Saturday, June 28, 2008

A Photo I've Got To Op

Separation of Church and State, Indy-style: Downtown doing the engineering side of covering this idiocy for the Big Giant Old Media Company, I noticed that the large, impressive City-County Building sits catercorner to the Disciples Center, HQ of a major Protestant denomination; from Court Street (one of the city's named alleys, supposedly a bizarre byproduct of Indiana's early, local-option approach to Prohibition*) they appear back-to-back across the alleyway. They've worked out a fine deal: the Disciples of Christ don't arrest anyone and the Police and Mayor don't preach. Some of the City-County Councilbeings have a little trouble with not-preaching part, while others seem to be having trouble with both Godliness and abiding by the law...

I hope my little camera can catch the same view my eye found Friday afternoon; the image is striking. And, for the more frothing-at-the-mouth one way or t'other, perhaps it might be a reminder that these institutions can and do co-exist quite smoothly.
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* I can't substantiate it but supposedly Indianapolis's ban of saloons included language courts held to imply forbidding them only along named streets, so the bars nailed up the front doors and hung signs out back. There are a few left that still do! But at the time, the city simply named the alleys. Sneak-y.

6 comments:

Frank W. James said...

You have to remember it was the Indianapolis chapter of the Disciples of Christ that ordained the Jim Jones whose followers made Kool-Aid the drink for them that refuse to question authority or even sanity and logic.

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Roberta X said...

Pretty kewl, hey?

Seriously, even though the Disciples are kind of loosely organized and vary from church to church, his freaky mix of relion and politics was way over their line, at the very far Left.

What I am finding about Jim Jones' religious affilation online so far is inconclusive; he appears to have been raised as a member of the Disciples but became involved with a Methodist church in early adulthood and supposedly became a student pastor at Sommerset Southside Methodist Church. (And was an ardent Communits at the same time. Crazy already? Oh, for sure. IMHO.) His ordination in the Disciples was, at best, done by a DoC congregation, a process no longer allowed by that faith and which was at that time held to apply only within the particular congregation.

In any event, I'm not holding any faith responsible for the acts of ex-members, or even their legitimately crazy members, or we'd have to give them all the cold shoulder.

Remember, I freely admit to bein' kind of tone-deaf about religion; I don't grasp the big pay-off but I do see how it makes a huge difference to some people. More power to 'em, as long as they're not runnin' abusive and/or suicide-murder cults.

The religious believe in things for which they cannot produce evidence; if you call any of them crazy on that account, you'll have to call them all crazy. And I am pretty sure there are plenty of theologians who would take understandable umbrage at so doing and argue cogently to the contrary. Right or wrong, IMHO, life's too short for that debate. Their faith neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Frank W. James said...

Yeah we were members of a congregation of D.of C. at the time and believe me, the entire episode more than shook the rafters of the organization. We left that congregation a few years later, but I know the honchos in Indy were in a quandry over the whole affair and to a certain extent were worried about assuming some sort of responsibility for his actions -- while he was in Indianapolis.

In short they realized they had been played...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

Council person McNeil will not be required to explaine her actions and I predict no legal action will be forthcoming these people are above the law.

Chuck Pergiel said...

catercorner? catercorner?? I believe the term you are looking for is kitty-corner.

Roberta X said...

Tomato, potato... Is "diagonally opposite" apposite?