“One day, he’ll realize he is and was wrong. But that’s for him to figure out. You can’t change people or make them realize things they don’t want to see.” ― .
It seems I had too high of an opinion on how much I could get done, given both Thanksgiving and my recent grief. My family comes to my house for the holidays, and I try to cook way too much food. Although they offered to come up with an alternative plan, I thought it would be nice for us to do our traditional family things. It is 10 PM, and I just finished items for the morning.
I will make this short because I knew many readers would also be involved in their family gatherings. I have followed Karen Swallow Prior’s educational career from her time at Liberty Univesity. She seemed pleased to leave that institution and move to teach at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was puzzled about the move, thinking she was jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
You might remember Southeastern as the former home of Bruce Ashford, who suddenly disappeared from that institution and his job as the BFF of JD Greear and one of his vaunted elders. You know the mantra “Rules for me but not for thee” and all that jazz. TWW is still asking the question,
Where’s Brice Ashford?
We are determined to get an answer to our question, but it might involve spending too much time driving around North Carolina pursuing sightings we receive occasionally.
Back to KSP, as she is known by many… In the spring of 2023, she announced she was leaving Southeastern after a short stay. Since she is an excellent professor of English Literature, well-loved by her students, and a prolific author, I was a bit surprised (Just a little bit…)
I have no idea why she left Southeastern so quickly. Still, I wonder if the following essay she wrote for Religion News Services might give us a clue: Don’t go into a relationship — or institution — thinking you can change them.
When I saw the title, I thought back to the days when I thought I could change my former SBC church by simply helping them see how they mishandled a pedophile situation. Oh, how we carefully wrote a letter to the elders, assuming they would see the error of their ways. I’m sure many of you nod along, having experienced a similar attack, denial, and threats to involve lawyers.
Please read the full article, at the minimum, to enjoy her writing.
Many of us who seek change and to be agents of change do so by putting our hopes in the next generation. But in places where the old guard is grooming the next generation precisely in order to replace themselves with replicas of themselves, such hopes are in vain.
…I thought for a long time I could help the church (or at least my slice of it) change. I could take a community and denomination rife with racism, cronyism, misogyny and abuse and change it.
How foolish I was.
…Sometimes we don’t see who or what a person — or institution — is because of our own history, experiences, upbringing, expectations and blind spots
…here are other times when people don’t show who they are at first. Some are skilled with smoke and mirrors.
…Just as important is owning our own misplaced trust in ourselves or self-pride in thinking our influence might be greater than it possibly could be; it’s also important not to bear the responsibility for what others have done or failed to do.
Ultimately, our responsibility is to know when it’s time to shake the dust off our feet (Matthew 10:14) — and then do it — in order that we might find the people and places we can embrace as they are.
For me, I spent more than a few years shaking the dust off my feet before I found a place and people who embraced me as I am.
I hope the same for all of you, as well as KSP.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving, Dee. Praying that you will feel God’s presence during this time.
Praying that you may find comfort. It is good that you have family near; I hope that you can get some rest.
—
Re: the OP, the thought occurs to wonder what Biblical precedents there are for group repentance. Not many that come to mind; Nineveh at the warning of Jonah is the only one I can think of off top of head.
I think that change is possible, but significant change is kind of rare. “Bondage of the will” is a real thing, and it afflicts the powerful as well as the lowly. Prophets usually are not heeded.
When I was a young person starting work cross culturally I was told, “don’t fight with the culture or try to change it. You will lose.” The only change I can expect is in me and those individuals who seek change for themselves. God will empower us to change. If enough people change a culture can shift. But that can’t be our goal. Its the reason culture wars will fail. I think this its also why Jesus focused on making disciples. Because Individuals can and do change. But changing institutions? Not worth the heartache and ultimate failure. “Be the change you want to see”. And if no one follows time to move on, no matter what I may have invested in a community or institution.
“ We are determined to get an answer to our question, but it might involve spending too much time driving around North Carolina pursuing sightings we receive occasionally.”
And you can’t order a Lyft anymore and hope to find him.
Best laugh of the week!!!!
I am not just still trying to ‘shake the dust off’ but rather the caked on mud. But haven’t given up hope that I will find a new faith community to call home again.
