We have now received a reply from the Attorney General that she has read our objections to her decision that the police notification should not be investigated. She writes that she will not make any further action in the matter.
The letter can be found here: http://goo.gl/GHlsTI
How can it be that we can be done checkmate without getting answers to the questions we have, when we are writing to bishops and pastors? The Attorney General and the police answer “to the East”, when we ask “in the West”. We have never been called in for an interrogation. We have just gotten fines without questioning. How can they afford to violate the principle of legality?
We've got mails from journalist Henri Nissen and pastor Helge Pahus, where they write that we send out hate mails, as if we pursue the Reverend Jonas Serner-Pedersen and the Church.
How can it be permitted that Jonas Serner-Pedersen can use our social security numbers, - he has his handwritten signature on our notice forms? So he can get a police restraining order instead of right from the start in May 2012 to tell us what he has used our papers for? This should be very simple, to quickly and efficiently talk with us about our resignation. We first found out by accident here two years after that we had been enrolled in the state's church. How can it be us who persecute the Church when he has ensured himself, via police restraining order to not getting mails from us, so that we could have been able easily and simply to have done a little formal conversation at the latest in May 2012. Instead all others get the burden placed upon them, together with us, for several years now.
Daniela will seek visas to the United States this year, and now we're going to have, together with Daniela's American fiancée, to get legal help from an American lawyer, as she has a financial penalty on her criminal record. Journalist Henri Nissen might call it threats and persecution to seek help in this way.
We cannot understand why everything should be taken this far. But we have only been told by the Police and the Attorney General’s Office, that we can seek compensation with Jonas, if we have a claim. This seems to be an answer in the East when we ask in the West: we need help from the Church minister Marianne Jelved and minister of Justice Karen Haekkerup, for we have been paying church tax for two years without justification and without our knowledge.
How can we seek compensation from Jonas Serner-Pedersen for a sum that has been paid to the State? How is a membership of the state church legal, so it could possibly have any validity for us – if one of us, for example were to be buried from the state Church, could we then get a discount? This question comes once again as a result of that we are baptized with the baptism of faith by submersion in water, on the basis of another biblical ritual and Bible interpretation than the state church's Bible ritual and christening procedure.
When several people call us hateful persecutors they should themselves be responsible for their own projections! We feel so miserable and powerless in the face of all this stuff. We have no desire to be taken over by the state church's Bible interpretation and religion, when we ourselves have gone through processes and have chosen that the baptismal theology from independent churches is what we can be fully vouched for. Don’t we have freedom of religion in Denmark?
We really need answers and help and we are citizens of Denmark.
How can it be legal/ how can this enrollment be done without it being addressed and consequences being drawn of it?
We are powerless.
We see in this time that Bishop Tine Lindhart opposes that a pastor baptizes people with christening, without ensuring that they become a member of the state church. In this position the church put church membership over the actual baptism. The content as it is instituted by Jesus Christ himself, however, has never been that humans must be baptized in order to belong to a particular Church direction, in general not to belong to an institutionalized Church, operated as a business. Baptism is intended that people must belong to Jesus and his universal Church, by the Apostle Paul also called the Body of Christ. It is this purpose that lies in the believer's baptism, as it is practiced in free churches in Denmark. In this theology and Church tradition baptism does not automatically give membership of a particular Church, even though is also used a basis of membership of free churches. Where in the Bible does it say that free churches have the right to make baptism a basis for membership?
A former Secretary general of the Inner Mission in Denmark, Poul Langagergaard, once said that the people who originally baptized with christening, and later let themselves be baptized in a free church with baptism of faith, "invalidates my baptism" (quoted from memory), where "My baptism", is the baptism, Langagergaard profess, so child christening.
When child christning is made invalid, the membership of the state church of Denmark is also made invalid. But in doing so, the community with Jesus Christ is fortunately not made null and void! Nor that one can be with believers across Church divisions. Biblical Christianity is, as Jesus says in John Chapter. 17, "that they all may be one...".
The question then is, how the Church can accept that people with an invalid baptism may be a member of the Church and pay church tax? Could the problem lie therein that the Church does not have a decision-making body and a singular voice externally?
We plead really urgently for help and answers in this difficult situation. We are fully valid nationals in Denmark.
With kind regards Daniela Skov and Lars Skov Krøgholt.