{"id":5068,"date":"2014-12-09T00:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5068"},"modified":"2014-12-04T19:42:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T01:42:33","slug":"being-part-of-a-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5068","title":{"rendered":"BEING PART OF A GROUP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;It takes courage to stand up against your enemies. It takes more courage to stand up against your friends.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>(Peter Vardy)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Social context is huge. \u00a0It does not need to be determinative. It does seem however to be determinative many times.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I have been in and among many churches and Christian organizations. One question I&#8217;ve asked which shows the power\/influence of social cohesion is: Name one person who has raised an issue of concern about their respective church, school, etc. and was that person marginalized, fired, or promoted? I get lots of silence.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sad reality and it is the kind of thing which made Niebuhr cynical about groups, including the church. But the church can and must do better. And I know several pastors who do, so I stay sane!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;It takes courage to stand up against your enemies. It takes more courage to stand up against your friends.&#8221; (Peter Vardy) Social context is huge. \u00a0It does not need to be determinative. It does seem however to be determinative many times. I have been in and among many churches and Christian organizations. One question I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,37,69,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friendship","category-learningeducation","category-love","category-questions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5069,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068\/revisions\/5069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}