Correspondence:
BRADLEY, PAUL & DORSEY, GARY & PARKER, (REV.) VAN & TAYLOR, JOANNE & PURCELL, DONALD & Elie, Paul & Brown, Robert McAfee
CORRESPONDENCE There'll always be.... Palo Alto, Calif. To the Editors: No doubt your recent comments about the beauty and mystery of British postal addresses ["Et Cetera," June 2] will open the...
...Elie describes our place as a "context in which the congregants' spiritual gropings are sponsored and considered valid...
...As I already suggested, it is possible that Ms...
...ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN Poppycock...
...Taylor, is clearly on the side of "dismantling" rather than "building up an explicitly Christian community...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...I think I was right to assume that the nature of such assertions, and my critique of them, would be clear to Commonweal's readers, and not only its Catholic readers...
...I know of Ms...
...Elie's review is more than an attack on me...
...I am happy to admit that the Ms...
...DONALD PURCELL...
...Dorsey accuses me of not having read beyond his book's first few chapters, when I quoted or referred to passages from pages 301, 342, and 346 of the 388-page book...
...Dorsey's book-to write saying so...
...Also, in using the word "semiliteracy" I was echoing a running theme of Congregation: Mr...
...My name is really Joanne Taylor, unlike most others in the book, who are blended characters and pseudonyms, therefore somewhat protected...
...It's an exciting, growing, and increasingly diverse community, rooted in the gospel and willing to trust the words of the old Puritan pastor, John Robinson, who declared that "God has more light and truth to break out from his holy word...
...He claims that "on the surface, her approach is that of the smug and reductionist post-Christian intellectual who aims to dismember the dead formulae of traditions...
...Taylor, although a quiet but powerful influence at First Church, is not herself a churchgoer or perhaps not even a church member...
...None of these superficial similarities of names excuses my error...
...Fraser, Mich...
...Dorsey and Mr...
...REV...
...I'm going to miss being the pastor of this congregation...
...I can't even pray for myself...
...More specifically, to say that I am a person "who is unfamiliar with the hard sociological explanations for why people go to church and who is wary of the religious ones" is simply untrue...
...It's a killer in the true sense of death.'" Later he quoted Ms...
...Dorsey's "semiliteracy" in religious matters...
...But let me elucidate that critique for, as Ms...
...Dorsey's version of Ms...
...Dorsey's portrait...
...Second, we probably should have qualified our reference to reverse discrimination by saying that there is no evidence that it exists on a scale remotely comparable to the disabilities visited upon African-Americans by law for centuries and by society even now...
...This "Joan Rockwell" was also a member of the group Joanne Taylor led in spiritual direction...
...These remarks are drawn from the first half of the book, but in my view they reflect its overall tenor-an account of Dorsey's struggle to become more fluent in religious language and practices...
...Perhaps I was too strong in remarking on Mr...
...Writers and publishers alike often seem to forget that nonfiction books often arise naturally out of experience already lived, rather than growing out of a proposal delivered to a publisher and then followed up with a manuscript some time later...
...He claims she "shows up early for Sunday service to dance the Spirit into the empty church...
...Dorsey's necessarily limited (sixteen months) involvement with First Church, his book was primarily shaped by the logic and deadlines of journalism, not the complexities and open-ended commitments of lived Christian life...
...Elie's unkind and untrue characterization of our spiritual director, Joanne Taylor...
...And in my view of its presentation by Mr...
...I am not "semiliterate" in religious affairs, as he states...
...But my point is somewhat different...
...A person who would seek to challenge these cardinal points-as, in my view, does the Joanne Taylor found in Mr...
...Dorsey writes: "She practiced a gentle detachment that served her well leading the dramatis personae of Spirit...
...The Supreme Court has had no difficulty finding iv...
...On June 11,1 will be retiring after twenty-seven years as pastor of this wonderfully alive and caring congregation...
...PAUL ELIE It shines Potsdam, N.Y...
...Dorsey nor any First Church member called Congregationalists "God's Frozen People...
...In one passage, Dorsey wrote: "Churches, [Jo-Anne] believed, could-and often did- damage and confuse people rather than guide them...
...Your argument has all the convoluted rhetoric of prochoicers...
...I sometimes wonder if he even finished the book...
...Elie describes me as "attending worship rarely, avoiding committees and daily 'scut work,' and feeling glad that her Jaguar is in the garage of her middle-class home the day the finance committee visits...
