Each to their own, or how to disrespect the other
Is it not the case that amidst all our contemporary liberal celebration of otherness there is a distinct whiff of fear concerning those who are different from us? We may say that we want to live in a society of difference and that we are enriched by this wealth of diversity. Indeed we may even spend our time fighting for such a society. However, so much of this seems to spring from a deep horror and fear of the other. Is it not the case that we can celebrate others only so long as they occupy a public space with us within which they do not air their potentially exclusive, racist and sexist attitudes?
I celebrate the fact that you are not like me, do not think like me, or see the world like me, only to the extent that I never have to encounter that side of you. I can only accept your otherness so long as I never have to be polluted by it, so long as I never have to see or hear it in the workplace, pub or street corner. So we end up showing our ‘respect’ of the otherness of the other by demanding that it remain behind closed doors (where they can engage in their cultural, religious activities in peace). In short, we all must publicly act as modern, liberal, Western Capitalists and leave our ethnic and religious ideas at home.
The reason why I mention this is because I want to apply this logic (which I have admittedly skimmed over) to the issue of how we really show respect to other religious expressions of faith (particularly ones we find dangerous). So often I hear my friends, who have moved out of what they experienced as a constrictive religious setting, saying, ‘this is my journey, I don’t want to impose it on anyone else’. This can often be wrapped up in the idea of respecting difference. However, is it really respectful of the other? For does this position not end up either advocating some kind of crude relativism or treating the other as an infant not worthy of engagement?
In terms of the first we must remember that the celebration of doubt, ambiguity and complexity in life (virtues I have spent a great deal of time defending) do not in any way lead to some kind of ‘all narratives are equally valid’ position. While we may wish to avoid the absolute claims of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ with regards to different expressions of faith, that does not mean that we are unable use the best evidence available to ascertain whether a certain expression of faith is ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’, ‘damaging’ or ‘healing’, ‘beneficial’ or ‘detrimental’. Take the example of the scientific method. By applying this scientists avoid the closed idea of a true description of phenomenon in favour of a theory that provides the best description. These theories can range from fragile (e.g. String theory) to almost irrefutable (e.g. gravity), but they are never totally closed. In the same way we can, for example, argue that the faith expressed in documentaries such as ‘Jesus Camp’ and ‘Audience of One’ are deeply unhealthy, not through reference to religious dogma, but through reference to critical reflection.
Secondly, and much more common, is the claim that not by not critically engaging with different expressions of faith (such as the ones we have left) we show respect for other peoples religious expressions. However what this really means is that we distance ourselves from the activity that we dislike. Ignoring it as best we can. For example, if we meet someone we know in the shopping centre who is part of the church we left we attempt to talk to them about something insignificant (like the weather) or something that unites us (like our families). In other words, we engage in the ‘other’ only in so much as they resemble us (and thus, only to the extent that they are not really other).
We must not then fool ourselves into thinking that this is a sign of respect. To respect them we must be prepared to treat them as one with the ability to think rationally and be able to discuss controversial issues. Of course, a shopping centre is unlikely to be the best place to do this! Instead we often treat them as one would treat a child who believes in Santa. If we want to show respect for another we do it by treating them and their views as worthy of critical reflection: as worthy of disagreement rather than mere dismissal. Of course, when entering the debate I would argue that we must be open to being wrong, be prepared to be self-critical and ready to learn from the one we are in discussion with.
I guess what I am wanting to open up in this post is the idea that, far from being exclusive, arrogant and disrespectful, it is in engaging in rational argument with those we disagree with that we (1) avoid exclusivity (2) mitigate against arrogance and (3) respect the other. It is by encouraging a meaty, passionate discussion with those we disagree with that we can hope to avoid new dogmatisms and, in addition to perhaps helping the other, allow them to aid us in our own further development.
Tags: , Audience of One, disrespect, intolerance, Jesus Camp, Peter Rollins, respect, tolerance
May 31st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
This assumes that the other is open to hearty dialogue – my mantra has always been, I state my views, you state yours, we have a hearty debate over beers (or Grape juice if you’re Baptist) and then depart as friends. I’ve had some knock down drag out fights that in the end, brought us closer together. So I might be hopping mad but I’m still standing hoping when the dust clears that we can stay friends despite our differences. Then again, I never claim to know the truth and admit I am just now learning to ask the right questions. Those who have the answers tend not to want to engage in any real questioning – and unfortunately at least here in the States those are the ones who tend to have the power via publishing, national media presence, etc. So circumventing them to have the dialogue you mentioned feels akin to a kid sneaking out from their parent’s house. And there are consequences to engaging in said sneaky behavior – I am in a battle that has already cost me dearly and will continue to do so.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
If I might challenge one of your assumptions, in my experience, rational argument practically never changes anybody’s mind – our conclusions about God and the world are far more influenced by our experiences and context than they are by disembodied ideas. And I arrived at my current theology and spiritual practice almost entirely by experience through a decidedly non-rational process. When it comes to talking about my relationship with God, I find myself falling back on testimony every time.
