To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up.
For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.
I can never read the story of the golden calf without thinking of Edwin Friedman, the rabbi who applied Bowen family systems theory to congregational life in his classic Generation to Generation and to the practice of leadership in his posthumous book A Failure of Nerve. In these books, Friedman explains that anxiety is like a chronic illness lurking in every human system, whether that is a family, a congregation, or even a nation. And systems without healthy ways of managing that anxiety find themselves caught in a downward spiral of emotional regression.
