More on Rod Dreher's poisonous behavior

Rod Dreher has displayed singularly poor judgment wherever Metropolitan Jonah has been concerned. First, he started an anonymous muck-raking web-log last year, OCA Truth, to manufacture controversy and dissent around Metropolitan Jonah's leave of absence. The anonymous web-log even went so far as to quote Rod Dreher "onymously" in its support. I could go on about how terrible the web-log was and about its ill effects, but they are well-known. If they are not, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the web-log was taken down a few months ago.

Now that Metropolitan Jonah has resigned, Dreher is again trying to engineer some controversy and clamor. He specifically states, "I wish he had gone out like Samson instead of yielding to this pack of wild dogs." First, there are many holy and prayerful men on the Synod, and I hardly think it kind to malign the entire lot as dogs. Second, Mr Dreher is a relatively recent convert with a personal connection to Metropolitan Jonah and relatively little experience in the OCA. As such, he might not realize that the OCA is bigger than Metropolitan Jonah and that the rest of us have to live here, too. Smashing everything behind Metropolitan Jonah would not be a very nice thing to do to the rest of us. When he says things like that, he comes across as a nihilist, a Jacobin, a bomb-throwing anarchist, not a "conservative". Since Metropolitan Jonah will not be throwing bombs (it seems), I sincerely hope Mr Dreher and his ilk do not take it upon themselves to start their own cultural web-log war again in the hopes of gaining... what, exactly? The kudos earned by following Apollos instead of Paul (or vice versa - I know I'd rather be on Paul's side, but that's missing the point)? Dreher says, "What they don’t understand is that they probably signed the OCA’s death warrant in so doing." Maybe, maybe not, but one way of pushing the OCA toward death is by pulling the pillars down through inflammatory web-logging, like OCA Truth, AOIUSA, and Monomakhos are notorious for (Will Monomakhos try to take out Bishop Melchizedek again?). OCANews is dead (and it served a good purpose at times, amazingly), so that leaves only one coterie of destructive internet muck-rakers.

Their personal devotion to Metropolitan Jonah and their misguided embrace of the Right's narrative of "culture war" are blinding them to reality in this case - whatever reality it is. There are very few facts and very many feelings at this point. Sources of information are biased, to put it gently, and you would do well to consider the "other side" charitably rather than call for destruction (or destructive mistrust). Or, I don't know, maybe we could just decide every single bishop on the Synod secretly wants to be an Eastern-Rite Episcopalian or something. I suppose one of those paths is easier. It's more fun to get worked up and shout about things. It's more fun to demand an explanation.

I suppose something needs to be said, but a lot of stuff has been said already and people didn't believe it. If a statement came out consistent with the narrative presented by the Synod over the last year, would it be believed? The narrative is complex; most of us have trouble following the ending of Fight Club. Perhaps it would. Would it be trusted? No. Do we demand more? Well, do we really want the full answer? I don't think it's ever wise to ask questions you don't want the answer to, and I think the answer to this likely falls in that category (largely because it is going to be boring). I concede that I am, perhaps, being a bit combative on this point. Not everybody spends as much time reading crummy web-logs as I do. A wise Russian once said, "Normal, well-balanced people do not post on web-logs." So some people out there might not have heard the conversations in the past by the Synod. Maybe they do need to say something.

This is turning into a rambling post, I do apologize, but I found a couple normal, well-balanced people commenting on this post: http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/2012/07/oca-holy-synod-appoints-archbishop.html

A couple more words on Metropolitan Jonah's resignation

I am, ultimately, fine with what happened because I have an implicit trust in my own bishop. I don't know him well, but he seems like a decent, honest man and I can trust that he is looking out for the interests of the Church at large. I don't know much about the other bishops, but I know that my own wouldn't let himself be steamrolled into accepting something he couldn't accept. The request for his resignation was, as they said, unanimous. If my bishop is behind it, I can accept it.

