Jobs lost at Focus On the Family

November 19, 2008 at 8:18 am (fundamentalism, politics)

Via Gazette.com:

Because of a weak economy and cash-strapped donors, Focus on the Family said it is eliminating 202 jobs, the deepest cuts in the 32-year history of the Colorado Springs-based Christian nonprofit. The ministry laid off 149 workers, and cut another 53 vacant positions.

The cuts announced Monday slash Focus’ local workforce by nearly 18 percent – from about 1,150 to 950. Twenty percent of the cuts are in management.

The layoffs come just weeks after Focus announced it was outsourcing 46 jobs from its distribution department. Focus also laid off 30 workers and reassigned 15 more in September 2007.

The organization also cut its the budget from $160 million in fiscal 2008 to $138 million for fiscal 2009 in anticipation of tough times.

The reason for the layoffs and budget revisions Donations are down, and Focus relies almost entirely on the charity of others. …

Donations began to decline in October, which starts Focus’ new fiscal year, and after polling major donors, Focus expects this holiday season – normally the most lucrative time of the year for nonprofits – to be even more painful to the bottom line. …

Although Focus grabs most of its headlines on political topics, it spends only 6 percent of its budget in that arena, such as the roughly $500,000 the organization spent to support the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban in California.

The other 94 percent of its budget is dedicated to its far less sensational mission of dispensing parenting and marital advice via Dobson’s radio broadcasts, as well as through books, magazines and Web sites. …

The 149 laid-off employees will enter a tough job market in the Colorado Springs metro area, where job growth is flat and unemployment has crept up over 6 percent.

A spokesman says that Focus On the Family expects the jobs to return when the economy turns around. I wouldn’t bank on it.

It seems to me that Focus On the Family has lost some of its credibility, tarnished along with the rest of the hard right, Christianist/Republican alliance.

Remember that James Dobson refused to endorse John McCain until McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn’t turn out so well, Mr. Dobson.

It’s risky for Christian organizations to immerse themselves in politics. The gamble paid off for Focus On the Family for a long time, but it’s not a good long term strategy.

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Projecting our evil onto others

October 25, 2008 at 8:19 pm (Jung, politics, psyche)

This is a follow-up to the previous post, Carl Jung: persona and shadow.

Previously, I explained that the shadow is an aspect of our personality. It consists of socially unacceptable traits that would tend to make us unappealing to other people; therefore we keep our “shadows” hidden.

Indeed, the shadow is hidden even from the individual him- or herself, buried in the unconscious.

In this post, we’ll see how the idea of the shadow leads to another important Jungian concept, projection.

Although unconscious, the shadow does not cease to exist:  it remains dynamically active. The rejected aspects of the developing ego continue to carry a sense of personal identity, and when, from time to time, they impinge on awareness, they are experienced as liabilities:  they are tinged with feelings of guilt and unworthiness, and bring fears that one will suffer rejection should they be discovered or exposed.

To own one’s shadow is, therefore, a painful, and potentially terrifying, experience — so much so that we usually protect ourselves from such disturbing awareness by making use of ego-defence mechanisms:  we deny the existence of our shadow and project it onto others.

This is done not as a conscious act of will but unconsciously as an act of ego-preservation. In this way we deny our own “badness” and project it onto others, whom we hold responsible for it. This act of unconscious cunning explains the ancient practice of “scapegoating”:  it underlies all kinds of prejudice against those belonging to identifiable groups other than our own and it is at the botom of all massacres, pogroms and wars.

Anthony Stevens, On Jung, pp. 43-44

The key idea is expressed in the statement, “we deny our own ‘badness’ and project it onto others.” Think of the popular saying, “the pot calling the kettle black.”

Let’s illustrate how projection works. Here’s a public example, from this year’s presidential election.

It’s a quote from Rick Davis, who is John McCain’s campaign manager.

Character assassination has become the hallmark of the Obama campaign.

On the one hand, Davis seems to be unaware that his own candidate practices character assassination; on the other hand, he claims that character assassination is a defining attribute of the Obama campaign.

It’s a clear instance of projection — the pot calling the kettle black.
Read the rest of this entry »

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