Southern Ohio Episcopalians need to try again on our new mission statement.
Welcome back to my 12th Freedom for People First post at cwatts.us. I appreciate you. Check out my updated ABOUT THIS SITE page. This post is my comment on the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio's NEW mission statement survey since our new bishop arrived. Footnotes are in (#).
Empathy is the soul of democracy and crucial for expanding freedoms for all. I encourage you to make empathy (care) central to constant public discourse. All Aboard the 3:12 Empathy to Freedom Train is on page 8. Listen to Hidden Brain Innovation 2.0: The Influence You Have to learn how effectively you could expand our freedoms. Consider joining the PROJECT CARE TEAM to help me find legislative sponsors for CARE Education in your state.
Also, now is also the time to check out Indivisible's new conversation tool, Neighbor2Neighbor, and engage our Democratic neighbors and celebrate Kamala and Tim's "joy campaign."
THANK YOU. I am amazed that some of you read everything I send you. Please consider a paid subscription. If you do, I'll send you a complimentary copy of George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling's The Little Blue Book.
Democracy requires a caring society.
Otherwise it makes no sense.
If you don’t care for anyone but yourself, democracy and freedom for all make no sense.
The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio's (new) Mission Statement (1) focuses all its content on its own membership with no mention of the well-being of non-members. (2) As a priest in good standing who spent most of my ordained career in bi-stipendiary ministry, I want my faith tradition to effectively build a caring society for all faith traditions.(3) I want my faith community to politically and morally promote the duty to care for everyone’s freedoms.
However, the new mission statement ignores the non-members identified in the last two questions of our baptismal covenant,(4) i.e., “all persons” and “every human being,” respectively. Democracy makes no sense in this new mission statement.
Conservatism and progressivism are centered around social dominance or social empathy, respectively.(5) Cruel-wing conservatism promotes culture war, and care-wing (6) progressivism promotes culture diplomacy. The new mission statement doesn’t alert the public about whose moral and political side we’re on. (7) Every conversation is a moral and political conversation. The human brain was created to be biased to save our lives, i.e., yes or no, good or bad, etc. It's up to nurturers everywhere to nurture a bias toward committing to the duty to care for each other’s freedom while we’re alive.(8)
Cruel-wing conservatives could have written this mission statement because the concepts used are contested in the human brain. Conservative Christianists(9) have been telling me for the last fifty years that I’m going to hell or that I am a “baby killer” for favoring the human right to family freedom and no forced pregnancies. I want my daughters and granddaughters to be free to love and marry whomever they want and be free from fear of forced pregnancies.
My only younger brother, who has no daughters, started his Campus Crusade for Christ to save my soul while I was attending seminary fifty years ago. Just a few years ago, he called me while I was driving to a lecture by Bishop Jack Spong. He started weeping over the phone when he heard where I was going, saying, “I want to be with you in heaven, and I won’t be if you stay on this path.” Our earthly mission must be focused on caring for the entire creation versus just “us” and “our communities.”
I think the closest allies against these cruel-wing religious conservatives are progressives from other faith traditions or no faith traditions, who promote the legal duty to care for each other’s freedom and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.(10)
We accomplish two things when care-wing progressives cut the religious jargon and repeatedly, openly, and honestly make social empathy, the soul of democracy, central to our daily public discourse. First, we physically activate social empathy brain circuitry in every brain hearing or reading our writings. At the same time, we physically inhibit social dominance brain circuitry in those same brains and link our faith, facts, tradition, and policy directions to our moral worldview of social empathy.(11)
Secondly, and more importantly, if enough of us publicly engage daily, our hearers/readers, says cognitive scientist, linguist, progressive activist, and practicing Jew George Lakoff, “will give priority to the worldview that public debate evokes more strongly in their minds.”(12) In the case of progressives, that would be a caring worldview versus a cruel one.
The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio is located in the United States. It could be a strong advocate for democracy. However, this current mission statement is an outward and visible sign of our collective inward and spiritual irrelevance. We can do better.
What about something like this?
Our Southern Ohio diocese commits to Jesus' command to love our neighbors' diverse communities of nurturing families caring for each other's freedom in and out of our congregations.
It aligns with our baptismal covenant and needs promotion. More people need to be encouraged to commit to the duty to care for each other’s freedom. Send this mission statement back to the drawing board.
I appreciate you. Peace and love,
Chuck
NOTES:
(1) Mission Statement Survey Questions - https://diosohio.wufoo.com/forms/mission-statement-survey
(2) “The Diocese of Southern Ohio equips and empowers us to embody Christ and witness the Good News of God’s love transforming our communities.”
(3) United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 18, 29, and 30 - https://proempathy.us/76udhr2p.
(4) The Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer, p. 305, 1979, https://bcponline.org/
(5) Wehling, Elisabeth, Your Brain’s Politics: How the Science of Mind Explains the Political Divide, Chapter 4.1 The Physiology of Two Concepts: Social dominance and social empathy, p. 60, Imprint Academic, UK 2016.
(6) How do we normalize the care-wing frame over the left wing frame? By using it.
(7) As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is a member of ELC, has proclaimed the Golden Rule, “It’s none of your damn business (what I do with my body to protect myself).”
(8) Matthew 22:39
(9) Sullivan, Andrew, The Atlantic, “In Defense of the Word Christianist,” by the Daily Dish, 12/16/06, https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2006/12/in-defense-of-the-term-christianist/231807/
(10) CARE Education, https://proempathy.us/care
(11) IBID., Lakoff, Chapter 6.6 Values to be Mindful of: Conservative and Progressive Worldviews, p. 88.
(12) IBID., p.89
