Bullying and Religion

The GetReligion site is one I've only recently hooked up with; they analyse news reports that have a religious content, and see whether the reporters are really doing their job when it comes to the religious aspect. Their goal is to improve the state of religious reporting, whether it be from secular or religious sources.

Recently there was an article about bullying in schools (American schools, but I suspect some of the issues may be relevant to New Zealand). The analysis is interesting not only in its attempt to get at the facts, but also in terms of just how vast a problem bullying now is, along with it being one of the reasons why a number of students commit suicide.

We've looked at bullying and suicides on a number of occasions in this blog because they impinge on the areas of concern we have as bloggists. The blog post Bobby Ross Jr on the GetReligion site has posted is entitled 'Bullying Gays in God's Name', so it extends the concerns still wider.

At the end of the piece, Ross echoes a question another reporter asks: How do parents and schools protect vulnerable kids without turning schools into a battleground for the culture wars? It's a question we need to keep asking here in New Zealand.

Ways for congregations to drive their pastor crazy

On previous occasions we've posted about the bullying of some pastors by their congregations. This time, with only a little tongue-in-cheek, Richard Floyd sets out a fairly comprehensive list of ways in which congregations can make sure they're doing their best to drive their pastor crazy.

Unfortunately the list will be too close to home for some in ministry. Don't read this is you're already feeling low.

Floyd calls his list Ten Highly Effective Strategies for Crushing Your Pastor's Morale.

A couple of examples:

3. Make sure to have an annual customer satisfaction survey where every member of the congregation fills out an anonymous questionnaire about their views of the pastor’s performance during the previous year. Make sure all the negative (or ambiguous) comments are read aloud at several meetings, and publish them without attribution in the church newsletter.

5. Cut the mission budget to balance the budget. Better yet, ask your pastor to choose between a raise in salary or an increase in the mission budget. This would be a good subject for an extended conversation at a congregational meeting. You can never talk too much about clergy compensation at a congregational meeting.

There are some funnier ones, and some that will set your teeth on edge. One or two would make Jesus himself weep.

Pink Shirt Day: Stop Bullying Now

Well, I'm not wearing what you'd call a pink shirt today - it's more like a reddy-brown - but be that as it may, today is apparently celebrated as Pink Shirt Day, and that relates to Bullying.

I quote:

Pink Shirt Day aims to show that bullying is not ok and won't be tolerated. By encouraging the people of New Zealand to wear a Pink Shirt on the 28th of April we can help to raise awareness of bullying and show the massive amount of people who support taking a stance against bullying and believe that bullying should not be tolerated anywhere no matter what the reasons or circumstances are.

I say Amen to that. You can read a good deal more about bullying and what's being done about it on the Pink Shirt site, and also catch up with the recent Massey University study on bullying here. The latter deals primarily with workplace bullying; the Pink Shirt site is more focused on bullying in schools.

Why do bullies bully?

Bullying is an issue in the church as in the business world. It may be the minister (and his family) who are being bullied, or the minister himself who's doing the bullying. In an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Create a Bully-Free Workplace, Nathanael Fast writes:

Among targets of bullying, 40% never told their employers and, of those who did, 62% reported that they were ignored. This suggests there's a significant opportunity to increase profits and beat the competition by eliminating the prevalence of workplace bullying in your organization. But how?

The first step is to identify the root of the problem. A set of recent studies conducted with Serena Chen, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, may provide some insight. We found that power is partly to blame. However, in contrast to the old adage that "power corrupts," giving people power did not turn them into bullies. Rather, it was the simultaneous pairing of power with feelings of inadequacy that led people to lash out. In our studies, the power holders who felt personally incompetent became aggressive, not because they were power hungry or had domineering personalities but because they were trying to overcome ego threat. Put simply, bullying is a cheap way to nurse a wounded ego. [my italics]

Bullying: church, schools

Bullying is a topic that's coming increasingly to our attention within the church. This blog post about pastors being physically threatened and their families verbally abused by members of their own congregation, brought a bunch of comments in which the stories are horrendous.

Yesterday I caught up with a short video from Sweden - it has an English soundtrack - in which a young boy is seen being bullied (somewhat mildly at this stage) by some older boys.



What is interesting about the turnaround in the video is that the other older boy does something that has a ring of the Gospel about it. Sharing in the pain the victim is suffering, but in the process, turning the evil away. It would make a good starting point for a Gospel sermon, even though that isn't what the makers intended.

For a different look at the problem of bullying - in a Japanese school context - check out this video report. It runs for about 21 minutes.

Bullying, Abusive Congregations

I was alerted to this blog post on abusive congregations yesterday by a tweet from a friend on Twitter. So I'm passing it along. The post itself is fairly moderate, but the several comments that follow show an appalling problem within the church - an appalling lack of Christian behaviour from people in some congregations towards their ministers. You have to wonder if they ever pray, read their Bibles, think about Christian discipleship.

I've heard of such things with other colleagues, and experienced it myself in a somewhat less severe way when I was filling in as pastor at a former church, so it's by no means an American problem.

The post itself refers to research on the topic from the Clergy Health Initiative, and one of the people commenting adds several useful links which anyone suffering this kind of abuse should follow up.

One of the other awful things from the comments is how many of them talk about the way in which the ministers' spouses were also abused. As Paul says, if I remember rightly, Brothers (Sisters), these things should not be!

Text bullies

More than 700 million TXT messages are sent through Vodafone's network each month. Many of these are between young people - and some texts bully the recipients.

Vodafone has now annouced a new initiative to make it even easier for young people to get help with TXT bullying.

Alison Sykora, Head of Company Communications and Corporate Responsibility, says Vodafone has always worked to be proactive about ensuring young people are kept safe. Now they're providing a free TXT service to help anyone affected by bullying.

By TXTing the word 'bully' to 4001 Vodafone will be in touch to get info and investigate.

IF necessary there are a number of things Vodafone can do to help, such as warning the bully, stopping TXTing from their account, temporarily barring their account or even permanently deactivating their account.

Up till now people could TXT 777 for help. However, Sykora says, "Many young people are more comfortable sending a TXT than making a call and we're hoping this will encourage them to make contact"