...I hope you'll read it...
...That Mr...
...It is totally off the mark to liken Gary Dorsey to a journalist "on deadline" who didn't "have the inclination to undertake ongoing training in Christianity...
...None of these statements is true...
...It has understood the church as guiding people more than it damages them...
...Therefore, as I set out searching for a church to write about, I also went directly to the office of Professor William McKinney, dean of the Hartford Seminary and one of the nation's experts on main-(Continued on page 26) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) line American religion...
...Our apologies...
...Alongside you and yours...
...He and I talked in detail about my idea for the book and he graciously left me with an extensive bibliography, which I used to begin building a personal library of resources...
...Dor-sey's wife, Jan, who said, "Now you know why they call them 'God's Frozen People.'" It was not Joanne Taylor who showed up early to "dance the Spirit into the empty church": it was a church member given the pseudonym of "Joan" who "danced silently and alone on Monday nights in the First Church sanctuary before our services to prepare the way for leading strangers toward the Spirit...
...Dorsey's depiction in Congregation leaves the reader with the impression that Ms...
...To my knowledge, the people at First Church have never described themselves as "God's Frozen People," nor would I. Worst of all, Mr...
...This loss was made endurable by the fact that the bus stop for our flat in North Oxford was Squitchy Lane...
...Certainly I don't qualify as an expert on sociology or on the higher reaches of theological thought, but I do know something about congregational life and I know, love, and admire the people of the First Church in Windsor...
...Dorsey' s letter (and those of Mr...
...I don't have a way to say....'" • '"But was there any discernment of the event?' Joanne asked...
...This was consistent with my own good intentions...
...Simpson defense team in your assertion that "there is precious little evidence that reverse disCORRECTION: Because of a transcription error, reviewer Gene H. Bell-Villada's name was misspelled on the cover and contents page of the June 16 issue...
...Taylor and her work only through the description given in Congregation...
...That, of course, is my own interpretive description of the book, and I stand by it...
...Dorsey's struggle to articulate religious concepts and aspirations...
...Finally, Mr...
...Elie didn't seem to catch any of this surprises and saddens me...
...On to other matters: It is odd that Mr...
...Dorsey is proud of the time he spent writing his book and I don't doubt the genuineness of his commitment to it...
...Elie assumes, I am not a "typical" journalist who is forced into "deadlines" by any publication or publisher...
...Read the book Catonsville, Md...
...And it is odd that he disputes my assertion that he portrayed the congregation as "objects of Chaplinesque entertainment," when in his book he himself wrote: "If I had joined the healing group with the intent of infiltrating the mysterious culture of the church, I very quickly found its members to be a natural source of middlebrow entertainment-chaotic and Chaplinesque-despite themselves...
...Elie's wanton disparagement of me and my work I consider a wound inflicted upon spiritual direction in a Protestant setting, which grieves me, for much of my spiritual nourishment has come from Roman Catholic sources...
...Often it is not until years after an experience that a writer is truly ready to write about it, and then often years and years of writing won't be enough to get it right...
...You speak of "old-boy networks," when the proper term would be "rich boy/girl networks...
...During a similar search for housing at Oxford even earlier, I came very close to closing a deal to live at 5, Folly Bridge, but another American beat us out...
...I think my account of the difficulties of this sort of writing is largely accurate...
...VAN PARKER Not true West Hartford, Conn...
...As the spiritual director in that church, I must protest the untruths and innuendos in his writeup...
...Despite what Mr...
...Taylor has been the object, first, of what she tactfully calls Mr...
...PAUL BRADLEY The editors reply: First, if the elite is made up of rich boys and girls, we're out of it...
...Andrews Fife Scotland One correspondent said it suggested to him that the post was delivered by hummingbird...
...The part of the review that disturbs me most is Mr...
...Taylor of Congregation...
...It was my responsibility as a reviewer to call attention to these differences, and indeed to evaluate them...
...Taylor herself observed in a letter to Commonweal's editors [not published here], it has to do with our "fundamental differences in the theology of church...
...In my view his depictions of church members in many instances throughout the book are consistent with this remark, and I will gladly point out the passages to him or anyone else...
...those were my words, meant to introduce the quote that followed: instead, because of a typesetting error, they were run into the quote...
...His remark that I and other journalists who have written books about church life "have set themselves up on the road to Damascus with nothing to guide them but last week's magazines" is based on nothing but his own imaginings...
