Have you ever tried to discuss an idea and, when mentioning that you disagree with what someone has proposed, you are told that they are a good person? This emotional blackmail is meant to end the discussion rather than risk a conversation.
All religious groups I know about seem to have many people who are afraid of conflict. They cannot distinguish between disagreement and condemnation.
Afraid to say ”no,” they live with things they cannot agree with or do jobs they do not really want to do. One day they explode. Then the situation often cannot be repaired, and the group has a problem that may take years to overcome, if it can be overcome.
Because people are afraid of conflict, religious institutions and community groups often tolerate behavior that would be unacceptable at any other level of society.
[i]I have been aware of people storming out of meetings after committing atrocious behavior, and the rest of the group then nervously wondering how they could get the offender back. Such groups operate with the unspoken belief that if they stand up against bad behavior and for their basic principles, they will not survive. The opposite, in fact, is true. One compromise leads to another, and their major goals are missed altogether, because there is no backbone in the organism.
There is no law against conflict in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. Rather than encouraging silence, the New Testament urges readers to ”speak the truth in love.” The prophets in Israel pulled no punches. Jesus is not remembered as going along with things for the sake of peace. In fact, the gospels have him on one occasion more or less ”disowning” his mother and brothers and sisters when they tried to stop him from disturbing the public mind.[/i]
I have no quarrel with the sentiment Bishop Marshall expresses (and have seen the sort of explosion of pent-up frustration that he describes in a parish context), but he doesn’t appear to offer any solution to the problem of what to do when there are fundamental differences over what constitutes “the truth.” Indeed, his comment might seem to be most appropriately directed at institutionalists like himself.
More to the point, how well does Bishop Marshall deal with dissent when he himself encounters it?
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Maybe someone who knows him can tell us.
This is a devastating takedown of the behavior and reasoning of Marshall’s own church. My guess is, he completely missed the irony.
And, is Marshall supportive of ECUSA’s agenda? He’s right that, just because somebody is a nice person, it doesn’t mean that person is right, yet this is the entire “theological” underpinning of SS blessings. It might be better use of his time writing this to Mrs. Schori rather than his local paper.
Since it made it to this site – I assume it probably made it to her desk – or at the very least to his permanent “file”. Totalitarian regiemes are very interesting. Someone ought to send each Bishop a copy of Orwell’s Animal Farm – some might even understand the parrarells.