In his last book, the memoir “Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most” (2014), Professor Borg wrote: “Imagine that Christianity is about loving God. Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns, about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life.”
Mitt Romney: Mormonism, private equity, and the making of a candidate.
“He was the big man on campus,” Christensen told me. He owned an A.M.C. Javelin, the hottest car made by the auto company that his father, George Romney, had run. “He had a beautiful wife. His father was famous, he was handsome. Everybody wanted to be what Mitt was.”
.. Romney is very deeply a product of a series of interconnected, tightly enclosed worlds, with their own rules: Mormonism, business school, management consulting, private equity. Understanding him requires understanding the subcultures that produced him.
.. If the seed was planted back then, one of the lessons plainly was that you want to be the guy in the race who has the most money, not the guy who is dependent on the guy with the most money.
.. Three of Mitt Romney’s sons have Harvard M.B.A.s. I asked Eyring why so many prominent Mormons are attracted to business school. The educational ethic, he said, is “to be intellectually curious but to be practical. That will take a disproportionate portion of the population into commerce—schools of business.
.. Eyring noted that Joseph Smith’s expulsion from one state after another, and his murder in Illinois, impressed on Mormons the importance of being empowered participants in government.
.. “Most religions come to believe in the Zeus model of God. He was outside the universe and created everything. Latter-Day Saints believe that God is in the universe and his power comes from understanding the rules of the universe perfectly. Everything we learn makes us more like God. The impetus to learn is so strong because it helps us to become more like God.”
II. BUSINESS
John Howard Yoder: My Untold Story after 36 years of Silence
It was 1979, and I was 22-years-old and employed by the Mennonite Church in a leadership position. When Yoder was in his late 50’s he began a campaign of actively pursuing me as one of his proteges. I was initially flattered, until it turned ugly. Ultimately, after 2 short years of employment, I suddenly resigned from my church position and moved from Pennsylvania to California, largely as a result of Yoder’s outrageous actions directed at me. I have never looked back.
.. Persons who question why the alleged victims did not report anything are horribly naive about the depth of denial and the cover-up skills within the Mennonite Church. Or perhaps, how incapable Mennonite church leaders can become when having to deal with conflict, confrontation and deviant evil.
.. After reading the article I contacted Marlin Miller whom I had known personally through my previous work with the Church. I told him what I had experienced with Yoder and he asked me to send the cassette tape to him that I told him I possessed; I had transported the tape with me all the way to California from Pennsylvania in 1981. What was on that tape? Yoder had recorded his unique sexual philosophy for me in no less than 60 minutes, as his deep sonorous voice repeated intellectual-sounding theories about how the Mennonite Church, because it is so limited in its thinking, doesn’t understand sexual intimacy and how it was to be played out in the true community of believers. He sent that tape to me, admonishing me to keep it private, never share it with anyone, and then record over his words with my own thoughts and reactions to what he had said. I was then to send it back to him.
.. The Church will either have to morph into a new church that is far more accountable, open and accepting of all persons, or continue to die. I observe a dying Mennonite Church here in North America, because extremely talented people have lost patience with the Church and left. If you have to ask why then you need to ask some more hard questions and do a little bit more critical thinking about pacifism and whether the Mennonite Church is truly a pacifist church. Is it possible that it is just a passive church? What a humbling thought to those who have devoted their lives to the Mennonite Church. The Mennonites may no longer be the experts in pacifism, but merely experts in passivity. Confusing pacifism with passivity is a big mistake.
I Am Not Charlie Hebdo
When you are 13, it seems daring and provocative to “épater la bourgeoisie,” to stick a finger in the eye of authority, to ridicule other people’s religious beliefs.
But after a while that seems puerile. Most of us move toward more complicated views of reality and more forgiving views of others. (Ridicule becomes less fun as you become more aware of your own frequent ridiculousness.)
.. Yet, at the same time, most of us know that provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud.
.. In most societies, there’s the adults’ table and there’s the kids’ table. The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults’ table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids’ table. They’re not granted complete respectability, but they are heard because in their unguided missile manner, they sometimes say necessary things that no one else is saying.
.. Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people.