An aspect of religion that I have never gotten used to is that it has a political dimension. In fact, I'd say that church politics is probably the main reason I find myself unable at present to attend church or even really to believe in a distinctively Christian theology. I adhere to it as an ethical system principally because it's what I know.

At the same time, I recognize that this perspective is naive. Politics, defined in its broadest sense as the use of power over people, is endemic to human activities. And the greater the perceived stakes, the more intense the politics.

For a fairly workaday example of church politics in action, consider two posts by "Christian Grewal," the pastor of a Toronto church whose parishioners are mainly Chinese:

More than a decade ago, most of the other Chinese churches in Toronto serviced the Cantonese-speaking community, while our church serviced the Mandarin-speaking community (Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese). Despite very different political and historical backgrounds, Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese worshippers co-existed rather peacefully in our church. Part of the reason was the fact that since coming to Canada, it was nice to worship in their own dialect; so politics and nationality took a back seat. . . .

[R]ecently all this has begun to change. In an effort to raise the numbers in his Mandarin-speaking service, a Pastor at one of our neighboring churches has taken it upon himself to label our church "Taiwanese," thus tearing open an old wound and polarizing the two groups within our church. This man would send his people over to our church, or to co-operative special services (where several Chinese churches would get together) to spread his campaign of misinformation. He would tell other pastors that there were four Chinese churches in our area and one Taiwanese one (meaning us, HWC).

Notice the subtlety in his language? He openly recruits people (especially leaders) from our congregation by visiting them in their homes or inviting them over to his church to run a Bible study. Thanks to this pastor some families have left us, and we're now known as the "Taiwanese church in Downtown Toronto." As well, the Mandarin-speaking Christian community in Downtown Toronto is now nicely split along the lines of National identity (Mainlander vs. Taiwanese). I think, for this pastor, sheep stealing is easier than actually going out and evangelizing others.

I would imagine that from God's perspective, it is a matter of indifference as to which church these parishioners attend. In other words, I don't see how anyone's spiritual well-being is intrinsically being threatened here. However, it's impossible not to sympathize with a pastor who feels his membership is being poached, and I can assuredly attest that the tactics of which he complains--and quite likely any counter-tactics he may himself adopt--are apt to create the sort of conflict that does indeed have adverse spiritual effects.

Conflict is bound to arise. The trouble with Christians--I can't speak knowledgeably of other groups--is that when it does their repertoire of skills to deal with it is no more advanced than that of others. Pastor "Grewal" seems an appealing character, based on my limited reading of his blog, and he may well be very adept in matters of this sort. But I have sure known plenty of pastors and lay leaders who weren't.

How to address the problem? I think the first step would be to go straight to the other pastor for a one-on-one. A useful guide to this sort of thing is Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999). A precis of its approach is Bruce M. Patton, Difficult Conversations With Less Anxiety and Better Results, Dispute Resolution Magazine (Summer 1999), 25-29.

Pursuing Holiness is an individual (as opposed to group) blog maintained by Laura Curtis of Metairie, Louisiana. She describes herself as "a Christian, wife, mother & business owner blogging the pursuit of holiness in daily life, bible studies, & the reconstruction of New Orleans after Katrina. I homeschool a teenager and spend too much time and money at the gun range." As you might imagine, her politics are conservative--actually libertarian, judging by her placement on the Politopia political quiz (scroll down to bottom of page).

Laura registered PursuingHoliness.com in April 2005, but her first post appeared on May 26. She filed it under the heading of Bible Study, which seems to be one of the most frequently used of the eleven categories she has created thus far. Others include Politics (which seems to have been created only in mid-November but has been frequently updated since), Sermon Notes (which seems to deal with sermons found online that appeal to her), and Christian Living. And because she lives in the New Orleans area and had to evacuate in August, there's a category devoted to Hurricane Katrina.

Her worldview might be described as Christian evangelical conservative, from what I can tell, though it's never a good idea to pigeon hole people, especially on the basis of a quick reconnaissance of their blog. Among the posts I read, my favorite was Church Speak, which deftly translates some stock evangelical phrases into their actual meaning. She gives three examples, to get the ball rolling, and asks her readers to provide more. She got no takers, which surprises me, because you could run forever with this particular thread. On the other hand, I imagine most of her readership is conservative evangelical--the echo chamber effect in blogdom is strong--and I have rarely known conservative evangelicals who had a sense of humor where church was concerned. Too bad, because few areas of life are more in need of a good dose of healthy irreverence.

