She s a New York dog, interjected a lot of hostility. Maybe I should take Casey to a dog psychiatrist to work out her feelings towards humans. It s a curious thing to me, and maybe to you, that the Church isn t a whole lot better than our society. For the past several years, it seems that every denomination has been embroiled in a fierce debate over homosexuality. It seems that you can split them all along roughly the same percentage of liberals and conservatives.
National gatherings appear to get nastier to the degree that they are impersonal.
Instead of being Fred or Sherri, these people become them , as in the enemy that must be defeated if the denomination is to have a future. Battle lines get drawn and everyone involved is forced to define themselves in caricatured ideological terms that no one is comfortable with. Fiery rhetoric and sharp wit are applauded. The next thing you know, you have full-blown warfare going on and there is nothing that the Media would rather cover than a good church fight. The impersonal really doesn t help us in these occasions.