What kind of change?

Posted on June 10, 2012 by blgriffith

We
keep hearing so often how we must change our structures – change our
organizational, institutional way of being – because the structures of
the organization are failing us.

I don’t have a problem with
organizational change, but it is too easy to believe that the problem is
with the structure itself. Sometimes it is, but more often than not the
problem comes down to the people inhabiting the structure! The problem
is us!

WE have to change, and if we do change the old
structures may well work just fine. If we don’t change within ourselves,
all the restructuring in the world will make little difference!

Identity Politics and the ABC

Posted on April 5, 2012 by blgriffith

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke in Wales recently. On March 26th, 2012, the Archbishop visited the National Assembly of Wales and delivered a keynote address on the subject “For the common good: what is it that turns a society into a community?”. Earlier in the day, the Archbishop joined a debate with a group of 14-18 year olds who were l

WADI KHARRAR, JORDAN - FEBRUARY 20: Archbishop...

looking at the theme of identity. He summed up what he heard after a number of the young people gave speeches and presentations of their experiences and thoughts.

Below are a few paragraphs from his comments that deal with “identity politics.” I particularly like his idea that the pendulum is swinging back to where we need to refocus on what we all have in common and how that shapes our identities and how it helps us live together in common concern…

“Identity is a very slippery word, as everybody has brought out. I heard some voices raised, I think very importantly, against what people now often call ‘identity politics’: this is who I am, these are my rights, I demand that you recognise me.

“Identity politics, whether it’s the politics of feminism, whether it’s the politics of ethnic minorities, or the politics of sexual minorities, has been a very important part of the last ten or twenty years. Because, before that, I think there was a sense that diversity was not really welcome. And so minorities of various kinds and – not that it’s a minority – particularly a group of women, began to say ‘well, actually we need to say who we are in our terms, not yours’. And that led to identity politics of a very strong kind and the legislation that followed it.

“We’re now, I think, beginning to see the pendulum swinging back, and saying: well, identity politics is all very well but we’ve got to have some way of putting all that together again, and discovering what’s good for all of us, and, as I said at the beginning, sharing something of who we are with one another so as to discover more about who we are.

“That’s just one point that struck me in listening to this excellent conversation – identity isn’t just something sealed off and finished with. Identity is something we bring to the task of building up a fuller identity all the time. It’s always a work in progress, always a project, never something done with. Once we start saying ‘This is my identity and that’s it,’ then I think we’re in danger of really fragmenting the society we belong to.”

Let us affirm our faith…

Posted on April 2, 2012 by blgriffith

For those who have ears to hear! The following quote comes by way of Kendra Creasy Dean in her book, “Almost Christan: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church” (2010), p. 70. Dean was one of the researchers for the “National Study of Youth and Religion.”

“Creeds are articulated beliefs. The theologian William Placher defends the importance of creeds by citing Lionel Trilling:

‘It is probably true that when the dogmatic principle in religion is slighted, religion goes along for awhile on generalized emotion and ethical intention — morality touched by emotion – [but] then it loses the force of Its impulse and even the essence of Its Being…

‘Even if I have a warm personal relationship with Jesus, I also need an account of what’s so special about Jesus to understand why my relationship with him is so important. If I think about dedicating my life to following him, I need an idea about why he’s worth following. Without such accounts and ideas, Christian feeling and Christian behavior start to fade to generalized warm fuzziness and social conventions.'”

Find the book on Amazon.

Fetishation of Social Media

Posted on March 9, 2012 by blgriffith

An article on the HuffingtonPost, by Arianne Huffington, entitled, “Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All.” Below are some paragraphs that I thought summarized the gist of the article…

Going viral has gone viral. Social media have become the obsession of
the media. It’s all about social now: What are the latest social tools?
How can a company increase its social reach? Are reporters devoting
enough time to social? Less discussed — or not at all — is the value
of the thing going viral. Doesn’t matter — as long as it’s social. And
viral!