According to Technorati, 91 posts link to Pursuing Holiness, which is a very respectable showing. (The number of external links is considered one of the best indicators of a blog's readership and influence, though like most things on the Internet, it's subject to manipulation.) The blog is currently a "Flappy Bird" in The Truth Laid Bear blogosphere ecosystem. As of this morning it's ranked #2913 out of all blogs listed in the TTLB ecosystem, and is credited with 83 external links.

Stumbled upon the Politopia political quiz, which asks an array of (rather leading) questions and then places you on an idealized political map. I turn out to be right on the main stream (shown on the map as an actual stream) and near the town of . . .

Centerville-You would feel most at home in Centerville, which means that you are more or less pleased the status quo-you think the US government has just about the right amount of control over your economic and personal decisions. Your neighbors include democratic and republican party leaders and others who call themselves "moderates" and "centrists."

Although I'm just getting started on this site, I've been blogging elsewhere for a full two years and am reasonably conversant with the blogosphere. I seldom read religious blogs--most of them seem little different from the ubiquitous political blogs--but since a blogroll is pretty much de rigueur I created one as soon as I began this blog, basing it on two criteria: recommendations from Belief.net (for the most part), and a broad spectrum of coverage. Doesn't mean the current selections will last for very long. I've checked them regularly and so far most have made little impression on me.

Blogs4God, "a semi-definitive list of Christians who blog"--I think they must really mean Red State Christians who blog--is a well established blog and, as they are happy to tell you, a finalist in the Best Religious Blog category of the 2005 Weblog Awards. It's competing against fourteen other blogs in this category and it occurred to me that a perusal of them ought to be a good, practical reconnaissance of the religious blogosphere. Here's the complete list, with links to the blogs in question:

Pursuing Holiness
Evangelical Outpost
Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank
Ales Rarus
Wandering Jew
The Thinklings
Blogs4God
Transforming Sermons
Internet Monk
Rome of the West
Flos Carmeli
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur
Another Think
Jay Adkins
Mere-Orthodoxy

I've as yet taken only the briefest of glances at most of these, but over the next few days I'll go through each of them and report what I find.

UPDATE, Dec. 11, 9:33 a.m. - I've posted on Pursuing Holiness and cast a vote for Best Religious Blog, which enables me to see the vote count at present (balloting is open through Dec.15, and a person--actually an IP address--can cast one ballot every 24 hours until then). The top five contenders at the moment are Evangelical Outpost (419 votes), Jay Adkins (411), Wandering Jew (197), Generous Orthodoxy (155), and Internet Monk (134).

UPDATE, Dec. 13, 4:31 p.m. - I now have profiles of two more contenders: Evangelical Outpost and Ales Rarus.

Seventy years ago today my mother was born in Norfolk, Virginia. I cannot say she led a happy life. Her childhood home was drenched in anger and abuse. Her troubled 23-year marriage ended in divorce. At age 29 she was institutionalized for several months with a mental illness diagnosed first, erroneously, as schizophrenia and later, correctly, as bipolar disorder. Ten years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The disease finally killed her a few weeks after her forty-seventh birthday.

My mother was part of the last generation of American women raised to embrace what Betty Friedan would call "the feminine mystique": the idea that a woman's highest calling was to be a wife and mother. She usually described herself as a "professional homemaker." She never read The Feminine Mystique. She didn't have to. She lived Friedan's critique of it day to day. She would like to have escaped, but hampered by her bipolar disorder in addition to the usual difficulties of women of her age and station, she stayed in the trap. But she never stopped trying to get out. She immersed herself in self-help books. She drowned herself in religion. Once or twice a year she overdosed on sleeping pills. Through it all she composed short, didactic essays on how to live life and wrote a lot of clumsy poems.

I seldom think of her without recalling these lines from Spoon River Anthology:

I AM Minerva, the village poetess,
Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
And all the more when “Butch” Weldy
Captured me after a brutal hunt.
He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
Will some one go to the village newspaper,
And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—
I thirsted so for love!
I hungered so for life!