...In the book he makes the following remarks on the subject: • "I am not a person with much insight into matters of the Spirit...
...Please note: I am not saying that the church never works against the spirit, never damages people, never inflicts wounds in childhood that arrest adult spiritual growth-or that a spiritual director should never offer such criticism of the tradition...
...Having participated in half a dozen healing services, I was surprised to hear myself make a fumbling petition...
...My faulty syntax ('My wife, Jan and me, well...') didn't deter a dozen of them from coming to my side...
...Taylor's connection to First Church, however, it comes straight from the book...
...There were times, in the period following, when I wondered if the book would ever come out...
...I do not, have not, nor do I ever expect to own a Jaguar...
...Dorsey's "artistic license" and, second, of my own further isolation, compression, and emphasis of certain aspects of Mr...
...none of them appears in the book...
...As for Ms...
...Elie's malicious characterization apparently is made so that he can go on to build up his straw-man case, and conclude that "Joanne, in short, strikes the reader as the sort of person who is more interested in dismantling Christianity than in building up an explicitly Christian community...
...It is also a Christian community shaped by worship, prayer, and a genuine desire to live out Christ's message...
...If the author has left some blanks, for some reason Elie has chosen to leap in to fill those blanks with malicious, libelous comments, inferring that I am nothing less than a legitimized charlatan...
...There are indeed "fundamental differences" between my understanding of the theology of the church and Ms...
...Elie says that I saw First Church in Windsor as "anything but a church," and he quotes me as saying the congregation "comes straight from central casting...
...The reason I am not a regular attender in Windsor is that, for a number of reasons, I have chosen to retain membership in my local parish, where I have been for thirty-one years...
...But I also relied on extensive quotations from Ms.Taylor as reported in Congregation, among them her view of the church as "an institution that works against the spirit...
...Because my book is a work of narrative nonfiction, I rarely quote from any of these sources- it is my particular work as a journalist of narrative nonfiction to tell a story, not to preach, analyze, or explicate-but each of these authors and teachers informed my vision and the narrative tale of Congregation...
...If so, it was a five-year deadline because that was the time that elapsed from Gary' s first visit to my office until the publication of the book...
...Dorsey was mentioned nowhere in it, and not every trait I identified could be applied to every writer...
...She does worship regularly in the church to which she belongs...
...Contrary to what Mr...
...It was the pseudonymous "Janet Filer," organizer of the church's fund raising campaign, who said, "I guess it's a pretty good thing I hid my Jaguar in the garage," as she and the pastor sorted through the prospects...
...I don't know how to pray!' I blurted...
...I am saddened by this harmful review of my book and its attack against me and others in my profession...
...Elie says, I do believe you will find in it a fascinating story, and one rich in the themes of American religious life...
...Dorsey also takes issue with my analysis of the limits and pitfalls of the kind of book that was the subject of my review essay-the book in which a journalist enters into a religious tradition in order to write about it...
...Joanne Taylor is a highly gifted, well trained spiritual director and a deeply committed Christian...
...In fact, I was often so busy writing and researching the topic outside the confines of First Church, I pushed my "deadline" almost three years beyond my contractual arrangement with Viking Press...
...I am particularly upset by the attacks against Joanne Taylor, a wonderful woman who has been a source of wisdom and guidance to me for a number of years, and against the people at First Church, who were and have continued to be my companions on the spiritual path during an important time in the life of my family...
...GARY DORSEY A conversion story Windsor, Conn...
...I do not think that, I have never written that, I have never said that...
...Perhaps this is the place to make an obvious point...
...Because of Mr...
...Dorsey is right, he did not describe the congregants of First Church as coming "straight from central casting...
...Dorsey, Ms...
...It comes with excellent endorsements from M. Scott Peck, William McKinney, Bill McKibben, and a variety of reviewers at established newspapers from the Hartford Courant and the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Baltimore Sun...
...Let me try to beat the rush by sharing the address my family and I had during a sabbatical leave in Scotland a couple of decades ago...
...I'm sorry, that's religious lingo'" [she replied...
...First Church is an imperfect and very human place, like all congregations...
...In writing my review, I was aware that Mr...
...A portion of those resources is included in a bibliography of nearly forty books printed in the final pages of Congregation...
...To the Editors: No doubt your recent comments about the beauty and mystery of British postal addresses ["Et Cetera," June 2] will open the floodgates...
