{"id":3766,"date":"2011-08-19T12:58:50","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T16:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/slacktivist\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2012-06-24T16:03:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-24T20:03:40","slug":"brian-moynihan-and-empress-eudoxia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2011\/08\/19\/brian-moynihan-and-empress-eudoxia\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Moynihan and Empress Eudoxia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Where does Brian Moynihan go to church? And how is it that he still feels comfortable<\/em> there?<\/p>\n

Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, \u201cplans to cut at least 3,500 jobs<\/a> in the upcoming months, with the possibility that thousands of additional positions could also be eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a memo to the bank\u2019s senior management obtained by The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Moynihan explained the betrayal and abandonment of 3,500 of his workers by saying, \u201cWe owe it to our customers and our shareholders to remain competitive, efficient and manage our expenses carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moynihan, 51, raked in $1.9 million last year. That\u2019s a lot \u2014 more than 40 times the median household income in this country \u2014 but it still makes him kind of a minor-leaguer when it comes to overpaid job-destroying CEOs. The guy who laid me<\/em> off, for example, Gannett CEO Craig Dubow<\/a> \u2014 who has eliminated thousands of jobs in his tenure atop the nation\u2019s largest newspaper chain \u2014 took in $9.4 million last year. Moynihan is going to have to enrich himself even more and upend thousands more families if he wants to compete with guys like that.<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

But fortunately for Moynihan, if unfortunately for the rest of America, he\u2019s not just competing by laying off thousands of the people who work for him. He\u2019s also foreclosing on tens of thousands of his customers.<\/a> Well, mostly<\/em> his customers \u2014 Bank of America has also tried to foreclose on people who don\u2019t owe them a dime, like Jason Grodensky of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.<\/a>, who paid cash for his home and doesn\u2019t have a mortgage with BofA or any other bank. That was an accident, the bank says, but thanks to years of shoddy management that have left BofA\u2019s mortgage paperwork in disarray, such accidents are bound to keep happening.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not writing here today to question the morals or the business competence of people like Moynihan and Dubow. We can\u2019t question the morality of men who don\u2019t seem to have<\/em> any. And their utter incompetence has been unquestionably demonstrated by their inability even to make payroll.<\/p>\n

(CEOs shouldn\u2019t be allowed to announce 3,500 layoffs with a single sentence. They should instead by required to write, \u201cBecause of my own failure as their manager, I will have to break faith with a member of our team by unilaterally weaseling out of our agreement with one of our employees.\u201d And if they want to lay off 3,500 people, then they should be required to repeat that 3,500 times<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

My questioning here is reserved instead for the pastors or clergy of whatever churches or congregations these awful men attend.<\/p>\n

It seems strange to assume that such men do attend worship services, as there\u2019s nothing in their business conduct to indicate that is true. But businessmen love to \u201cnetwork,\u201d and church membership can be nearly as important as country club membership for that. Appearances won\u2019t just keep up themselves, you know. So it would be disheartening, but not surprising, to learn that people like Moynihan, or Dubow, or the Koch brothers, or the profiteering vampire squid<\/a> of Goldman Sachs all attend regular worship services. Kind of like when we found out that the BTK killer was president of the Congregational Council at his local Lutheran church. Dismaying, but not really surprising.<\/p>\n

The presence of such unrepentant, proud predators in one\u2019s congregation rewrites the lectionary. It dictates the topic of every sermon indefinitely. This is not optional. This is the job, and it becomes the pastor\u2019s duty to perform that job and to preach that sermon until either the necessary repentance is achieved in some Zaccheus-like moment of Jubilee or until either the preacher or the predator is forced to leave.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shortage of material for such sermons. \u201cToday we will look at the story of the prophet Nathan<\/a> \u2026\u201d \u201cThis morning our text is the story of Naboth\u2019s vineyard<\/a> \u2026\u201d \u201cWe turn today to the Magnificat<\/a> \u2026 to the Beatitudes<\/a> \u2026 to 1 Timothy<\/a> \u2026 to 2 Corinthians<\/a> \u2026 to 1 John<\/a> \u2026 to James<\/a> \u2026 to Amos<\/a> \u2026 to Isaiah<\/a> \u2026 to the second chapter of Acts<\/a> \u2026 to the fourth chapter of Acts<\/a> \u2026 to the fifth chapter of Acts<\/a> \u2026 to the eighth<\/em> chapter of Acts<\/a> \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Something\u2019s bound to give long before you\u2019ve exhausted all the possibilities.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened back around 400 CE, when St. John Chrysostom<\/a> was compelled to serve as the bishop of the cathedral in Constantinople. He was removed from the church by the Empress Eudoxia when she became convinced that his relentless sermons on greed, wealth, lavish living and the neglect and oppression of the poor were all directed at her personally.<\/p>\n

They probably were. Eudoxia had John removed because she felt this was unfair. After all, she gave a great deal of money to the church. Without her the cathedral couldn\u2019t have afforded to host those lavish banquets for imperial and ecclesiastical officials (John promptly cancelled those). And she gave generously to civic causes too. There was no way Constantinople could have afforded to erect that huge, pure silver statue of her across from the cathedral if she hadn\u2019t paid for it herself.<\/p>\n

American churches have more than their share of modern-day Eudoxias sitting in the pews, unrepentant and unperturbed. So where are the modern-day Chrysostoms to perturb them and call them to repentance?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where does Brian Moynihan go to church? And how is it that he still feels comfortable there? Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, \u201cplans to cut at least 3,500 jobs in the upcoming months, with the possibility that thousands of additional positions could also be eliminated.\u201d In a memo to the bank\u2019s senior management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11,58,36],"class_list":["post-3766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-bible","tag-greed","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nBrian Moynihan and Empress Eudoxia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Where does Brian Moynihan go to church? And how is it that he still feels comfortable there? 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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