Here's a picture of the lads - these are the camp directors - at UCG (United Church of God) meeting to plan the 2016 season of church camps for preteens and teens. President Vic Kubik comments "Great group of guys..."Indeed. But where are the women? Are women incapable of organizing things like camps? Let me tell you from personal experience, they're indispensable.
And of course, when it comes to the real work on camps, women hold those things together. But maybe things are different in the US to New Zealand.
But I doubt it.
So why no women at the top table when it comes to planning these events? Surely these old codgers could do with the perspective and balance that the other 50% of the population can bring to the table.
But I doubt the fellows in the photo even thought about it. It's just another blind spot in COG culture. The big table is a big boys' perk. The ladies should feel privileged just to serve them the coffee.
Which, Vic, is why UCGIA is spinning its wheels when it comes to engaging with the up and coming generation, ironically the very people it's trying to retain by providing a camping programme. A programme which presumably includes young women as well as young men.
Speaking of which, are any of these blokes under forty?
The picture of HWA and Loma are missing, and have been replaced and are gone. GOOD!
ReplyDeleteArmstrongites, as you already know. believe in a patriarchal system. Women and children do not count. But, even further, the common lay membership does not count. The "great group of guys" makes all the decisions for everyone. The idea of management brought by Christ called Servant Leadership is pointedly disobeyed and preached against among Armstrongites. (Usually, adherence to this principle is claimed but involves radically redefining and distorting what constitutes "service".)
ReplyDeleteAt AC Big Sandy back in the mid-Seventies, a large luxurious Faculty Locker room was built near the raquetball courts. It had wood paneling, plush carpets, a large TV and a beer keg. Although it was available to all the faculty there were, of course, unwritten rules based on the caste system. Lower levels in the faculty caste were not welcome. In fact, they had a separate, crowded locker room over the the Field House. The plush locker room was principally for the upper caste faculty members and ministers. Typically they would congregate in the "Faculty" locker room on Sundays and you would hear the whoops and hollers as they drank beer and watched football games in their men-only clubhouse. This little vignette supports the understanding of how a cult manages the privileges of the class system. It was purchased by the tithes of the common lay people who were financially stressed and who were persona non grata on the AC campus. Most would not even be permitted to look into this locker room. And I am sure that most did not know it existed.
But it became a point of internal controversy when one of the female faculty members raised the issue with Ron Kelly about how this facility could be called a Faculty Locker room when faculty women were not permitted there. It was a men's locker room. And she wanted to know what would be done to provide women faculty with a Locker Room. I am sure this kind of question was never even considered when the building of the "Faculty" locker room was planned. And I imagine that this female faculty member became suspect because of this inquiry.
The solution was belatedly to make provision for the women faculty over at the then defunct Imperial Schools. There was a locker room there that had been used by the Imperial "Faculty". As I recall, it wasn't a bad facility. But it is clear that when the term "Faculty" was used at AC in regard to privilege, it meant male faculty members exclusively to the point that female faculty members were not even an afterthought. This is called "Recapturing True Value:"
This caste system was a disgusting and non-Christian system. It is hard for me to believe now that I ever supported it ideologically and with my few dollars. But I am sure there are some damaged souls who must reminisce about it with great sentimentality. Shows you what brain washing and calculated distortion can do.
-- Neo
Ah, yes. The faculty locker room! That was where GTA and Thorny used to hold court over a couple of beers with some of the student basketball players after shooting some hoops or playing handball. My weight lifting buddies and I found out that we were not entirely invisible to them, as we had supposed. Through the walls, GTA had heard some of our jokes, and had repeated them in a very unapproving way during one of the weekly student forums. He prefaced this with the remark that, "There are some mighty sick jokes going around on campus these days. i'm going to give you an example, but I have to
ReplyDeletewarn you, don't laugh, because it isn't funny!" And then he had to start with "Hey, Bob! Did you hear that........." Of course, when he got to the punch line, I just couldn't contain myself, and did laugh, as the entire student body turned around to see who had "blasphemed" GTA's authority. Not even my buddy who had told the joke laughed! It was perhaps the most embarrassing moment of my AC tenure. Funny now, but back then????
BB
I visited one of my buddies on the custodial crew one evening back in the Seventies on the AC campus and he took me up into the Unholy of Unholies after hours. We both had a glass of beer out of the keg. "Thou shall not muzzle the ox...." As I reflect on this, it seems to me that some faculty members and ministers saw the Big Sandy campus not as an educational institution but as a kind of sports country club. This is supported by the fact that there seemed to be first rate athletic facilities on campus but few decent lecture halls. I recall the excitement that used to crackle through the atmosphere when the Dallas Cowboys were winning. I believe there is a strong sports-related pathology here if someone were to look into it. But its no worse, I guess, than the football colleges in Oklahoma, my home state.
ReplyDelete-- Neo
There may be another reason entirely.
ReplyDeletePatti Sexton, wife of United minister Rex Sexton, has had a successful business as a service to the State of Washington and the State of Oregon, caring for the mentally ill and otherwise challenged. For this reason, since she is a successful business woman, she would not have the time to engage in United planning activities: She's too busy.
It turns out that it isn't just Armstrongist minister's wives either. The wife of Rich Odegard, pastor of the New Life Church of God Seventh Day has worked for the Tacoma Rescue Mission for many years.
While Paul Wood's wife doesn't have a job outside the home, she does plan for the Seventh Day Church of God Children's activities and instruction at the Feast of Tabernacles held in Fruitland, Washington.
A Proverbs 31 wife need not be a church corporate shill and may display the talents and abilities for business in other ways that attending a meeting of this sort.
A lot of them just have more important things to do and leave it to their husbands to do the scut work.
Perhaps the new Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, can give us a clue.
ReplyDeleteMaybe United doesn't realize it's 2015 yet.
Who knows what century they are living in.
Predictably, there also don't appear to be any "colored blokes" present at the meeting, and here it is, 2015!
ReplyDeleteWe all went off to see the Wizard, and unfortunately there are still so many who never woke up from Dorothy's nightmare.
BB
What if you could also hear the conversation going on? That would be very telling. No critical thinking skills? No new thinking based on any growth in the knowledge of the Bible, History or Theology? Might it sound like you traveled back in time three or four decades?
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