‘A comfortable way of caring’ instead of 'Another way of living?'

Carl Bowman presented statistics from the profile of the Church of the Brethren at the Young Center's recent 300th century conference. (read my previous post and some readers comments here) Here's the report from the Newsline for October 19, 2007:

Carl Bowman gave perhaps the most provocative paper of the conference, reporting results of a 2006 scientific survey of Church of the Brethren members in his plenary address titled, 'A Profile of the Church of the Brethren Today.' Bowman has been a professor of sociology at Bridgewater (Va.) College for many years, and is director of survey research at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

The opening phrase of the 'tagline' of the Church of the Brethren--'Another way of living'--is 'at best a hope, at worst a deception' in light of the 2006 survey, Bowman said. To support this statement he reviewed survey findings that indicate Brethren today are both conservative and progressive at the same time, he said. Many Brethren do not consider themselves to be radical, nor consider their faith to be radical or even Anabaptist or Pietist. Relatively small numbers of Brethren say they experience any conflict between Brethren ways and the larger society, he reported, and many say there is no difference between the Brethren and other mainline Christian denominations. '

Are these marks of another way of living, or the typical rural American way?' Bowman asked. 'Today, does ‘A comfortable way of caring’ really capture it?' he said, proposing with a note of sarcasm a tagline he suggested might more accurately reflect the current identity of Brethren.

What is happening to the peace witness...and to the church?

According to a report by Newsline, the 2006 Brethren Membership Profile survey found some statistics that are hard to ignore

"78 percent of frequent attenders [at Annual Conference] agree with the declaration that 'All war is sin,' while only 46 percent of non-attenders agree."

Knowing that only a small fraction of Brethren (several thousand out of over 100 thousand total members in the US) attend Annual Conference, what does this mean? As was discussed at the General Board meeting in March where these and other related data were presented,

The comment prompted one person in the meeting to offer his interpretation, that Annual Conference may not be representative of the denomination. Another person quickly offered a different interpretation: that Annual Conference and Conference attendance may be very important in creating Brethren identity.

Both interpretations talk about higher involvement in Annual Conference, which I really doubt would solve the incongruence between Conference statements and beliefs of folks in the pews. So how do we resolve this? Church discipline of those who disagree with Annual Conference? A massive exodus of the half who hold to Conference policy? Living with those who disagree, and engaging each other more? Living with those who disagree and ignore the difference? It often seems like we're practicing the last option, when that one seems to be the most damaging. All of the other possibilities are threatening as well. I don't have any answers, and maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe that's what community's for...or not. We'll just have to wait it out and see.

The real root of the problem

"If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world." I've always wondered where humanity went wrong...

Alexander Mack drops in on Brethren conference

The live webcast of the Young Center's conference for the 300th Anniversary of the Brethren was blessed with the presence of our honorable founder Alexander Mack:


Unfortunately, Brother Mack never replied, and quickly left the webcast.

i can haz radical pie?

After seeing a post on Gospel Messenger based on the lolcat phenomena, I got inspired to create my own images with the cheezburger factory and submit them to icanhascheezburger.com. Here are my creations, using pictures of my very own cats!