Did Social Media Just Save General Seminary?
The rewiring of American Christianity continues.
By Elizabeth Drescher
October 22, 2014 | General Theological Seminary, the oldest of ten remaining Episcopal seminaries in the United States, and the only one under the direct authority of the denomination itself, seems to have dodged a likely fatal blow this week by offering the collective reinstatement of all of eight full-time faculty members (“The GTS8") who walked out last month over an extended conflict with GTS President and Dean Kurt Dunkle. As reported here and abundantly elsewhere, Dunkle was alleged by the faculty to have created a hostile environment at the seminary both in direct expressions of sexism, racism, and homophobia and through what faculty saw as an uncollaborative and alienating leadership style. In the aftermath of the walkout, the Board of Trustees summarily fired — er, “accepted the resignations” — of all eight faculty members, who had in fact not resigned and, for good measure, had established a faculty union.
The details of the unpleasantness that ensued are extensively archived on the website of the GTS8, the hub of a canny social networking strategy that the group quickly created to facilitate communications and digital organizing.
Other news and commentary is found on the always comprehensive blog Episcopal Cafe, and round-ups of sundry press releases and public statements are available on the Episcopal News Service website.
The highlights reel includes a bizarre Facebook missive from a member of the Board of Trustees, the hiring of several replacement adjunct faculty, and the decision by noted theologian Stanley Hauerwas to withdraw from the seminary’s annual lecture series. Ominously, the firing of the eight faculty members put the seminary’s upcoming accreditation by the Association of Theological Schools in jeopardy, threatening to undermine the (expensive) education of GTS’s 70 full- and part-time students.
What seemed a death knell was sounded on Friday, when the Board of Trustees announced that it had “reaffirmed its call” of the current president and dean and, in a stinging rebuke, offered aggrieved faculty the opportunity to individually negotiate “provisional reinstatement” through the end of the academic year.
The pathos of this ordeal at a small seminary in a declining mainline denomination drew attention from seminaries and denominations in the midst of similar demographic slides and from academics across the spectrum worried about the steady erosion of the tenure system. It likewise stirred the indignation of workers’ rights advocates, who mounted a petition calling on the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, to intervene. Supporters crowdsourced funding to offset legal, communications, and other expenses incurred by the striking faculty.
All of this, by no means incidentally, played out on Facebook, Twitter, online news sites, and an abundance of blogs.
And, lo, a calm fell over the digital landscape.
Through the weekend and early this week, the situation shifted rapidly in a much more positive direction. A member of the Board of Trustees announced his resignation from the board — on Twitter. The Diocese of California passed a resolution “deploring” the firings of the GTS8. Four bishops, including two members of the GTS Board of Trustees and one ex officio member, offered — online and for all to see — expressions of regret and proposals for reconciliation.
By day’s end on Monday, October 20 the striking faculty had responded in public to what was apparently private correspondence from the president of the Board of Trustees, accepting an offer of reinstatement and an invitation to an extended period of mediated reconciliation.
Surely, the GTS8 can be seen as nothing less than inspired in their deployment of media resources that would only a decade ago have been well beyond the reach, or, for that matter, the interest, of professors at a tiny, if charming, Chelsea seminary.
The detail available to all of us on what would traditionally have been a behind-closed-doors, legalized chess game is stunning. Even tracking the hyperlinks required for a thin outline of the debacle is a dizzying task. Surely, the GTS8 can be seen as nothing less than inspired in their deployment of media resources that would only a decade ago have been well beyond the reach, or, for that matter, the interest, of professors at a tiny, if charming, Chelsea seminary. So, too, the timeframe with which the conflict moved to resolution once it began to play out across digital locales is remarkable when compared with the lack of responsiveness and progress the faculty reported as they attempted to improve their relationship with the president through the previous year.
Silence and secrecy have long been weapons wielded wantonly by those in power against those with little access to the means of broad-based communication and collaboration. As the saying goes, history is the story of those who win, but that adage seems to need reworking in the digitally-integrated world: Those whose stories speak most clearly, most truly, and most widely increasingly win … at least eventually.
This was surely the case with the clergy abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church, which became undeniable only as the internet came to life, allowing not only for the widespread publication of one harrowing story after another but the formation of distributed networks of abuse survivors and advocates. Even recently, as we’ve discussed extensively here on The Narthex, social media has brought to light ethical and leadership lapses across the religious landscape.
