Bismarck noted that, as with sausages, it is best that the average person does not know how laws are made. The point being, of course, that both manufactures tend to be a matter of expedient, and sometimes dirty, combinations of whatever is at hand, for reasons and by means that are often far less noble or aesthetically pleasing than one would ideally wish.
So why would anyone in their right mind — let alone someone who actually is positive about their religion — get involved in ecclesiastical organization and legislation? Like, say, for example, going to a diocesan convention next weekend to discuss budgets, various resolutions, and lay the groundwork for electing the next Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado?
It’s true that there are a lot of people who avoid getting involved in the church that way, since they know in advance that seeing the sausages being made will do their personal religious life more harm than good. And it’s even more true that it’s something that burns out a lot of folks who get involved that way. It’s way, way too easy to get wrapped up in the business of the church and lose sight of the purpose of the church.
But it’s also a dirty job that someone has to do. A church, by nature, is a society, which means that it needs rules to live by. Jesus talked a lot about how people should behave toward one another, but steered way clear of how churches should be organized. (He also avoided talking about how sheep should be slaughtered or roads built, but presumably he didn’t object to either.) Paul got into the act, laying out some ground rules that (a) were mostly to correct problems that were already occuring in the early Church, (b) are pretty damned vague, and (c) are suspect because, hey, it was Paul, and sometimes he got kind of whacko about little things.
Still, if it’s sometimes a huge turn-off for the average churchgoer how their particular denomination runs things, it’s even more of a turn-off for those outside the church. When I hear people ragging on Christianity, it’s rarely on particular doctrines, and even more rarely on the key lessons that Christ taught. It’s most often on the piss-poor examples of how to implement those key lessons that have been provided by church members, organizations, and, most of all, leadership in the past two millennia.
The explosion of scandals in the Catholic Church over the last year is an example of that. The average person I read/talk with may have disagreement with Catholic doctrine (which disagreement I fully understand and often concur with), but that usually goes to the limit of “Boy, those guys running things are real reactionary dunderheads, aren’t they?”
But when you get into how the Catholic Church itself has been operating — the coverups and whitewashes by the hierarchy, the good-ol-boy and prince-of-the-church mentalities, the clear out-of-touch behavior (to be charitable) of Rome — then you get folks who are down-and-out furious, and the level of vitriol becomes staggering.
I’ve digress slightly here, but the point is that figuring out how to make a church run is a necessary evil — and one that, in its failures (and the failures of the folks doing the running), often discredits the church and the principles which it represents.
But, again, it is necessary to figure it out. Religion, Christianity in particular (since that’s what I can best speak to) is not just personal, but also social. Jesus’ greatest two commandments were to love God and also to love one’s neighbor. That means that the individual Christian really cannot just live like a hermit, but needs to interact with those around him or her. And because humans are social animals, sharing community and combining strengths. That usually means congregating with a like-minded herd, bound together by particular interpretations of what the hell those two commandments actually mean, and so you get churches — individual denominations — formed.
And, as I keep saying, that means you have to set up some internal rules as to how things run, and who does what. Even the most loving family ends up with a structure, and a set of customary assignments, chores, responsibilities, and processes for making decisions and carrying them out.
And so we end up dealing with sausage-making, because just as even in the most loving family there are differences of opinion (e.g., which TV shows should we watch this evening), so, too, there are differences of opinion even within the most homogeneous religious organization, and mechanisms need to be devised and implemented to resolve those differences. What programs within the church and in outreach to the community should be funded, and by whom, and who should oversee them, and what exactly should they do? What assistance should individual parishes provide to each other, to the diocese, and how should the diocese assist individual parishes? Who should make those decisions? How should the opinions of individual parishes (and their members) be represented? Should each parish have an equal say, or should a 5,000 member parish have a hundred times the say of a 50 member parish? How do you count members? How should leadership, if any, be selected? What sort of leadership are we looking for? Those are the sorts of issues that the diocesan convention is facing this coming weekend.
And those sorts of mundane issues don’t even include times when issues of church doctrine and belief come up at conventions (conclaves, congresses, however any ecclesiastical organization that extends beyond a single person in a single building organizes itself). The convention I’m a delegate to next weekend doesn’t have any doctrinal issues before it per se, but doctrinal issues are behind a number of the conflicts brewing below the surface — conservatives vs. liberals vs. moderates, those who lean toward central authority vs. those who lean toward distributed authority, and so forth. It has the potential to get pretty nasty — which is both a real shame (let’s remember why we’re all here, folks), but is also an indication of what happens when you get a bunch of humans in the same room who believe strongly in different things.
So why am I going? Why did I volunteer to be a delegate? Why do I want to see sausage being made?
Well, one could argue that it’s always about vanity. Recognition. The ability to be influential. To be (snort) powerful.
I can flip that around, of course, and also say that if I have certain strong beliefs, I’m ethically and morally bound to do what I can to see them put into effect (tempered, of course, by the equally strong beliefs I have about folks having to be able to make their own decisions on issues of morality).
For evil to succeed, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing. If I don’t go, then can I be sure that what I think is good is getting the representation, the voice it needs? If not, then how strongly do I really feel about it?
Watching sausages being made can be distasteful, but (if I can belabor the metaphor), it’s sometimes better to participate in their manufacture than leave it all to someone else to do it, perhaps with lesser ingredients than you’d want, or with a less wholesome recipe. Maybe it’s not something one can stomach for long, but maybe one should do it for as long as one can.
Or maybe I should just get some sleep.