Happy Thanksgiving to all at TWW. And Dee, I still remember the bittersweet Thanksgiving we spent 15 years ago after my father died as many family members gathered around the table. And then the next day, laid him to rest.
From KSP:
“…Sometimes we don’t see who or what a person — or institution — is because of our own history, experiences, upbringing, expectations and blind spots
“…here are other times when people don’t show who they are at first. Some are skilled with smoke and mirrors.
“…Just as important is owning our own misplaced trust in ourselves or self-pride in thinking our influence might be greater than it possibly could be; it’s also important not to bear the responsibility for what others have done or failed to do.”
And listening to the testimonies of people who have experienced what we don’t see? Maybe the little people without the degrees, published books, and pedigree? Who attempt to be heard, at their own risk?
Power is at the top. Knowledge is at the bottom. If they don’t communicate, the ship sinks. – Naval Commander David Marquet
on ‘changing’ an abusive faith community
refuse to be ‘abused’ yourself
but even more importance, think of the ‘lesson’ found in
‘The Ones Who Walked Away From OMELAS’ By Ursula K. Le Guin
because an ‘OMELAS’ situation is so much more destructive to all the souls involved who ‘know’ what is being done to the poor ‘scapegoat’ tormented and who ‘accept’ that it is the ‘price’ for their own ‘well-being’ and what kind of ‘well-being’ agrees to such an arrangement without destroying one’s own soul in the process????????
what is the value of a single human person?
Dee, life circumstances can mean we cannot have a happy holiday. Sometimes it is enough to have a blessed one. Praying for you!
Confirmation bias is really a thing. Sometimes people just cannot grasp a different view of the world. Much smarter to just move along.
For years I have advocated that those who believe women can be pastors should just leave the SBC and LCMS. There are other Baptists and other Lutherans who will welcome them. Same for those that want gay ordination or gay marriage. Stop trying to disallow other people to follow their own consciences. Find a group you are in agreement with and settle in there.
I can remember a time when folks did just that–find the place that taught what they believed the Bible said and settle there. Today more folks want to stake out their traditional turf and then try to change it.
I’d like to think we are better than that.
Meanwhile here in the Ozarks, the pecan pie is made, the cranberry sauce is made, and the celery stuffed. The turkey and gravy and dressing and yams and all the other fixings will done this afternoon, along with the rolls. Just us this year. Family all taking a quiet one at home. Some due to weather, others due to avoiding the circulating bugs, and some due to jobs. But we are so blessed. We have family, we have homes, we have food, we are not in a war zone, we have utilities, and most of all, we have Jesus.
1 – supplicate all we can
2 – share deep truths of universal or wide application with anyone open to you as person, cult ivate their company which they will be glad of,
3 – if higher ups see that its about you and your friends, either they’ll leave you alone or they won’t.
4 – It was right what you did, with that letter. You weren’t really trying to “fix” anything other than the moral rights of the victims and innocent bystanders.
5 – what I’ve seen and found out in churches, someone else knew about anyway. In some cases there are a handful that dropped out like I did (or stayed on more knowingly than the average), in some cases no-one keeps up with me from dodgy-feeling or blatantly dodgy churches.
In one instance I halted starting to report to secular authorities some matters (reverse money laundering and tricking and damaging a vulnerable person, within the stated “purpose” of the said “charity” of course, and said person hadn’t asked me to act for them anyway) because I knew it would get back to the culprits. A counsellor offered to de-radicalise me and I only stopped seeing the counsellor because of airborne cannabis outside his door (I’m allergic to it). It would have been interesting to be deradicalised (someone knows why)!
6 – Life for everyone – including encountering weird organisations – is a mixed bag, Carry on sharing with open people about deep and wide truths.
7 – Supplicate all the more. I’ve said some Glory Be’s for you!
8 – Bruce made the only intelligent contribution to the tenth anniversary volume on “A Secular Age”. My gut feeling is, he felt out of place among peers who make a point of not taking anything seriously.
9 – I think Karen was doing her students (who weren’t ringleaders) a favour for as long as she could.
10 – I think we benefit so-called “unimportant” people in an organisation as we and they pass through it. Recidivists and saboteurs might realise in retrospect, in their old age, what good you did indirectly.