I can neither confirm nor deny the historical creeds of Christianity, I’ve declared a moratorium on God the Father, and my spirituality has been significantly de-Jesused over the past few years. I have very close friends who are solidly evangelical in their theology. I try to get them to do yoga and centering prayer, and they know I don’t pray to Jesus, but I have virtually no interest in debating atonement theory. I’ve found that we have significant points of connection when it comes to spiritual experience and our inner lives – our official theology just doesn’t seem to matter all that much.
So I’m all for talking about our families and what unites us and creating safe spaces for us to be honest about ourselves. In my experience, rational arguments tend to work against that and exclude the many people who aren’t very good at debating. My spiritual journey has been a very painful one, and the only way for me to explain why I believe what I believe is to talk about some parts of my life that I only share with people I trust, things that I am highly unlikely to bring up in the context of a debate over dogma. Life is short, and I don’t want to spend any more of it arguing about questions I’m not asking or justifying myself.
Just food for thought.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
in the church, i find that all that seems to happen is a polarised form of ‘discussion’ where people habitually prop up their arguments in personalised ways that are often simply spiritually and emotionally abusive powerplays – we don’t really do dialogue, in the same way that politicians don’t really do robust, witty and wise debate any more – we seem to have lost the skill for creative, critical, collaborative and compassionate thinking – and along with it the desire and ability to engage in open, flexible, rigorous and challenging dialogue about the things that we think are really important and meaningful – i agree with Christy – rationality doesn’t change people’s minds – but i also think that we have lost the humility we need in the church to participate with diverse others in meaningful conversation about challenging issues
May 31st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
And I would like to (partially) challenge one of Christi’s assumptions.
I do not think “rational argument” need mean what you take it to mean. I believe you are rejecting the rationality of modernity which seeks to decontextualize so it can be “truth” through all times and places (think: most apologetics). I agree with you that this type of argument is fruitless.
Rational religion or spirituality is often simply a passive description used by sociologists to indicate that all religion is “rational” in that it makes sense to the person who employs it from where they stand. It’s difficult to practice non-rational beliefs.
In light of this I would like to affirm your critiques and observations but add that engaging someone on their own terms and from their religious position–to include their experiences, culture, socio-factors, trials and challenges (especially these last two) is to engage the other rationally. It’s especially a non-modern form of rationality in that it insists on contextual engagement. So it’s not just the biblical text we read; we also read the text of the life of the other. Engaging them in this way opens doors to pointing out the otherwise invisible or unacknowledged ways in which the unhealth of their traditions (as we see it) produces results that are diametrically opposed to that persons affirmed truths and beliefs. As one of my professors says: “you have to funk it up a little bit.” I believe this leads to the kind of engagement Peter is suggesting here.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:33 am
Thank you Matt for clarifying here. Christy, what you said is very true and important. And my post (in isolation from my wider work) could be seen to be susceptible to the problems you highlight. However, as Matt says, I am a critic of how rationality is used as a tool for ‘decontextualisated’ truth. I also think that faith commitment is based on a host of factors that mean apologetics is pointless (and idolatrous). Rather I follow Wittgenstein here in the idea of language games.
Using reason from ‘within’, by interrogating the inner workings of a system of belief in order to explore and expose its tensions and fissures can be a powerful thing, especially if you and your interlocutor have respect for each other and a readiness to listen. I still take some time each year to work with young people in conservative religious settings in this way. And have found the results to more than make up for the effort.
Thanks Julie also for bringing this out and making the distinction between pointless argument and meaningful discussion.
And thanks Becky for this and your other comments so far. They have been really insightful and challenging. There is nothing like a good old argument between friends. Communication should not be about eating the other (i.e. consuming their thoughts and making them into yours) or vomiting out the other (pushing the other out of your frame of reference, making them an enemy that needs to be removed violently from the system) but rather eating with the other.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:25 am
Pete as you continue I would be interested in how you deconstruct the word “tolerance” – this is used as a term by those on the liberal side of the spectrum when discussion interfaith issues – underlying their use of said term is that they are very intolerant of those who dare to differ. One of the linguistic challenges is to move beyond the “codes” that each tribe so to speak has developed as a means to advance their cause.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Pete
Thanks again for the post – it’s the second in a row to really challenge me and what I am doing with…everything really.
Thanks as well everyone for all the comments. I too have a good back catalogue of getting dumped on for not agreeing (and sometimes for the cowardliness and clumsiness that characterises a bad lover when I should have been loving my detractors not rebelling against them or trying to change them)
Anyway one of my learning points at the moment is to spend time grounding my thinking in how I would ground it in a/my diverse community – so let me indulge myself in teasing something’s out around that -
‘Dialogue’, ‘conversation’ etc are just as at risk of abstraction from genuine relationship as are dogma from faith and doctrine from knowing God etc
‘Talking’, as any communication scientist will tell you, is only 7% words. The rest is tone and body language that reveal (more or less transparently depending on how you are blessed/cursed!) our own person, emotion, intent etc.
