Rodgers-Melnick #3 Covenant Communities in Turmoil (Clark-Martin-Scanlan)

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*The second revision combines both parts one and two of the original article.* Ann Rodgers-Melnick went on in her series of reports to move outside the Pastoral Visitation of the Sword/Servant community in Steubenville Ohio to cover similar shifts and revelations in the Sword of the Spirit/Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan.The three major players in the Sword of the Spirit debacle are described quite differently in her article. First is Ralph Martin, who listened to members in the Word of God when they identified injuries and failures of the Clarkian teachings. His response was an indepth look at how Sword Teaching and Pastoring had affected Word of God members. This resulted in public apologies and repentance for injuries and abuses. Word of God even went so far as to call back former members such as Tom Yoder who had been shunned 13 years earlier. Tom told me personally what a healing and freeing experience it was to recieve this repentance and to offer his forgiveness.Rodgers-Melnick reports that Scanlan's defensive posture attempts to shift the focus on to the Charismatic Renewal. This appears to have been a fairly effective way of distorting and deflecting the criticism these communities came under. However these men and their behaviors were NOT typical of the Charismatic Renewal. The abuses were never attributed to Charismatic gifts or the exercise of those gifts. The abuses were directly tied to repressive systems of pastoral "care" that were administered in Covenant Communities through the models in Steven Clark's books PATTERNS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES and MEN AND WOMEN IN CHRIST. Fr Scanlan's approach seems to have fit in nicely with his training as an attorney.Lastly was the response of Steven Clark who simply thought that everyone else was wrong, not him.It's a great article that, in my opinion, does a good job of describing the problems with a minimum of hyperbole.