#MeToo, Power Disparities, and Why the Church Is Struggling to Help

This would be an ideal moment for a holistic Christian ethic that focuses on the rich theology of relationships and marriage.

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Before I begin, an announcement. The Dispatch’s Sarah Isgur and I have launched a new podcast. It’s called Advisory Opinions, and it’s a weekly (at least) look at law and culture through the lens of two attorneys who’ve spent our fair share of time in the political and legal trenches. Sarah is brilliant. Our latest episode addresses, among other things, the British election, the inspector general’s report, and the conservative porn wars. Give it a listen!

Now, on to the Sunday newsletter … 

Many years ago, when I was but a young lad practicing law, I had a fascinating conversation with one of the leading divorce attorneys in Nashville. For the first time in my young career, I’d been pulled into a sprawling divorce case (our client owned a large business, and the value of the business was at issue in his divorce), and at dinner one evening—after a long day of depositions—his lead counsel in the divorce started telling stories. 

(As a total aside, if you’ve never enjoyed a long dinner with a southern trial lawyer, it’s your loss. They have the best stories, and they tell them in the best way.)

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  1. Avatar photo
    WKDawson

    I appreciate that the editors allowed this idea to have a chance and I hope that it will flurish.

    I was happy to see you bring up the matter of male-female relations in the work place. One of the problems in the main stream is that I feel like we're just supposed to pretend that this "chemistry" doesn't exist. Neither does it just go away because I'm married, etc. I feel that we don't really know how to talk about it, so we just say nothing. That's even us regular folk. Add to that these power dynamics. We tend to paint things in stark contrasts where one person is 100% evil and the other person 100% good. In reality, I think there is something like 20/80, 30/70, 40/60, ... at least 5/95. I think we lack role models that can show us the appropriate way to be when spending enormous amounts of time together. What we find when we dig into it, is that most of these things are as bad or even worse than the most cynical things we imagined.

    One thing that doesn't come through in the press that we should remember as Christians is that, though we cannot turn a blind eye to what happened in some places, we also understand that it is by the Grace of God that we don't do the same dumb things ourselves. Hopefully, if we keep Jesus close to our heart, whereas we still may do some dumb things, it somehow puts the brakes on our worst self so we don't keep sinking.

    Although the corny roles of old Hollywood movies wouldn't work anymore, it would be nice if we could return to projecting good role models that helped us see how we can address the modern world with all its strangeness and unexpected novelties in a gracious and charitable way. For example, to somehow get really great script writers to explore these things and find some good ways through the morass rather than find ourselves always falling into cynicism again.

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      David French

      This is a great comment. One day I might share some of the best advice I've ever gotten about handling workplace dynamics, especially for leaders. Before becoming a journalist, I led legal teams for more than a decade, mentored male and female attorneys alike, and spent many, many long hours on the road, litigating in intense environments with diverse groups of people. There are rules that help, but we all know that life is about much more than rules. Anyway, this is a great comment and it's spurring a column idea.

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        WKDawson

        Thank you too. Perhaps it could be an occasional sub-topic in Advisory Opinions. They use case studies in business, and, of course, history is a great reservoir of case studies. As an educator, I reflect on where I’ve been successful, and when I failed, what went wrong, why, and how I might do things better in the future.

        The advantage of working with current events is that change seems to have become extremely rapid. We should always remember that our witness (by his Grace) must look to the “eternity”, not the moment. That is a good way to avoid most trouble. Still, in today’s world, I don’t always know how to see that “eternity”.

        The style with legal case studies is different from business to some extent, but you're definitely savvy enough to understand how to transform “legalese” into the vernacular and the perspective of law is something that many of us lack.

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    Kevin Durant?

    Just listened to Ep 2 of ‘Advisory Opinions’. Great content AND sound quality. Enjoyed the soothing piano intro even though I know Sarah really wanted Pearl Jam and David was lobbying for Whitesnake.

    I think I have a compromise that will appeal to both sides of the Porn Wars:

    We must provide a platform, outside of Twitter, dedicated exclusively to scolding people like David for their moral relativism. This will allow people to vent by posting videos of varying length and quality where they can fully express their outrage.

    Maybe call it ScornHub....

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      David French

      ScornHub is a fantastic idea! Let's head to a VC and pitch the concept.

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    ReneFerrerJr

    Thank you
    Mr. French I appreciate what you are trying to do on Sundays with politics and religion.
    I no longer subscribe to any religion because of all the the different religions and all their rules, yet we only have one God, one Jesus Christ, and one Holy Spirit.
    I hope this is not sacrilegious and send me to hell, but I look forward to your Sunday newsletter as it has become my Sunday Sermon.
    Keep up the good work,
    Rene Ferrer, Jr.
    Stanton, Ca

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      David French

      Thank you! I appreciate the comment and the encouragement.

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    Merrijane

    Question: Is there a place for discussion about the podcasts? Or are there plans for that in the future?

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      David French

      You can discuss it here, but we'll have a full website launch in January, and we'll interact with subscribers quite a bit.

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        Chris Elliott

        Regarding the various podcasts, y’all might think about taking a page from Spectator UK. They give listeners the option of subscribing to Spectator Radio, a feed which contains all their podcasts.

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          David French

          Stay tuned!

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