“The title of Lloyd Rediger's book is shocking, but not as much as the behavior described inside its covers. Clergy killers are people who seek to destroy the credibility, reputation, and career of pastors. Certainly, many unhappy separations of pastor and people occur without clergy killers being involved. But Rediger's clinical experience as a pastorial psychotherapist confirms what I have seen happen again and again to friends and acquaintances in the pastorate, especially in the last 20 years.... His knife sometimes cuts close to the bone. If we submit to his surgery now, however, we will be better prepared to deal with the problem of genuinely malicious attacks against pastors.
Everett L. Wilson, Christianity Today
"It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."And all male, too.
The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care. But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine—except inaction. "You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking—and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?" Definitely. Now let's see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them.I think that this is a great idea.
Like other international treaties, CEDAW amounts to a bill of rights, rights that may too often be honored in the breach, not so very different from "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We may not need those rights in exactly the same way as women facing honor killings or genital mutilation. But, as we are so quick to note on other fronts, when the United States stands up for a principle it sends a message to the world about how that principle ought to be valued. Yet while America signs off on trade treaties and refugee treaties, it refuses to join the world community in standing up for the rights of women. Today some nations in Africa and Asia far outstrip us in female political representation. Even Iraq, under our tutelage, has written into its Constitution a guarantee that 25 percent of its legislators will be women. By my count, that means someone owes me 11 senators.Sing it.
Couples like Allen and Sarah fear that their burdens are too great, too ambiguous, or too disagreeable for their friends to bear. They fear that disclosure will weaken their ties with the community of the congregation, and so they hide their situation from the friends who are most important to them.Oh, yes, we felt like that. Paul and I have received such incredible support from our families, our church, and our friends over the past 2 years. A big thank you to everyone who has been here for us.
Genetic testing adds increasing pressures to have a "perfectly healthy" baby. If testing is easy, abortion available, and social pressure strong, will that result in social discrimination against even mildly "imperfect" children? To take a specific case, could governmental and charitable dollars disappear for families raising children with Down’s Syndrome? [sic] Will, or should, insurance companies refuse to provide coverage for those with pre-existing "expensive genes?" Such cases of refusal have been reported.I fear this very much. Please vote to strengthen IDEA and similar legislation whenever possible to avoid turning our society into Gattaca. Please don't use "sped" or "tard" as insults. Please raise your kids to be sensitive to people with differences.
Dr. Robert Lebel, a medical geneticist writing in an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) publication, notes the following: "We should combat the naive assumption that these testing methods are useful only for identifying pregnancies to be targeted for termination [abortion]. Such an assumption is a grave error because it overlooks the opportunity some families appreciate—to prepare themselves psychologically, financially, spiritually, and socially for the birth of a child with a handicap. In some few instances, it also allows for specific prenatal therapeutic efforts to be undertaken. In severe conditions, with survival impossible, it may provide the basis for "do not resuscitate" plans when delivery occurs."Oh yes. But another Lutheran thinker quoted in the article, Hans Tiefel, is full of shit:
Easy for him to say. I don't see any evidence that he's ever been in this position, or has kids at all. He's also against stem cell research.He asks whether it could ever be loving to abort a seriously ill pre-born, and concludes that it could not. . . . Tiefel recognizes that this view is painful, and possibly cruel for parents of genetically affected children. The medical costs and emotional burdens can seem like more than flesh and blood can bear. Nevertheless, he argues that love may well require this of both parents and the church community.
