A Civil Society Forever!

Over the last few days, the idea of civil society and civil institutions has taken a hammering, or at least been struck like a gong. The reverberations still continue, but I think it is a kind of healthy clangour.

Let me describe the situation. A local women's-rights organisation was taken over at its AGM by a group of women who turned out to have a general commonality: a bunch of them were from the same Christian church from down the road. As the details emerged through the cloud of fine spittle that tends to develop around the hissing of the faucets, it turned out that a number of emails had been exchanged among some members of this latter group describing the original institution as... well, perverse in terms of sexual mores, I suppose.

This was deemed reason enough for a takeover. Many days and mutual recriminations (some probably slanderous) later, an EOGM was held and vociferously attended. The newly elected executive committee was roundly defeated in a vote of no-confidence and the old organisation, newly overturned, was back to its old self again.

The vote of no-confidence succeeded by the large margin it did simply because it had a huge and even newer coalition supporting it. Apparently, the threat of a church-based takeover of a secular organisation had stirred the pot so much that secular forces had decided to get their own back. And so they did.

Personally, what I found alarming was the fact that persons X, Y, Z and so on could just blithely take over an established institution and decide to destroy its culture because they thought it was a good idea. It happens a lot, but never with such naked and unrepentant zealotry.

So, who was right and who was wrong? Or, who was right and who was left? It is tempting to cast everything in some sort of Foucaultian power/society/sexuality/institutionality sort of model. But I think that quite simply, it is generally a good sign for those who are hoping that Atlantean society develops balls the capacity for a healthy degree of internal disagreement, debate and discussion.

What I don't agree with is that churches should be tainting themselves by taking over secular organisations. There is no Biblical precedent for it; rather, Christians are exhorted to be in the world but not of it, and to free themselves from conformity to the world and its institutions. In this, I use the word 'taint' in the sense of 'tint, colour or dye', a perfectly legitimate usage from the 16th century. Christians aren't supposed to be part of secular sides, but separate from all to the same degree.

Actually, proto-Christians were also supposed to be proto-Marxists, if you read this passage (and this one) clearly. I've always thought that Marx had cribbed his famous 1875 slogan off somebody. Naughty man.

But I don't think I saw any of the church people rushing to sell their stuff for redistribution. The American religious right tends to talk about Godless communism. I wonder if they've ever considered Godly communism before. What a powerful social framework it would be! Heh.