Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
I view the paper as a thinly-veiled whitewash, attempting to cover the absurdity of an institutionalized movement which was founded on rejection of every other movement as the product of fallen humanity's organizational efforts. Somehow this new organization wasn't one at all, but a living organism. Yet every other organization by contrast was dead, lifeless, hopelessly corrupt. So you see naive statements like "no staff devoted to outreach or enrollment" when it's exactly the opposite. All those help-ful "co-workers" and "trainers" exist to suck others into the same system.
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The LC likes to make claims, saying that they are "not an organization", and it is upon such claims there is the presumption that it makes them better than anyone else. The most apparent issue is the fact that the claim about not being an organization is completely false, but the other issue is the underlying notion that a supposed lack of organization is somehow 'better'. I think that's where the trap is. The level of organization that exists within the LC is probably no different than many other groups. Larger movements need some type of organization, and the larger they get, the more things will become 'institutionalized'. I don't think that such things really make or break a group, and certainly a group cannot be judged solely based on how much structure exists within the group.
When WL came to the U.S., he stumbled upon a period of social unrest and change. It obviously worked to his advantage in terms of getting the LCM started and up on its feet. The issues that the denominations were facing at the time is what I would characterize as an inability to adapt and change with the times. This of course, was related to high levels of structure, organization and institutionalized practices. The solution to the problem, however, was very simple. Many just chose to “move on” to other groups, like
Ohio has mentioned. There was really no need to look back and criticize. But what Lee did instead of acknowledging that others had perceived the same problems and had also moved on to form their own groups, he took a cheap shot at denominations.
It made it really easy for him to paint the LCM as something vastly superior when what he was comparing it to was an institutionalized form of Christianity whose relevancy had already been called into question. Unlike others, he couldn't simply move on, he had to use every opportunity to make the LC appear to be so 'special'.