...In another instance he has confused me with another character in the book, Joan Rockwell, the dancer...
...Especially when you associate religion with ethics or morality, it's a real killer,' she said...
...I apologize to Joanne Taylor for attributing the words and actions of others to her...
...Taylor's analysis of Christian institutions is reductionistic, her judgments about churchgoing Christians' lack of awareness are harsh, and her analysis of the institution-vs.-the-spirit conflict resembles those of thinkers commonly called post-Christian...
...modern sufferers of quiet desperation" is also untrue...
...Elie seems to have come to his review with a whole host of prejudices and preconceptions...
...Spiritual direction is only recently being recovered as a discipline within the Protestant church and is now in its fledgling stages...
...Taylor's theology of church as presented approvingly in Congregation by Mr...
...that's why I qualified my statements with the phrases "on the surface" and "strikes the reader...
...It's always false...
...Parker and Ms...
...Taylor of real life may not deserve the sharp comments I directed toward the Ms...
...DONALD PURCELLp," June 2] is a genuine Commonweal gem: It gains brilliance on re-reading...
...She has been a blessing to us...
...I doubt your largesse extends quite that far...
...I don't know how...
...You speak of the "rightful place" of African-Americans in society...
...Every time I close my eyes to begin, I can't find an honest word...
...I do not "show up early for Sunday service to dance the Spirit into the empty church...
...Taylor as follows: "I saw how 'religion' crushed the spiritual lives of adults when they were children...
...He wrote, rewrote, rewrote again, read a variety of books on theology and congregational life...
...I believe that what I do in some small way serves to strengthen the life of the church...
...Dorsey's book-can fairly be seen as wanting to "dismember the dead formulae of tradition...
...to say we "don't have the inclination to undertake ongoing training in Christianity" is another harsh assumption that is without any basis in reality...
...It went: Windrush Lade Braes Walk St...
...To report that I portray them as "objects of Chaplinesque entertainment, latter-day Puritans who mock themselves as 'God's Frozen People,'" is also inaccurate, as Mr...
...My account of the difficulties of this genre, which opened the piece, was a general portrait, and a figurative one (Mr...
...To the Editors: As an Irish Catholic and long-time reader of Commonweal, as a so-called "white male" from a "Joe Six-Pack" environment (who nevertheless has degrees from several universities), and, chiefly, as the uncle of seven little "white boys" who are "affirmative action" targets-unlike the children of the "elite" from whence your tired voice emanates, as evidenced in the editorial "Action Still Needed" [June 2]-I say this: Poppycock...
...To the Editors: It is obvious in his review of Congregation that Paul Elie did not read this book with care...
...In my review I praise him at a number of points, and made many of my criticisms against a type of writing about religion rather than against any individual writer...
...I noticed, for instance, that she rarely attended worship services...
...It seemed, and still seems, a fair interpretation of Mr...
...JOANNE TAYLOR The author responds: In replying to Mr...
...In a more detailed letter to the editors, I have outlined other responses to this vicious attack on me, including some of my credentials and a description of the way I view and conduct spiritual direction, which is really very conventional...
...Dorsey's depiction of her may not have been complete...
...Let me give some others...
...To the editors and readers of Commonweal: I hope you will read Congregation for yourselves...
...To the Editors: I have just finished reading Paul Elie's review of Gary Dorsey's book, Congregation: The Journey Back to Church...
...Dorsey charges me with malice...
...These are not just general claims I am making about the Christian tradition: they are claims about the authentic nature of Christianity which I subscribe to as a Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition (the tradition of this magazine) and which are affirmed in Eastern Orthodoxy and many parts of Protestant Christianity as well...
...Neither Mr...
...Parker are surprised that I would draw conclusions that are critical about Joanne Taylor's work based on this account...
...We at the Windsor church have an understanding that this is Gary's book, painted with some artistic license-a broad-brush sketch, describing the daily comings and goings of ordinary people in a strong, healthy church, grounded more in the gospel and faith than doctrine per se...
...My husband, now retired as an Associate Conference Minister (equivalent to an auxiliary bishop) of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, feels it is the best no-nonsense, unidealistic account of life in a Protestant church since II Corinthians...
...To the Editors: I write to correct inaccuracies, misstatements, and libelous blunders made by Paul Elie in his review of my book, Congregation ["Reporters in the House of the Lord," May 19...