Happy Thanksgiving to all from Muff Manor.
“Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
______
In this quote “Forget it” means don’t try to fix the problem because it is futile.
I think Jerusalem in the time of Ezra (the rebuilding of the Temple) also qualified.
Much more common is the corrupt system you’re trying to change from within corrupts YOU from within.
“Nowhere do we corrupt so effectively as at the very foot of The Enemy’s altar!”
— Screwtape
This one of “the little people” DOES have a degree. Plus extensive self-education from decades of being a natural speedreader.
And in my experience in-country, both of those are treated as the Sin of Witchcraft.
There are a LOT of Holy Nincompoops out there who HATE with God’s Perfect Hatred anyone smarter or more educated than themselves. Where the more Stupid and Ignorant you are, the more Godly a Christian you must be.
5 – contd – and a property fiddle (a long way off) announced to us in advance – I tried to laugh off these eccentrics with their eccentricities . . . I eventually learned the owners had to pay the court costs of the thieves . . .
Since then I space out and bells go ting ting ting when foreign and interregional connections are talked of (and often there were aggravating factors too).
Excellent work! I’ve benefitted greatly from you!
I’ve concluded “evangelicals” and the “reformed” consider themselves my inferiors but that’s not a message I’ve given them – and they have “better” degrees than mine. I just give them a sample of uniqueness and hope they’ll discover that in themselves eventually.
Headless Unicorn Guy,
Some people with power, at the top, have degrees and pedigree, but the point is, they have power. Do they listen? Where do they get their information? How do they use their platform?
People at the bottom, with neither power nor a platform, may have degrees and education and be well-read. They are definitely not necessarily stupid. What have they witnessed or experienced that is crucial information for those in power?
Ronan Farrow listened, took notes, then used his powerful platform, and a monster was stopped.
That — as in Happy Thanksgiving to all 🙂 — although I’m not part of Muff Manor, I like the name for your household, Muff Potter, so I included it. 🙂
“the old guard is grooming the next generation precisely in order to replace themselves with replicas of themselves”
Mohler begets Mohlerites … Dever begets Deverites … Chandler begets Chandlerites … etc. … the beat goes on in SBC. New Calvinist followers take on the personality of their reformed icons, rather the person of Jesus … Christlikeness is unheard of in the new reformation.
Wurdz of wizdum, seriously.
I left the LCMS and joined up with the ELCA version because they (LCMS) will not allow female pastors.
Update: all 5 Christmas trees are up. Hubby is decorating one, I will do the other two this afternoon and help him on the big one. All ten nativity sets are up. I am sorely tempted to spring for a moose set. Trying to resist. Radio is playing carols, Christmas hymns, and modern Christmas songs. Leftover turkey dinner will be lunch, chili will be supper. I decorate the whole house, even bathrooms.
After all, we are celebrating God announcing GOO will toward us. Not wrath. Good will.
We should be dancing in the streets:)
typo. make that GOOD will
“Give me your children and I will make them mine. You will pass away, but they will remain Mine.”
— Famous Austrian Cult Leader with a funny little mustache
“Better” as in “send $300 to Podunk BIBLE College diploma mill”?
Or as in “Reverend Larry awards Reverend Moe an Honorary Degree, Reverend Moe awards Reverend Curly an Honorary Degree, Reverend Curly awards Reverend Larry an Honorary Degree, Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk”?
Headless Unicorn Guy,
No! Ordinary ones, considered relevant to their current professions (in leading industries) (this is church Z). I’m proud of mine, but I did struggle in studies, and I entered employment during boom years, and I have learned a lot on jobs, as well as what many things I was always inclined to be interested in.
At two of the churches where I dropped by (churches P and Q), I had the bizarre experience of being the only under 88 AND unmarried (apart from in both places a sole 5 year old who was somebody’s great grandson).
The one I go to most, church Z, I’m their only over 48 AND unmarried AND a bit frailer than is chic. They don’t seem to like people with wide mental interests and I’m the neuro-untypical one! I’m not shaming them, I’m at ease with all sorts of people except people that aren’t at ease with me.
