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Why Do Those Wanting to Transform an Institution Almost Always Claim the Institution…
. . .and the people who want to preserve what the institution has stood for must leave and create a new institution to preserve the values of the old institution?
The United Methodist Church, which I recently joined in the hopes of avoiding just such a fracturing, has before it a proposal to split over whether to adhere to traditional church teaching. Although the triggering issue is listed as human sexuality, sexuality is merely the surface issue for a much deeper conflict over many aspects of traditional church doctrine, the authority of scripture, the value of traditions, and questions of how God has related to His people throughout history. But this is not the thread in which to discuss the specifics of the Methodist controversy. For better details on the Methodist proposal, go to the thread entitled, “This Week in the UMC” by @jimchase.
The proposal in the UMC is just another example that (according to the proposal) the faction that seeks to retain the existing values of the institution is required to leave the existing institution and to establish a new institution, while the faction that seeks to fundamentally upend the values of the existing institution gets to claim the shell of the existing institution (the name, most of the physical property, and any people who don’t actively transfer to the new institution).
This dynamic (those who seek change get to claim the shell of the institution while those who seek to preserve what the institution has always been must leave the institution) has played out many places, most prominently universities and other churches, but also sometimes in business corporations.
Why is this? It seems to me that those who disagree with an institution’s existing principles so much that they are willing to split the institution to achieve their fundamentally different vision should be the ones forming a new institution. They aren’t really interested in the existing institution. They want a different institution. So why are they so intent on claiming an existing institution in order to transform it, rather than seeking to build a new institution?
I don’t think it’s that transforming an institution is easier than starting a new one. Fundamental transformation of the Presbyterian Church (USA) took about 40 years from first formal transformation proposal in 1978 to complete takeover in 2016. And there probably was background work going on before the first formal proposal. Some of the largest companies in the world have been built in less time than that.
One of my cynical views is that those who want a different institution understand that there is not enough public support for their desired vision on which to build a new institution. So their only hope is to take over an existing institution and remake it. My other cynical view is that they want the public “goodwill” that comes with the name of the existing institution. Although they want to change the institution to be something very different from what the name of the existing institution means, they know it will take a while before the public realizes that the name no longer means what it used to mean.
Is the value of physical property really enough to justify the effort? So, why does this dynamic keep happening?
Why don’t people who want something that does not currently exist not start a new institution, and instead take over an existing institution in order to remake the institution into something different from what the institution has always been?
Are there approaches people in existing institutions might take to reduce the possibility that the institution will be captured by those who seek to fundamentally change it?
This is not the thread to discuss the details of the proposal for splitting the United Methodist Church. For that, go to the thread by @philo.
Also, my intention is not to discuss here the correctness or incorrectness of traditionalists vs. transformation seekers. Here I am curious about why the transformation seekers keep taking over institutions rather than starting new institutions.
Published in Culture
It’s the gaying of the West. But, no worries. Normalizing sexually deviancy has never been detrimental to civilizations before. . .
It’s happening in the Catholic Church, too. Watch the German bishops.
As I stated, I blame Anthony Kennedy, but wasn’t Andrew Sullivan the one who kicked off the whole gay marriage stuff through his own view of Christianity?
I don’t think that group cared about marriage before that except for perhaps a few which adopted children.
I constantly hear Jonah Goldberg or George Will say that the Congress is supposed be the dominant branch of government, but it seems to me that is always the Supreme Court which has always been the henge-point for American history — and often one Supreme Court swing vote in a country of over 300 million people.
There is no end point. There is no distinction between the private and the public. They will put everything you have in life at stake, every day.
Further episode in the political realm, at least if a Fox News report is more or less accurate.
Democratic representative Ocasio-Cortez laments (using some rather strong language) that she and Joe Biden are both in the Democratic Party, and insists that the not-Progressives like Mr. Biden are the problem (and presumably should have to leave or be expelled).
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-slams-dem-centrists-as-tea-party-of-the-left-suggests-biden-shouldnt-be-in-same-party
Yet Rep. Ocasio-Cortez-Cortez and her fellow ideologues are the ones pushing an agenda radically different from the type of agenda the Democratic Party had traditionally advocated. Why does she think she and her fellow ideologues deserve to claim the Democratic Party and expel those who don’t agree with her? If she disapproves so strongly of what the Democratic Party has stood for, and doesn’t think she and Sen. Biden should be in the same political party, why doesn’t she start a new party? What other than power hunger justifies taking over an organization for the purpose of utterly transforming the organization?
The more I look for this dynamic, the more I see egotistical power-hungry individuals, and not people interested in the well-being of the institutions they use as vehicles for their power.
Similar to 1972. When the McGovern people took over the DNC Convention after he won the nomination, they not only disenfranchised the southern Dems at the convention, they also shut out Richard Daley and his Chicago machine as payback for the police treatment of the protestors at the 1968 convention.
Alienating the Chicago machine, along with other moderate Dems across the country, probably wasn’t the smartest idea for getting them to turn out in November (or turn out dead Chicago voters in November), but as with AOC today, the progressive Dems thought that the wave of Baby Boomers coming of age to vote, combined with the new 18-year-old voting age, would create a sea of new leftist voters. They found out differently.
One acceptable definition of reality is “that which eventually will bite progressives in the ass”
Regarding the turmoil within the United Methodist Church, I believe the above two paragraphs precisely describe the position taken by the “reformers.” It’s plain from their comments that they have a deep, sometimes life-long investment in the UMC and feel sorrow at the church’s present predicament. No one is gleefully shouting “tear it all down.” The same applies to those of us who take a more “traditional” position.
So true, which leads me to a peeve that I have when I hear someone talking about “my church.” No sir, or no ma’am, this is not “your church” or “my church” or even “our church,” it is Christ’s church. We aren’t owners, just tenants. The church (and probably most other institutions) are not our personal possessions, a fact that tends to be neglected when we start fussing over who inherits the institutional brand, and for that matter, who keeps the physical property. (I’m leaving aside the legal ramifications. That’s another matter).
I disagree. In politics most folks are egotistical and power-hungry regardless of ideology. If it can be done more easily it is a good strategy to take over an established institution with a reputable brand than to create something new yourself – it’s faster and gives you instant crediblity. The AOC types are already much of the way there – the party activist base is much more left than poor old Joe Biden. Most of my friends who are relatively apolitical but vote reflexively Democratic have no idea how dramatically the party has changed in the 21st century (a few have hopped off the train) but they’ll keep pulling the D lever so the AOC strategy makes a lot of sense.
I just found this post after your comments on my UMC post this week. This is a really interesting point. Maybe the reason this works is that taking over an existing institution can be done gradually, and the institution is up and running the whole time, while creating a new one has a high risk of failure.
I think the takeover is helped along by the fact that although pastors of both stripes have pledged to obey the Discipline, one side isn’t as likely to believe in rules and will more willingly violate them.
Colelges are in a similar situation, at least superficially. There are plenty of radical professors who openly say they want to tear down what college means, expressing an outright hostility to the tradition of higher education. The other side, I think, has too much civility to be as openly hostile to the people doing the attacking.