[Dialogue] Who are you in the current counter-revolution?

Tue Mar 6 08:35:02 EST 2012

Jim,

Thanks for sending this.  Some assumptions come to mind that "we" held back in the day.  One is that "institutionalism," (i.e. placing the building and preservation of the institution above it's mission of service to the world) is one of the major perversions of the church.  Another, an interpretation of Richard Niebuhr, is that the word "church" points more to a social dynamic, which Niebuhr described in various ways, than to an institution with an edifice with a sign on the door.

Finally, we understood that "movements" do indeed spring up here and there throughout history, and that at some stage in their evolution they are likely to crystalize into some kind of "institutional form."  When that happens a whole new set of dynamics, problems and perversions appear.

I do not and have never advocated any kind of reform of anything that even slightly resembles going "back to" anything.  I do wonder, however, if what Bass and others have referred to as a third enlightenment, to the degree that it involves the "church" as "social dynamic," might not take the form of shedding certain institutional shackles and taking up again more of an undefined, unstructured, unfettered by dogma, hierarchy and bureaucracy kind of "movemental" presence.  I have not yet read Bass's Christianity Without Religion, but I sense this kind of "movementalism" is what Harvey Cox is talking about in The Future of Faith and, to perhaps a lesser degree, what Paul Hawken is referring to as the "largest movement in the world" in Blessed Unrest.

If what they describe is in fact what is happening, I find it quite hopeful and would be willing to stake out my position in the counter-revolution there.

Randy

"Listen to what is emerging from yourself to the course of being in the world; not to be supported by it, but to bring it to reality as it desires."
-Martin Buber (adapted)

--- On Thu, 3/1/12, James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Who are you in the current counter-revolution?
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Thursday, March 1, 2012, 5:05 PM

Today, our world is rife with social pioneering, and you miss most of it so long as you draw the line at the edge of this or that country and don't "put our arms 'round the earth"  At the same time the state of institutions is worrisome, not just nation states, but religious bodies and large corporations as well.  My life depends so much on them  Here is another voice . . .

http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/02/29/christopher-hitchens-diana-butler-bass-and-third-great-awakening#.T095KB28zKI.facebook 

Jim Wiegel

Many have tried to define creativity, to quantify and qualify it . . .  Some say it involves imagination;  Whatever your definition of creativity or the creative process, marvelous creations abound to improve our lives and inspire us Kaneko Center

401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
+1 623-363-3277 skype: jfredwiegel
jfwiegel at yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

Upcoming public course opportunities:
ToP Facilitation Methods: Feb 7-8, May 15-16, Sept 11-12, 2012
ToP Strategic Planning: Oct 9-10, 2012
The Arizona ToP Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Feb 3, 2012
Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Aug 22-24, 2012. See website for further details. 
AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP courses

--- On Thu, 3/1/12, steve har <stevehar11201 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: steve har <stevehar11201 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Dialogue] Who are you in the current counter-revolution?
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Date: Thursday, March 1, 2012, 7:31 AM

We learned this week that U.S. Catholics support President Barack
Obama’s Feb. 10 compromise on contraception in almost identical
numbers to the population as a whole. Many of those sticking with the
Catholic bishops in opposition are evangelical Protestants.

During the 1928 presidential campaign, nutty right-wing Protestants
claimed that Al Smith, the first Catholic nominated for president by a
major party, was planning to extend New York’s Holland Tunnel all the
way to the Vatican.

 Today’s tunnel would run from the Vatican to a suburban Pentecostal
megachurch. Historians are rubbing their eyes in wonder that the
spiritual and political descendants of Protestants who founded the
Know Nothing Party in the 1850s on anti-Papist ideas — who hassled not
just Al Smith but also John F. Kennedy for supposed ties to Rome — are
now embracing Catholics. Rick Santorum was recently greeted at Oral
Roberts University by an enthusiastic crowd of 4,000.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/02/republicans_are_unprotected_on035487.php

---
If you look at those models that Jim Wiegel drew up at the San Antonio
meeting last year
http://2012gatheringminds.pbworks.com/w/page/38908833/San%20Antonio%2050th%20Celebration%20Workshop
...the interesting question remains: where to stand in this
revolution? What's moral?
---
 In a counter-reformation cultural revolution like the one we seem to
be traveling in,  just who is the establishment, the dis-establishment
and the trans-establishment? What would Bonehoeffer and HR Neibuhr say
again? Who are the social pioneers?

Wondering how Mathews would teach CS1 when there is reactionary energy
for non-scientific, non-secular, and not-city values.

---
Seems like finding a place to stand like a social pioneer these days
needs both the humor of  Bill Maher and the hard-hat energy of Saul
Alinsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5HxUeoQa8s

_______________________________________________
Dialogue mailing list
Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
Dialogue mailing list
Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120306/40d08768/attachment.html>