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Stephen
I was sad to hear that Derek had died and to read that Joan has left SMC, makes me happy and underlines something of her character.
Stephen, I think you’ve misread previous posts. It wasn’t Joan who left SMC - it was her mother-in-law - “Ma Jewell” - who - unlike so many other feeble yes-men, sycophants and toe-the-liners - stood up to the SMC leaders INCLUDING Joan and in the end felt compelled to leave. The Joan you speak of here has been a pastor of an SMC branch for many years, and is it seems very central in what goes on there.
Talking of which, I do find it questionable that posters here often are happy to describe congregants as being fine upstanding and sincere humans, while blaming everything on the SMC leadership. Some blame must lie in all the people who simply let the leaders carry on as they do. All the non “Ma Jewells” still in the church must be either so fully “true believer” about the SMC modus operandi that they side with them on everything, call them “hard liners” or what you may - or instead they are clearly spineless or too gullible to call out their naked emperors. The congregation here - not just the leaders really is morally responsible at the end of the day for what is being done “in their name”. Of course there will be a proportion of them who have simply been scared and cowed into obedience on all this. But the problem is, it is the responsibility of every human being to ensure they are not being duped, are not being misled.
Nobody should get a free pass out of their responsibility to carefully question everything. The failure to do this is why we have so many problems with religious fundamentalists right now.
Clearly the character of Joan Jewell and her Waco-esque clique of self-appointed and self-declared "anointed prophets" is what constitutes the problem here.
Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2012 01:40AM by Clive.