Not everybody can have that much trust for their own bishop. I think mine has earned it from me: I don't think a bishop demands that trust by virtue of his office, unfortunately. One large and significantly pro-Jonah part of the country does not even have a bishop right now. I might as well name names: the Diocese of the South is disenfranchised right now. With their historic ties to Metropolitan Jonah, that is only going to multiply their frustration. If I still did not have a bishop (our diocese had a vacuum for a while and would have had one longer if we did not already have a committee in place because our bishop was planning on retiring), or if I could not trust my bishop, I know that I would have a hard time with this news. Even more so if I had a personal trust in Metropolitan Jonah.

My major worry is that this will "poison the well" for some. While I am sure that Metropolitan Jonah would not encourage partisanship, I would worry that some of his partisans will view this as a call for "Metropolitan Jonah contra mundum". We already have seen Rod Dreher, formerly one of the anonymous web-loggers behind the OCA Truth propaganda site, say, "I wish he had gone out like Samson instead of yielding to this pack of wild dogs." Like Samson! This is why I am worried about Metropolitan Jonah's backers: with friends like Dreher, who needs enemies? For some reason, Dreher does not think that his journalistic promotion of the "Metropolitan Jonah contra mundum" narrative is destroying the OCA and that this is a bad thing - he sees it as Bakunin-esque creative destruction. If Metropolitan Jonah is given a diocese, especially the Diocese of the South, perhaps it will become a center for this discontent and alienate, eg, the DOS further from the rest of the OCA. Who knows? This is merely speculation and worry.

All I know is that some people are going to try to use this as an opportunity to stir up a lot of ----, apparently not realizing that a lot of us will have to live with the ---- they stir up and don't want to sit around in a pile of ---- all day. If you want to pull things down like Samson, do it in somebody else's Church.

But what is it to me? Because of my personal circumstances, I'll be with the Greeks, soon, anyway (at least, for a few years). I'm sure the OCA will have figured it all out by the time I get back, if I ever get back.

And may God have mercy on us all.

Metropolitan Jonah Resigns.

Well, that is unfortunate. I can't pretend to know what's actually going on, nor will I speculate. Of course, the OCA Truth folks (Rod Dreher and Jesse Cone), who probably hurt more than helped Metropolitan Jonah when they wrote their slimy anonymous mud-slinging web-log, will bemoan this as a grave tragedy, evidence of the corruption of the OCA, and proof of the infiltration of a "lavender mafia" or something like that.

I would only suggest that it might be more fruitful to look at it from the point of view of the letter of resignation itself: I had come to the realization long ago that that I have neither the personality nor the temperament for the position of Primate, a position I never sought nor desired. If we talk about this purely from the point of view of executive leadership, which I hate to do in a churchly context, running a national organization requires a lot of specific skills and a certain personality and temperament in addition to the virtues of a holy archpastor. Metropolitan Jonah had experience running a monastery, not running a diocese, and therefore had little chance to develop some of those skills. Holy archpastor, sure, he's got that down. He will be a valuable asset to the OCA for the next few decades, I'm sure. I don't know much about anything, but, from what little I've heard and what we've seen from the OCA, it seems plausible that we could take Metropolitan Jonah's statement here at face value rather than looking for hints of lavender or whatever.

On the Higgs boson

I got out of physics before I learned anything about the Standard Model, so I'm not going to pontificate about anything at all. This is quite obviously a grand achievement for humanity or something like that, but I wouldn't even know where it goes on the periodic table, so that's that.

I'm also not qualified to discuss philosophy or theology, but that won't stop me, so that is what I will do. The only prerequisite to discussing those subjects is a knowledge of your ignorance. Or an unbounded arrogance. I get confused sometimes. Either one works.

Apparently, some atheist web-logs are commenting on how this is a victory for Science over Religion. I was not aware of any church making any predictions about the Standard Model, but I haven't followed what Brother Guy Consolmagno has been up to lately. When one commenter on a discussion site was asked why those atheists are heralding this as a victory over religion, he said without irony:

It is a victory because as science and society advances further and further, less and less of the bible become relavent.

It is also a victory in displaying that the scientific process works, a concept a vast number of christians dont understand.

I am sure there are several other reasons, but my education and understanding of the particle isnt terribly high.

[Sic] as necessary.

I am not going to pick this apart because, in all charity, it does describe a lot of the people this person may run into.

