Last week I wrote a post about women and the Emerging church (incidentally, part of the 18th Carnival of the Feminists).
When I wrote that post, I didn’t know about Emerging Women, a two-month-old blog that boasts 33 contributors. I was pleased to see it; after all, until now I hadn’t really come across any blogs that strongly identified as Emergent that were written by women. It’s not that I’ve read every Emergent blog on the web (obviously I haven’t), and my judgement is far from scientific, but I’m just saying.
Anyway, this week there was a little bit of what we on the internets like to call drama and/or mild wank. I have to admit I have a long-time affinity for internet drama — generally watching from the sidelines, not participating, though there have been exceptions to that rule, this perhaps being one of them — and this case struck my interest. Here’s some drama amongst a group of people who pride themselves on being rational and thoughtful and good listeners. Oh, and Christian, which presumably involves something about love and guarding one’s tongue.
Last Friday, a member of the community named Sherri (whose posts are signed From the Margins) made a post entitled, “I Just Learned I’m a Minority Group?” In it, she posted a statement by Kevin Hendricks about women and the EmergentVillage.com website. Hendricks outlined a philosophy that minority groups should not be ghettoized. From the Margins took issue with the characterization of women as a “minority group” within the Emergent organization, and also, it should be noted, framed Hendricks’ remarks as the official stance of Emergent, one which had been deliberately circulated.
Not so deliberate, it turns out. Tony Jones himself replies to the post to chastize From the Margins for posting “an internal document within Emergent,” one that is “not meant to be read outside of the context of a months-long conversation on these issues, and it’s surely not meant to have one paragraph posted and subsequently mocked.” He then calls the post a “significant breach of etiquette and friendship” and disappears from the thread.
I’m not sure exactly when blog administrator Julie removed From the Margins’ post, but she did, at Emergent’s request. Emergent justifies this request saying that the email quoted by From the Margins was part of confidential correspondence with the web design firm who’s working on the new Emergent Village website.
On Wednesday, From the Margins leaves the Emerging Women blog and yesterday mizliz leaves Emergent, or “Emerg***” as she now styles it (an affectation which I might pinch, come to think).
Based on mizliz’s post it’s clear I don’t know the half of what really happened here, but I still have some comments.
First, while these public exchanges are unusual as far as internet drama goes for their overall civility and lack of direct personal attacks,
Sadly, however, this seems to validate to some extent Steve and Josh naming Tony Jones one of the Stupid Church People of the year. Steve and Josh’s rational for choosing Emergent for that honour last December was based on their soliticing funds, something which seemed to go against the grain of the non-organizational “conversation” that Emergent had purported to be. And what are we dealing with now, seven months later? Confidential memos? If this isn’t a sign that Emergent has turned into the same old hierarchical institution it originally criticized, I don’t know what is. And if all this kerfuffle isn’t a fine example of Stupid Church Behaviour… well, you know.
I’m glad to see that the Emergent leadership is taking the marginalization of women in their organization seriously. From what I’ve seen, they do realize that women are a minority — numerically in leadership as well as in sociological terms. But leaked memos? Are you kidding me? And strongarming bloggers? If Tony Jones & Co. are going to be running an institution, they need to know that once the memo is leaked there is no taking it back. (Like that object lesson we all had in Sunday School, the one where you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, you know the one.) Especially where the internet and Google caches are involved. Instead of censoring the offending post, claiming it was out of context (which surely it was) and a breach of contract (which it much less surely was), they might have posted the discussion for everyone to read. Kind of like, you know, a conversation, or something.