The media world’s fetishization of social media has reached
idol-worshipping proportions. Media conference agendas are filled with
panels devoted to social media and how to use social tools to amplify
coverage, but you rarely see one discussing what that coverage should
actually be about. As Wadah Khanfar, former Director General of Al
Jazeera, told our editors when he visited our newsroom last week, “The
lack of contextualization and prioritization in the U.S. media makes it
harder to know what the most important story is at any given time.”

Our media culture is locked in the Perpetual Now, constantly chasing
ephemeral scoops that last only seconds and that most often don’t matter
in the first place, even for the brief moment that they’re “exclusive…”

Michael Calderone about the effect that social media have had on 2012
campaign coverage. “In a media landscape replete with Twitter, Facebook,
personal blogs and myriad other digital, broadcast and print sources,”
he wrote, “nothing is too inconsequential to be made consequential…

“We are in great haste,” wrote
Thoreau in 1854, “to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to
Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate.” And today, we are in great haste to celebrate something
going viral, but seem completely unconcerned whether the thing that went
viral added one iota of anything good — including even just simple
amusement — to our lives…. We’re treating virality as a good in and of itself, moving forward for
the sake of moving. “Hey,” someone might ask, “where are you going?” “I
don’t know — but as long as I’m moving it doesn’t matter!” Not a very
effective way to end up in a better place…

“But as Twitter’s Rachael Horwitz wrote to me in an email, “Twitter’s algorithm favors novelty over popularity.”

“Indeed, to further complicate the science of trending topics, a subject
can be too popular to trend: In December of 2010, just after Julian
Assange began releasing U.S. diplomatic cables, about 1 percent of all
tweets (at the time, that would have been roughly a million tweets a
day) were about WikiLeaks, and yet #wikileaks trended so rarely that
people accused
Twitter of censorship. In fact, the opposite was true: there were too
many tweets about WikiLeaks, and they were so constant that Twitter
started treating WikiLeaks as the new normal.”

So, the question remains: as we adopt new and better ways to help people
communicate, can we keep asking what is really being communicated? And
what’s the opportunity cost of what is not being communicated while
we’re all locked in the perpetual present chasing whatever is trending?…

These days every company is hungry to embrace social media and virality,
even if they’re not exactly sure what that means, and even if they’re
not prepared to really deal with it once they’ve achieved it.

Or as Sheryl Sandberg put it,
“What it means to be social is if you want to talk to me, you have to
listen to me as well.” A lot of brands want to be social, but they don’t
want to listen, because much of what they’re hearing is quite simply
not to their liking, and, just as in relationships in the offline world,
engaging with your customers or your readers in a transparent and
authentic way is not all sweetness and light. So simply issuing a
statement saying you’re committed to listening isn’t the same thing as
listening. And as in any human relationship, there is a dark side to
intimacy.

“The campaigns can sort of distract reporters throughout the day by helping fuel these mini-stories, mini-controversies,” said the New York Times’
Jeff Zeleny. Mini-stories. Mini-controversies. Just the sort of
Twitter-friendly morsels that many in the media think are best-suited to
the new social media landscape. But that conflates the form with the
substance, and we miss the desperate need for more than snackable,
here-now-gone-in-15-minutes scoops. So we end up with a system in which
the media are being willingly led by the campaigns away from the issues
that matter and the solutions that will actually make a difference in
people’s lives. [emphsis mine]

Read the whole article.

What might this say for the Church and its obsessive, and at times pathological, preoccupation with social media? Are the same observations written in this article true for us? I hear from so many sources of younger people that older leadership in charge simply do not and will not listen (see the bold paragraph, above).

The enduring aspects of the Church in her liturgies, her patterns-of-life, and her foci mitigates against such trendy irrelevancies, yet many of us seem to think that everything must change now, often, and quickly, for its own sake, or we will be become irrelevant. Too often we think that which has endured must be sacrificed for the sake of trendy popularity. We willingly sell our patrimony for a bowl of desperately sought affirmation.

If you pay attention to what younger people are actually saying (in the aggregate), even if it isn’t what we want to hear, we might learn something that actually helps our situation. What I hear and see in the arrogate, and tell me otherwise form sources other than your own opinion, is that younger people are seeking after time-tested substance that is proven by its ability to endure and survive over time (and over time doesn’t mean over the last 30 years). We are tired of the chaos of constant change devoid of substance. What is sought are examples of real lives that demonstrate a sense of proven surety built on consequential relationships focused on something other than self.