At church X where I wasn’t told what the row was about and I only left when I was told “the nasty people have left”, were lots of people without degrees and they were comfortable around me. I miss them but the higher ups were giving me the willies with their talk of “connections”, and general passive agressiveness, after my two churches prior to that where I had already witnessed these phenomena. (And the following church that I fled to, church Y, gave me those as well: and their leader left 8 months after I did!)
About 20 years ago there was a church (church K) that was quite badly led, but big and I’d have been safe enough if I had stuck with certain individuals, but I was shy and unassertive and feared they were too close to the leader. I went there recently out of noseyness and they have a different leader (that was in the news 10 years after I left) but seem worse except for their music. I ought to have strengthened the others till it was the real time to drop out.
So, sometimes I leave too quick, sometimes too slow (at one of my movements, 20 years too slow). I don’t give details of most of my problem places of worship because the details remain sensitive for many and in some cases were designed to make some good leaders look bad and take false blame.
And the church X leader has left as well and gone to his mentor’s region; and he was someone without a degree – which wouldn’t have mattered to me if he hadn’t been a manoeuvrer: I like “ordinary” people, I am both a second and third generation migrant (on one side) and my family didn’t have enough house rooms till I was 11. I ought to go to church X again (by bus which is easier than it was) but I have been enjoying lifts to church Z. I really don’t know whether church Z are bad weird or good weird.
““Give me your children and I will make them mine. You will pass away, but they will remain Mine.”
— Famous Austrian Cult Leader with a funny little mustache”
___________
Godwin’s Law strikes again [and again and again ]. You don’t like something expressed by people who hold different view than you? Compare them to Nazis. It works everytime [ actually, it doesn’t. ]
“…Sometimes we don’t see who or what a person — or institution — is because of our own history, experiences, upbringing, expectations and blind spots…” KSP
Someone mentioned “playbook” in the comments recently.
The “playbook” for the slick conmen monsters is out: Dr. Ruth Ben-ghiat exposes the Strongman Playbook in her researched book, “Strongmen”.
The Strongmen Playbook applies equally to men (occasionally women) in our civil, professional, and faith spheres.
Now that all is exposed, do we really feel sorry for reading adults that get caught up and entangled in the cons’ worlds? C’mon, people. Enough is enough.
Finally got the gumption to watch HBO’S “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.”
Someone commented that as the lady cult leader became increasingly delusional, her appearance, hair in particular, became increasingly picaresque.
And then her hubby was so delusional as a pilot, he accidentally downed their plane. His pilot error was loss of correct spatial orientation.
Much loss of accurate orientation going on.
And why? No wisdom.
“Does not wisdom call, And understanding raise her voice? On top of the heights beside the way, Where the paths meet, she takes her stand” (Proverbs 8:1-2).
Lack wisdom = loss of accurate orientation = wrong path (there’s been an outbreak of that in the American church)
Because TONGUES! TONGUES! TONGUES! are flashier.
Not just “downed”, dude.
Full-throttle vertical power dive into three-meter-deep water. BOOM!
Which was written as a veiled reference to a pedo scandal of the time that was being swept under the rug by what would now be called “Big-Time Influencers” in the SF Author circles Le Guin circulated in.
I must decrease, and it must increase.
Happy Thanksgiving Dee. Sorry for your loss.
KSP’s article is interesting. Would have been interesting to see what would have happened had she announced her intention to change Southeastern Seminary as she was entering.
Is KSP’s experience at Southeastern similar to what we hear about when pastoral candidates who are Calvinists obtain employment at non-Calvinistic churches and they try to change the churches upon becoming pastor?
I think her observations about herself are good ones. She probably was naive and prideful, as she says.
But the “shake the dust off your feet” application to Southeastern and the SBC is not apt. Jesus used these words toward evil people who would not receive his word. Neither Southeastern nor the SBC fit here. And her intended reformation is in no way on the level with Christ’s message.
Also, the last event that touched her life at Southeastern was her handling of Jennifer Buck’s memoir. There has never been a forthright and honest accounting of that. Of all people KSP would have been expected to be better. I actually had higher hopes for her than Danny Akin and Keith Whitfield. Ironically, that episode showed that SBC politics changer her more than she changed the SBC. And that is a real shame because she is very talented and has a lot to offer.