Mark A. Weitz
Autor(a) de More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army
About the Author
Mark A. Weitz is an attorney with the Weitz Morgan law firm in Austin, Texas, and a former professor of history at Gettysburg College. He is the author of several books, including Clergy Malpractice in America: Nally v. Grace Community Church of the Valley, The Confederacy on Trial: The Piracy and mostrar mais Sequestration Cases of 1861, and A Higher Duty: Desertion among Georgia Troops during the American Civil War. mostrar menos
Obras por Mark A. Weitz
Associated Works
The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism (2002) — Contribuidor — 10 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- male
Membros
Críticas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 5
- Also by
- 1
- Membros
- 76
- Popularidade
- #233,522
- Avaliação
- 3.9
- Críticas
- 1
- ISBN
- 11
This book was grown out of law school research by author Mark A. Weitz, and it is thus the fruit of a twenty-year gestation from 1981 to 2001. The single legal case that it documents ran through various California courts for the entire decade of the 1980s, and was brought against Grace Community Church of the Valley, the largest fundamentalist Christian congregation in southern California at that time. At issue was the church's counseling to a young man who committed suicide.
The legal process was tortuous, and ultimately the California Supreme Court upheld an appellate decision to dismiss the case. The US Supreme Court declined to take it up. Nevertheless, Weitz (as well as his editors in the "Landmark Law Cases and American Society" series) holds this case up as a turning point for consideration of clergy malpractice in US law.
Weitz seems very even-handed in his treatment of the litigants, finding people and things to admire on both sides of the contest. I found myself increasingly sympathetic to the plaintiffs, however, whether or not this feeling followed the author's design. The book is fairly short overall, and not demanding in terms of any background in legal process or jargon. I would strongly recommend it to members of the clergy -- not as a view of the current legal landscape (it isn't), but for a sense of the social demands and tensions surrounding the exercise of pastoral care, and an awareness of the shifting regard for church privileges in American society.… (mais)