Virality doesn’t give such things – the type of things that give meaning to one’s life and a sense of true accomplishment and worth.

Ash Wednesday… to go

Posted on March 3, 2012 by blgriffith

A colleague of mine, Fr. Robert Hendrickson, writes in his blog, The Curate’s Desk, about the recent phenomena of “Ashes-to-Go” that seems to have caught on in our Church. I think he is correct in asserting that this type of quick and temporary experience does not actually allow people to experience the power behind the form, or the act of having ashes placed on one’s forehead. The power comes from the fullness of the RIte, from the intentional, persistent, and slow working within us by the Holy Spirit as we give ourselves to the effort. Without such intention and effort, having ashes placed on one’s forehead can be simply an activity, like putting on blush, although for a presumably understood (but not likely so) different purpose. Here are a few paragraphs from his blog… a full read is well worth it!

“I worry that we are sharing only the mark of our separation from God
rather than our conviction that God dwells ever with us and that this
very dust that we are may be hallowed, sanctified, blessed, and even
assumed. This reconciliation of ourselves to God brings with it the
welcome to live in the fullness of the Christian life. We are given the
hope that “being reconciled with one another,” we may “come to the
banquet of that most heavenly Food” and receive all of the benefits of
Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. Ash Wednesday is not about our sins
alone but about our life in and with the Triune God who calls us into
true life – a life free of the mark of death.

@daylife

“This simply cannot be communicated in a drive-by encounter. The sign
of death is decisively stripped away in the Sacrament – it is that
encounter with the Christ made known in the Body at the Altar and in the
Church that is the point of Lent as we are brought into Communion and
community.

“My worry about Ashes-to-Go is that it reinforces the privatized
spirituality that plagues much of the Church. “I” do not get ashes. “We”
get ashes so that we may know ourselves, as a Body, to be marked for a
moment but saved, together, forever…

“On the plus side, I think it is absolutely vital for the Church to
find ways to engage the changing world. This may be one such way – yet I
cannot quite get comfortable with it. I am increasingly leery of the
Church’s desire to find ways to make the work of the Christian life
easier or faster – especially as it pertains to this most sombre and
needful of seasons.

“My hope though is that Ashes-to-Go really can become an entry point
and that those who receive these ashes will be drawn to the Church in a
fuller and deeper way. Perhaps this brief encounter can catalyze some
movement of the Spirit that calls the recipients to newness of life. I
look forward to talking with my friends about their experience of the
day and pray that their efforts have shared something of the fullness of
the Christian life.”

When does it all end?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by blgriffith

When God sets about renewing his Church (whether a part of the One, Holy and Apostolic Church or a Protestant denomination – or all of it as the Body of Christ), it is more often than not a very messy, nasty undertaking. Entrenched interests, “conservative” or “liberal”, fight mightily to stop it (look how the religious leaders of Jesus’ day tried to stop him and the Apostles). There comes a point through the name calling, the casting of dispersions, the casting into outer darkness, and the utter unChrist-like actions, when those most entrenched in the fighting become irreverent to the new thing that God is doing. This happens because, I think, those most enamored with their own positions become blind to what is really going on around them, under them, above them – anywhere but with them. Renewal may mean the death of everything – the end of it all. No more money! Then, perhaps, the reshaping – starting in the very hearts of very real folk – can begin in earnest.

This little rant of mine comes out of this news report of a parish that was once an Episcopal parish that decided to pull-out of the Episcopal Church, tried to keep the property that did not belong to them (according to the very Canons that they agreed to and lived under for for nearly 30-years, particularly considering the vow taken by the then Episcopal priest in charge). They lost the court battle, were told to vacate the original Episcopal congregations building, but couldn’t leave it at that.

Now, I think that much of the way all this has been handled by the national Episcopal Church, dioceses, bishop, priests, and the laity in many of these conflicts has been terrible, but this kind of thing takes the cake, so to speak.

