Gregory Wilson. The Stained Glass Jungle. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1962.
This really is not a good time for me to be writing this. I have to confess I am not an objective bystander on this issue, and am becoming more prejudiced every passing moment as I invest more and more in the subject. Nevertheless, let me rush in . . .
I remember very well early in my ministry when a friend suggested that the only way to learn about the old “machine” in the former Mississippi Conference was to read this book. Being from the North Mississippi Conference, I had only heard rumors of what our southern brethren endured during the 1950s and 60s. Later, researching my own dissertation and talking to some who had done more detailed work in the area, I came to a better understanding. However, no conversation was as eye-opening or terrifying as The Stained Glass Jungle.
Written under a pen name, TSGJ tells of the operation of a political machine in a Methodist annual conference. The rumor was, is, that it was written by a Mississippian, one whose name is always on the tip of the tongue but somehow can never be completely spoken by informants. Written while the machine was still pretty much in control of the appointive system in the Conference, I do not blame the author for using this convenient shield. I would have wanted more cover.
Ecclesiastical Power and Resolution
TSGJ is mostly about the power exercised by a Methodist ecclesiastical machine, about the way it deals out privilege, rewarding its supporters, crafting promising futures for the compliant, and the way it deals with challengers, crushing hopes and aspirations in ways that would make the robber barons of the late 19th century blush. But it also is about one man’s search to find his own soul and calling in the midst of the trappings of ecclesiastical grandeur. Though highly romanticized and sensationalized, in fact a little juicy in parts, the struggle is there – and so is its final resolution.
It is that resolution which is fulfilling, if one can accept it. On the one hand, it indicates that the machine can not be beaten. Truly, as it is written, “… the oppressor you have with you always.” (II Calamities 13:7 Ray's Standard Version) If the history of the Mississippi machine is any indication, machines can be overcome but the oppressed may well become the oppressor. New political formulations are developed and old and new loopholes are exploited, and often by those who present themselves originally as reformers, which is the exact process used to create the old machine in the first place. Theological and pragmatic justifications abound, from “insuring the matching of gifts and graces,” to “effectiveness,” to “protecting the integrity of the system.” To those in the trenches it always seems the same. I wonder how the laity picture it. How well do they feel they are being served, or are they equally complicit in the machine’s workings?
On the other hand, the answer for the individual pastor is not to be found in the ecclesiastical machine; in fact, it is beyond its power to endow. It is the calling, in the pastor’s own motivation. Whether the ecclesiastical power is fair or corrupt, credible or not, in this sense it is a placement service. Placement is opportunity. And what does God expect us to do with whatever opportunity is set before us?
Figure out whom you are going to please. Or do something else.
4/25/05