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djonnFor those following developments regarding Sen. Obama and the remarks made by now-retired pastor Benjamin Wright:
It so happens that I grew up in a United Church of Christ church household (and attended several different UCC churches before eventually falling out of active church membership). And it seems to me that little if any of the news coverage I've heard on the matter has acknowledged a key characteristic of the UCC that provide important context for the response (or lack thereof) to the Rev. Wright's statements.
Specifically: the UCC is a denomination in which there's a very high degree of congregational autonomy -- pastors are hired and employed by each individual local church, and to the extent that there's a central denominational hierarchy, its function is almost entirely administrative rather than theological. An illustrative analogy: the Catholic church operates as a unified corporate hierarchy, in which local churches function essentially as branch offices or wholly owned subsidiaries, with everyone ultimately answerable to Corporate HQ in Vatican City. By contrast, the UCC is essentially a coalition of hundreds of local, independently owned businesses -- while they all operate under the same brand name, and have set up regional and national networks to pool resources and manage the brand, each congregation is fully self-governing.
As a result, when a UCC pastor says or does something controversial, the only people in a position to easily discipline or fire him are the members of his own congregation, which is run in much the same way as any other mid-sized nonprofit organization. Yes, this means precisely what you think it does: the committee structure and internal politics of a typical UCC church aren't all that different from, say, SFWA's....
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OBAMA SPEECH
Date: 2008-03-19 11:16 am (UTC)Why is a guy who grew up a rich kid with a Kenyan father and Southern White mother (no ties to being a slave whatsoever) lecturing Northern Whites regarding the Civil War when it was our ancestors who fought and died in the Union Army to free the slaves?
Is Obama kidding or what? Yes, Senator Obama, let’s have a discussion about race in America and then maybe you’ll understand why you are in absolute freefall against John McCain in States like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. You ripped a scab off of a wound that we didn’t deserve to have inflicted in the first place.
Lexi
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-19 01:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 02:49 am (UTC)The problem is...
Date: 2008-03-20 07:43 pm (UTC)Re: The problem is...
Date: 2008-03-20 09:26 pm (UTC)Two observations:
(1) Nowhere in that statement does Rev. Thomas actually say that he endorses or agrees with the content of Dr. Wright's comments. Essentially, Thomas is riffing on the old aphorism, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" -- though in this instance, Thomas gives very few direct clues in his text by which to judge whether or not he approves of the content of Wright's remarks.
(2) His title notwithstanding, Rev. Thomas's opinions and views are his own and no one else's. He does not and cannot speak -- nor indeed does he claim to speak -- for the views of local congregations or individual UCC members. Nor does he have the authority to discipline any UCC member congregation, pastor, or church member for engaging in political speech. The power to discipline or remove Dr. Wright from his position rests with the congregation he serves.
A clarification here for non-UCC folk: serious personnel issues involving pastors are sometimes administered at the conference level. Conferences are regional or state-level associations made up of a number of local congregations, and exist partly as administrative support for local churches, partly as conduits by which regional-level ministries and charitable activities are carried out, and partly to oversee and manage resources that require larger economies of scale to support -- for example, retreat or "church camp" facilities. But any human-resource authority a conference has over a given congregation's pastor derives from that congregation's delegation of that authority to the relevant conference officer, committee, et cetera. And insofar as I'm aware, there is no provision for either congregations or conferences to further delegate the handling of local personnel matters to the national UCC office. The hierarchy, such as it is, simply doesn't work that way.
Which isn't to say that nonsense from national UCC entities doesn't trickle down to local churches. Indeed, it's almost easier in the UCC than in a truly hierarchical denomination, because local church delegates make up a sizeable chunk of the General Synod -- and, thereby, the working groups that spin off therefrom. Example: a new hymnal whose updated "inclusive language" was apparently largely written by people who didn't understand that metric verse is supposed to scan. But local UCC churches are no more required to use that hymnal than they are to agree with such sentiments as the national administrative leadership may express, and no one will throw you out of a UCC church that does use that hymnal if you sing the traditional words to one of the badly rewritten hymns.
Thus, leaving the UCC based on disapproval of Rev. Thomas's remarks is rather like leaving the USA because the President says something you disagree with....