Here is an article describing what happened in: Diocese says Elm Grove’s church’s alter vandalized by evicted group ( ElmGroveNow)
Here is the photo on Facebook of the proud perpetrator of the action: the apse and alter – (Kelsie J. Wendelberger)

Continue reading →

The New “Anglicans”?

Posted on December 7, 2011 by blgriffith

When I was in seminary (2002-2005), Gene Robinson was consecrated the new Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. I don’t believe this was any kind of “political move” or a decision by the diocese for reasons of political-correctness, but the people of the diocese voting for a priest they knew, had faith in, and considered to be faithful to the Gospel. The fact that he was gay and had a partner didn’t keep them from voting for him. There are, of course, lots of opinions about him, the diocese, and act of consecrating him a bishop in The Episcopal Church. A whole lot has happened since then.

One aspect of the outcome has been the leaving of many Episcopalians to other Christian bodies and the creation of the Anglican Church of North America – a place where disaffected Episcopalians could flee and where some of the other “Continuing Anglican” bodies could affiliate. The hope was/is that this new church would replace the Episcopal Church as the official Anglican Provencal institution. This hasn’t happened. IMHO, many of the actions taken by the four dioceses, the parishes, clergy, and people who left the Episcopal Church and their motivation proves to be very American, but not very Anglican.

One such new institution is the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). This group actually left the Episcopal Church earlier, over women’s ordination, I think. They ended up being under the authority of the Anglican Church in Rwanda. The Rwandan Church consecrated new bishops to oversee this new church institution. The Rev. Church Murphy, former Episcopalian, was one of these new bishops. He now leads/led this group of churches.

So, now, some things have happened between the House of Bishops of the Rwandan Church and now-bishop Murphy that raises the ire of Murphy and some others in the AMiA. The Primate of Rwanda went about disciplining Murphy, which, of course, Murphy didn’t like. An ultimative was give to Murphy and the consequences for non-compliance were spelled out. A couple days ago, Murphy and the other AMiA American bishops affiliated with the Rwandan Church have announced that they are splitting with the Rwandan Church. Who knows what will finally play out, but it seems that Murphy and company may end up creating yet another Protestant denomination in the U.S. – another sect.

When I moved out of American-Evangelicalism and into Anglicanism (via TEC)
in the mid-1990’s, I recognized that there was a great deal in common
between American-Evangelicalism and Anglican-Evangelicalism. One issue
that wasn’t really dealt with in my parish was the difference between
the two. I’ve come to learn the difference. There was a real failure
among priests to teach “Anglicanism” – whether Evangelical,
Anglo-Catholic, or Broad Church – and how it is distinct and different
(yet similiar) to the other traditions. I think this is an underlying
issue among a lot of folks who left, who stayed, who broke-off, etc. It
is my opinion that this is a primary reason underlying the actions of
Murphy and others.

Anglican-Evangelicals are Catholic! American-Evangelicals (within
which I was raised) are not. As a matter of fact, they are often
anti-Catholic (both in polity and with respect to the Roman Catholic
Church). I think many American-Evangelicals who came into Anglicanism
through the Episcopal Church, like myself, never learned the difference
between Anglican- and American-Evangelicalism. When the going got tough
within the Episcopal Church, many of us reacted just like
American-Evangelicals, which means there was no issue or problem
believing we could simply break-off and start our own thing, since to
divide is the time-honored American-Evangelical way of “solving” or
avoiding problems. They, we, I, didn’t act like Anglican-Evangelicals,
who because we are Catholic, simply don’t separate, break-off, or form a
whole new church. There are times when conservatives are in the
ascendency and times when liberals are, but it seems to me that a
fundamental difference within Anglicanism is that we suffer through if
we have to because the Church is the Church Catholic, period, and cannot
be divided.

Chuck Murphy and those of the AMiA
who now spurn Rwanda are simply following the path they set out on and
doing the very American-Evangelical thing. It is expected. That is how
American-Evangelicals react to so many of the interpersonal and
authoritarian problems. I say this not out of anger or bitterness toward
my former tradition, because I am very glad of it, but out of a real
desire to be authentically “Anglican.”