“The truth will out,” Shakespeare promised, but, dang, that used to take a heck of a long time.
Just shy of 500 years after the Protestant Reformation, the priesthood of all believers is finally being heard en digital social masse.
The revolt of the GTS8, however it plays out in the weeks and months ahead, has taught us all a critical lesson about transparency and its moral power. Sure, there’s all that stuff about not airing your dirty laundry in public. But when the dirty laundry seems to be the emperor’s new clothes, it’s well worth the breach in protocol.
Back into the Cone of Silence?
But there’s more than this to the digital social unfolding of the GTS8 saga. The rumbling at General brought about what we know disasters are wont to do: it invited generous collaborations and contributions among widely distributed people, some of them with only the vaguest of obvious connections to the immediate situation. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had dozens of conversations with far flung online associates that have opened rich lines of thought — not least about the poison of institutional secrecy, especially in the Church — and encouraged productive, practical, widely distributed action. I’ve witnessed friends, colleagues, and acquaintances of all sorts speaking out, and putting their money where their tweets are, about what they saw as the injustices set upon the striking faculty, the GTS student body, and the dignity of workers in general through the actions of the GTS President, Board of Trustees, and by the Episcopal Church itself.
In the early days of what we might perhaps call the Chelsea Rising, a colleague made somewhat cynical by her own experiences in the teaching machine cautioned that the remarkable openness we were all witnessing might well be short-lived, fading once the GTS8 were safely reinstated. “Get all the information you can while they’re still talking,” she said. “Once they’ve made a deal, it’ll be crickets.”
Certainly, the legal claims surrounding the incident suggest that a season of silence is likely. The Board of Trustees cannot publicly condemn the president’s alleged slurs and other reported inappropriate behavior — not without multiple, unimpeachable recordings of these, at least — lest they risk myriad legal actions from faculty, students, and staff along with the strong possibility of counter claims from Dunkle himself. One cannot help but wonder if, as Mark Driscoll did last week after his own social media fueled implosion, Dunkle will use the quiet of the planned period of reconciliation and healing to reflect his way into a voluntary resignation. Whatever happens, it does seem likely that much of the social media conversation will trail off in the days ahead.
Rewiring the Body of Christ
Still, there is a renewed ecclesiology at the heart of this networked, relational reality that bears considerable reflection for participants in a changing church. Just shy of 500 years after the Protestant Reformation, the priesthood of all believers is finally being heard en digital social masse. It will not stand, it seems, for high handed, hard hearted, magisterial leadership. It demands not mere gestures of consultation, but substantive collaboration of the sort that makes clear that we are, indeed, “all members of one body…all made to drink of one spirit.” And it now has the social technology to make that ideal much more than a spiritualized metaphor. We have seen the digital incarnation of that power on behalf of the GTS8. I expect we will see it again and again as the Church lives into the reality of contemporary life.
A profound rewiring of the Body of Christ is at work here. It seems that this newly expanded circuitry may just have saved a small seminary in Chelsea from almost certain death. It seems certain, too, that the power of this rewiring will not easily be short circuited in the wider Church such institutions serve, animated as we are by a Spirit of justice and compassion that social media allowed us to call upon these past few weeks in distributed, digitally-integrated action.
October 23 | Editorial Update
The GTS Board of Trustees has not yet responded to the letter from the GTS8, which, while expressing appreciation for the offer of reinstatement and affirming a desire to participate in a process of reconciliation and healing, also asked for measures, including the provision a an obudsperson, to help ensure that “safe space” is maintained at the seminary. Responses on Facebook and Twitter indicate that anxiety runs high among supporters of the striking faculty given silence from the Trustees. Advocates for the GTS8 continue to petition Trustees for full reinstatement of the faculty and to crowdsource funds for legal, communications, and other expenses. Supporters are also also using social media platforms to request and share prayers for a just resolution of the crisis and the healing of the seminary community.
Elizabeth Drescher is the co-editor, with Keith Anderson, of The Narthex. Learn more about her research and writing on contemporary American religion on her website. She is @edrescherphd on Twitter.
Lead photo credit: Charis Tsevis, “Typography Power,” via Flickr. CC 2.0 licensing. Photo retinted and saturated.
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