This, however, does illustrate one of the many reasons traditional Christianity is a much better intellectual bet than modern "roll-your-own" Christianities. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and even the magisterial forms of Protestantism have a centuries-long philosophical tradition which is historically engaged with the philosophy of science and they do not have intrinsically unreasonable positions. Whether they are right or wrong, sure, is up for debate in the world, but their current intellectual tradition is going to be at least respectable.

However, non-traditional or anti-traditional Protestantisms run into a problem immediately: many of them are intrinsically anti-philosophical because of the manner in which they reject tradition. Further, their fragmented nature and small population mean that any one group is not likely to develop internally somebody capable of articulating a coherent philosophy of science which integrates with Christian theology (nor are they necessarily going to see why they need to do this). Unfortunately, philosophy is best done by trained professionals, because otherwise you are stuck reinventing the wheel (see: Ayn Rand). Theology, too, for that matter (see: Joseph Smith).

One common trap is a God-of-the-gaps: God's action in the world is relegated to areas where there is current scientific uncertainty. Unfortunately, as scientific discoveries are made, this god's powers get whittled down. The leap to not requiring a god, of course, is natural. Our uneducated atheist friend above directly alludes to this phenomenon. An Orthodox shouldn't have a problem here, but a religion with no exposure to philosophy might easily back itself into this corner. An individual Orthodox believer might believe wrongly on this point, but Orthodoxy as a whole wouldn't. We stand on the shoulders of giants, or at least acknowledge giants and try to stand near them. However, in many of these small religions, they don't believe in giants and every individual is thrown out of the street, essentially, if it's not a matter specifically addressed in their founding documents (sometimes it is, invariably with a form of populist anti-scientism, alas).

In short, it's pretty obvious that a religion with hundreds of millions of adherents across all strata of society and a two thousand year history of philosophy might fare a little better when "attacked" by scientism than an (usually) anti-philosophical 20-60 year old religion with thousands, or perhaps millions, of adherents, possibly self-selected from less educated demographics.

Legitimate Lulz from the AOI Crowd.

The American "Orthodox" Institute has give us some legitimate lulz today. Now, let me preface this entire post by saying that the views expressed here in no way have any relation whatsoever to those of my employer. Anyway, they posted a risible article titled, "The Republic is Finished and the America We Knew is Gone". Oh noetry!

Here are some of the larger gaffes (now, keep in mind these are only selections taken in isolation, please don't conceive of them as connected bits, that would do violence to the original meaning):

With this morning’s decision that Obamacare will stand as the law of the land means that America — home of the brave, land of the free — is no more. ...

The path of the free West now follows the path of Russia under the Soviets. ...

We may have to prepare for the catacombs. The government has been granted a license to control every aspect of your behavior under the rubric of the public good.

Yes, we may have to prepare for the catacombs. This is just like when the Soviet Supreme Court ruled that individuals who do not otherwise have health insurance may be required to pay a penalty if they do not purchase health insurance. And used that as a basis for murdering Christians. Better get those catacombs ready.

More seriously, I recognize that there are plenty of conservative and liberal objections to "Obamacare". It's a bit of awkward compromise legislation that nobody particularly loves. But this sort of rhetoric leaves you firmly outside the "reality-based community". Stalin killed millions of people. He killed the vast majority of Orthodox bishops and priests. This... is nothing like Stalinism. I can certainly take reasoned and reasonable criticisms of "Obamacare" seriously, but not ridiculous hyperbole hiding behind Stalin and false religious rhetoric.

Less seriously, some of the comments discuss Confederacy and buying a Confederate flag and all that. Perhaps it is just my Yankee bias, being from the Great (Anti-Slave) State of Iowa, but, to my mind, a Confederate flag is only good for burning, as it is a symbol of slavery, racism, and oppression rather than "heritage", "state's rights", or anything else that somebody might conceivably argue is not bad, much less good, much less worthy of approbation by a Christian.

And, as a reminder, there's more to apophaticism than not being $POLITICAL_IDEOLOGY.

More burnout stuff

The latest OCA Wonder is about Burnout. I glanced at the articles, they seem pretty okay.