Northern Plains: Interesting Analysis of the Predominant TEC Culture Riffing On Carol Gilligan
I appreciate this application of Gilligan to TECusa culture. My main quibble with Gilligan's work is that I don't grant that "rules-based" or "relationship-based" styles are partitionable by sex. So I don't grant her appellation of those categories as "girl" or "boy." I personally prefer that people simply are healthy and functional -- which is what the Gospel of Christ works towards, no matter our bias towards either style. Whatever it was that Gilligan describes was generally massively unhealthy and dysfunctional -- whether a man or woman practiced it.
In the case of TECusa, it's a bunch of women and men [who can forget the simpering, hand-rubbing, wildly-affected Secretary who led General Convention business in 2009, not to mention Griswold] who have finally acquired some power and are massively corrupt and abusive. What covers that abuse, corruption, and power-expression is merely their style-du-jour, which in this case is a lot of babble about relationships and dialogue, rather like a man who abuses his wife talking a lot about love and caring and roses.
Anyway, Tim Fountain is just blogging up a storm, and I'm catching back up on his work -- make sure you read the entire piece:
In the case of TECusa, it's a bunch of women and men [who can forget the simpering, hand-rubbing, wildly-affected Secretary who led General Convention business in 2009, not to mention Griswold] who have finally acquired some power and are massively corrupt and abusive. What covers that abuse, corruption, and power-expression is merely their style-du-jour, which in this case is a lot of babble about relationships and dialogue, rather like a man who abuses his wife talking a lot about love and caring and roses.
Anyway, Tim Fountain is just blogging up a storm, and I'm catching back up on his work -- make sure you read the entire piece:
Our Diocesan clergy deployment officer, back from a national meeting, said that the Episcopal Church projects an all-female clergy in the not so distant future. The Presiding Bishop of the denomination and its ranking lay officer are women. One seminary is run by a lesbian who goes around making speeches about the "holy work" of abortion. The "gate keepers" to ordination and to positions of authority in the church are an increasingly small group of women.
Have they brought peace, harmony and vital community to the denomination?
No, just the opposite. Record numbers of sanctions - many of them with questionable application of church law - have been imposed on clergy. About 10% of the denomination's active members have left to form a separate denominational structure. Millions of mission and ministry dollars are being cannibalized from the denominational budget to sue these dissenters, in cases sprawling all over the country. The denomination's members are the oldest and among the whitest, most affluent and most female in America. "Relational" correlates with monochrome.
Lest you think I'm engaging in impressionistic generalities, here's something more concrete: the denomination just changed its disciplinary rules to massively expand the Presiding Bishop's subjective authority over the church, while calling it "pastoral reconciliation."
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