Links for 2012-02-23

  • Experimental Theology: The Bureaucrat

    The second most common question I get is this, “Do you like being a Department Chair?” My answer is complicated, a yes and a no. On the one hand I don’t like managing the administrivia of a bureaucracy. I struggle with this part of the job. Plus, I keep waking up expecting to find that I have dead, soulless eyes. But on the other hand, as a bureaucrat I have a certain range of powers within the system. And my goal, in light of those powers, is this: humanize the system. This is the part of the job I like. I’ve written about this before, about how bureaucratic systems demonically dehumanize people. As a part of that system one of the things I can do is to work against that process.