...Praying, studying, and being with the people of First Church has continued to convert me, and I believe that Congregation is, at bottom, a conversion story...
...Perhaps he did, but he totally missed the spirit which motivated Gary Dorsey and the deeply rooted Christian faith which is evidenced by so many in the First Church community...
...You sound like the O.J...
...While a member of our staff, she is not a member of the congregation...
...Where might that be...
...What is at issue here is a balance in one's attitude, and the balance, as presented in Mr...
...Dorsey...
...It was Mr...
...Murder is murder, and discrimination is discrimination...
...To say that we "find Christianity is more complicated than [we] had supposed" is also incorrect...
...And it has insisted on identifying religion with ethics and morality, insisted that this brings not death but life...
...Dorsey is right to say that he was not literally stranded "on the road to Damascus...
...Finally, the issue at hand has to do not with "largesse" but with fairness...
...Discernment?' [Dorsey asked...
...crimination exists...
...Dorsey denies that he depicted the church members as having "an austere dignity, these latter-day sufferers of quiet desperation...
...I might better have written that, however wide his reading, I do not think that he brought it adequately to bear on his account of First Church...
...I also want to distinguish those errors from the analysis and interpretation that were part of my responsibilities as a reviewer...
...That is why I had to reply to what I considered a very unfair and inaccurate review...
...Dorsey disputes my observation that these writers often find themselves "on deadline" by noting that he worked past his deadline ("my contractual agreement") by three years in order to spend nearly five years working on the project, nearly a third of that time at First Church...
...Elie has confused me with another character in the book and didn't "get" that the Jaguar comment was a joke, anyway...
...Thomas), I want to acknowledge and apologize for the errors in my review essay...
...Elie would have understood if he had read beyond the first few chapters...
...To set the record straight, Joanne Taylor does not own a Jaguar, nor does she "dance the Spirit" in church, and she is certainly not a "smug and reductionist post-Christian intellectual who aims to dismember the dead formulae of traditions...
...To the Editors: The William Houghton essay on work ["Apprenticeship," June 2] is a genuine Commonweal gem: It gains brilliance on re-reading...
...She made it a rule never to discuss money or church politics or anyone's private or professional life...
...For 2000 years the Christian tradition has identified the church as an institution that, far from working against the Spirit, embodies the Spirit in a unique and undeniable way...
...His actual stay with us was sixteen months...
...Finally, he says that Joanne is portrayed in the book as "feeling glad that her Jaguar is in the garage of her 'middle-class' home the day the finance committee visits...
...Among the authors: Nancy Ammerman, Robert Bellah, Peter Berger, Jackson Carroll, Robert Coles, Michael Ducey, Northrop Frye, Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas, Samuel Heilman, James Hope-well, Alasdair Maclntyre, Martin Marty, Meredith McGuire, Parker Palmer, Wade Clark Roof, David Roozen, Steve Warner, and Melvin D. Williams...
...Elie has distorted and changed facts to attack Joanne Taylor, who serves First Church as its spiritual director...
...Dorsey's text...
...First, the errors, which I very much regret...
...To characterize her as "the sort of person who is more interested in dismantling Christianity than in building up an explicitly Christian community" simply could not be further from the truth...
...That seems to me to prove my main point, which I will state differently here...
...She distanced herself from operational jobs...
...Dorsey is a writer who works hard and means well, and it is kind of Mr...
...Taylor-two of the protagonists of Mr...
...Also Mr...
...All the evidence suggests that Mr...
...Because of the intimacy and confidentiality involved in my work, I feel it best to keep a little distance...
...But it is a hard truth of religion and literature that often good intentions are only part of the story...
...The truth is, too, that when I began my research in 1989,1 realized that Christianity, even at the most local level at a mainline church, could become a very complex subject...
...Neither image came from my pen...
...despite certain flaws in existing affirmative-action programs, some of them are still needed to give African-Americans the means to achieve their rightful place in American society-which is, yes, right alongside the rest of us...
...To report that I depict the congregation as people with "an austere dignity...
...Parker and Ms...
...Joanne Taylor's name is variously spelled Joanne and Joanne in chapter six where the dancing is described, and I mixed up the names...
...We are grateful that Gary found us a hospitable place which encouraged him to return to the church...
...The truth is I spent five years working almost exclusively on Congregation, though I was at the First Church in Windsor, Connecticut, as an observer for only about a third of that time...
Vol. 122 • July 1995 • No. 13
