Last weekend my wife and I attended a young adult Bible study at our new church. We recently moved back to Boston from New York City and, for the first time in all of our moves (and there have been plenty) we found a church on our first try. There was no church shopping or denomination hopping. We went straight for the nearest Episcopal church, St. James’ Church in Cambridge.
Episcopal dioceses that have relationships with the Episcopal Church of Sudan have begun to respond to a letter recently released by Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, in which he rescinded an invitation to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to visit with his church.
He resigned because “I couldn’t survive at this place if we went along with an injunction to kick the protesters out”. What he said at the time was that he did not want to see “Dale Farm on the steps of St Paul’s”.
I can’t determine from the distance at which I am watching this unfold whether Trinity is actually offering real aid to Occupy or engaging in the Lady Bountiful behavior that earns the parish perhaps more credit that it strictly deserves. But I know at least a little bit about crisis communications, and that the way in which organizations speak and act during crises tend to reveal—often inadvertently—their deepest values.
am more like Zechariah than I am like Mary. When the angel visits with an unexpected insight of peculiar wonder, I am much more likely to ask, “How will I know that this is so?” than I am to respond, “Let it be with me according to your word.”
They never intended to connect, listen to and support this movement in any real way. It is a re hash of their 9/11 record and as many know all too well, locally in times of social crisis, they do the right thing only if self preservation (image) requires it and even then only haltingly.