What does it mean to – include?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by blgriffith

From the Episcopal News Service, November 28, 2011, reported the conclusion of the disciplinary charges made against the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence:

“The Episcopal Church‘s Disciplinary Board for Bishops Nov. 28 said it cannot certify that Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence has abandoned the communion of the church.

“‘Based on the information before it, the board was unable to make the
conclusions essential to a certification that Bishop Lawrence had
abandoned the communion of the church,’ the Rt. Rev. Dorsey F. Henderson
Jr., board president, said in a statement e-mailed to Lawrence and
reporters.”

Link to the article details…

I am thankful for this. After working 20 years in higher education, I can say that I’ve found (pseudo) liberals (in name only) to be particularly exclusive and spiteful despite their demand for the right of radical “inclusion.” Whether I agree with this bishop is not the point – the point is that if we truly, honestly want a Church in the Anglican tradition of allowance of different perspectives, then he and his diocese have the absolute prerogative to be included. Whether I am personally gleeful, hurt, thankful, angry, or whatever emotion I might have related to their perspective is irrelevant. We are not a fundamentalist Church, whether the fundamentalists are liberal or conservative.

Inner Man

Posted on November 28, 2011 by blgriffith

“But even if one is content with a certain high usefulness in his chosen field, there is another phase of the whole matter. The Church has some useful information for that man which his inner being craves.

“The Church believes that the man wishes to know why the great gift of life was given him, how he may see beyond the affairs of the moment, what is expected of one so richly endowed in mind and heart, what shares he has in the improvement of the race, what he must do to enrich his own living, what thoughts he must think to understand his own relation to God and the world, what efforts he must make to gain real and durable satisfaction, what he may do to avoid the devastating sins, to whom he may appeal to quiet his conscience, how he may gain comfort in time of loss, how he must estimate necessary sacrifices, what powers he may appropriate to expand life and purpose, what unfading compensations there are for righteous effort and finally what his destiny is to be.

“The Church is the guardian of all this knowledge. Imperfectly as it may teach such traits, nevertheless that truth is its treasure.”

– George P. Atwater, “The Episcopal Church: It’s Message For Men Of Today;” pp 175-176.

Purpose

Posted on November 14, 2011 by blgriffith

In the continuing saga that is this book I’m dipping my foot into from time-to-time, the author picks up the ideas of the Church needing men and men needing the Church – the why, how, for what purpose, and all that. Here is a bit from the author concerning what the Episcopal Church in its Anglican Faith has to offer men for today (well, “today,” as the author wrote, was 1917 through the final publishing date of the book, which was into the 1940’s) and why men should be a part of the Church:

Image via Wikipedia

“…And because, if they do not [participate], they will lose sight of the central fact of Christianity and that is the life, work, and death of Jesus Christ, who reveals God to man.

“The Church believes that the man wishes to know why the great gift of life was given him, how he may see beyond the affairs of the moment, what is expected of one so richly endowed in mind and heart, what share he has in the improvement of the race, what he must do to enrich his own living, what thoughts he must think in order to understand his own relation to God and the world, what efforts he must make to gain real and durable satisfaction, what he may do to avoid the devastating sines, to whom he may appeal to quiet his conscience, how he may gain comfort in time of loss, how he must estimate necessary sacrifices, what powers he may appropriate to expand life and purpose, what unfading compensations there are for righteous effort and finally what his destiny is to be.

“The Church is the guardian of all this knowledge. Imperfectly as it may teach such truths, nevertheless that truth is its treasure.

“If this treasure of truth is drawn upon, men will enlarge their vision and fortify their lives.”

Now, I will certainly say that all the above is as appropriate and applicable for women as for men, but this book is addressed to men, specifically.

I will also say – which will be a bit of a counter to so much of what I experienced in my career in higher-education working with those enthralled with and dominated by identity-politics – that if we are to know fully how all this works and to realize it all in our lives truly, we need to admit that there are unique ways of appropriation and experience for men and for women. The sexes do not experience things the same and if we demand that they do then we lesson the full human experience.

hypersync

keeping track of life… this is my signature

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