This abstraction of dialogue from relationship is not just an issue for academia and Calvinist v Armenian, emergent v conservative tub thumpers but especially those of us in the blogosphere.
Relationship within which I speak the ‘truth in love’ (that often abused club to beat the detractor but also the standard we cringe away from in fear that leaves us poorer and our community poorer because we have disengaged – as per Pete’s previous post) is also equally about othering, mourning with those who mourn and rejoicing with those who rejoice – how often is it that it is in living through the extremes of life alongside one another that dialogue actually, truly, happens (often in the humility of retrospect)
Often those of us whose vision it is to see Christianity as about reconciliation, peace, shalom, etc, more than just sin management, are just as bad if not worse at modelling that towards our ‘enemies’. I know the truly shameful fear of what it might cost me to speak out – but integrity is both the cross to bare and the wonderful blessed life to live more abundantly.
Lets cut to the chase – talking is not just words – it is doing, behaving.
If you can’t find the words or are to scarred to enter the fray then I guess, from my own experience i kind of understand and certainly sympathise/empathise deeply, but that’s not an excuse for not doing and behaving towards the other in the way embodied by Christ (the way of life for us)
Surely the much misunderstood and much betrayed Jesus gets that as well – but his silence was not impotent and in his courage in moving through that suffering he acted out a restraint of power that subverted and overcame that other power by disarming it.
I have a mate who I need to have another few beers with before we enter the cold silence of relegating our relationship to discussing the weather and whether Gerrard and Lampard can play together. I need to act and behave with the disarming courage of grace – anyway I’ll try – at least then I’ll have my integrity, my own, full, life – and a chance of sharing that and gleaning more of that from him
Shalom and cheers for reading my ramblings
dgschof – part of – http://www.engagesheffield.blogspot.com/
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:21 am
Again, I need to work through the practical results of what you’re suggesting, Pete. You say that the shopping center isn’t the best place for the kind of conversation you think we should engage in with others. So what do you do when you run into this person in the shopping center? I don’t have time to schedule a meeting with each person I come across who I know I disagree with, so I often choose to avoid certain topics.
Also, I avoid those topics with people whom I have little faith in being able to discuss them without the conversation quickly turning ugly. That’s probably patronizing of me to do, but I definitely do it.
Pete and the rest of the comment-y gang, what do you think of what I wrote last week on this subject re: conversation vs. argument?
http://kidwonder.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-conversation-is-better-than.html
June 4th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Having notched up 4 years of numerous cups of coffee/theological discussions with P in Belfast at times I still don’t really grasp what he says – communication is a tricky business!!
rodney
June 5th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Much of this is resonant with the inter-faith work that I have been pursuing in various guises over the last few years. In October last year I was UK delegate to an EU training course on Faith, Religion and Dialogue where the subject matter wasvery much about how to create meaningful interventions between people of different faiths. Christians, Jews, Muslims and Atheists, of various persuausions were present, experimenting with methodology and discussing practice models for dialogue. This and another course held in Belfast are reported in the publication which can be had at the link below. More than anything I hope that it encourages and promotes the kind of critical engagement that I think Pete is advocating here. pp32-34 focuses on Leonard Swidlers – Dialogue Decalogue which became the subject of much discussion between us, but became the focus of our reccomendations for good practice in dialogue
http://www.salto-youth.net/otheremreports/?PHPSESSID=tgteudm26da6kc8a0453pfu5r3
June 5th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Sorry, hit submit too early!
The biggy I think for religions is getting over the desperate desire to believe in our own ‘rightness’. Swidlers 9th commandment says that in entering into dialogue we must be “at least minimally self-critical of both ourselves and our own religious orideological traditions”, dialogue if it is meaningful is a process by which we learn and we cannot do that if we believe our position to be correct.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Nice post! In innovation theory, the issue at hand (especially seen in your first point) is to take into account the CONTEXT of the idea. From reading other posts, I know you know this, but I’ll point it out anyway…
The words used don’t mean the same for you as for me (see the above responses, eh!). Different context/circumstance of the words.
The context of my journey is also relevant. For me, the beauty of the “journey” metaphor is that it presumes Me, on My Path, will never be duplicated. So transferring the Context of one person’s path onto mine is invalid. This does NOT prevent dialog, so long as context is brought into discussion.
Herein is one of the two primary failures of “the scientific method.” That is, the presumption that Independent & Dependent Variables are able to fully sum the context.
Practically, we don’t spend barely any time getting to know someone’s context, their surroundings AND their history at this point in their journey. PLUS, we don’t look to see how the Other sees their context (which will probably be very different than the way I see their context!).
This takes a lot of time – more time than to read this post and all the replies! A task I skimmed on the way down to this Reply box
June 6th, 2008 at 4:33 am
David’s comment rings true.No-one has walked in our shoes along the path that the Divine has led us – the revelation of the Divine as a loving presence is intertwined with this journey for each of us. Just as no two siblings have an indentical conceptual view of their parent’s love so also the Divine – and yet we are all still siblings in the family of God – some postmodern,some modernists and indeed some medieval in their world view.The challenge is to love them all and get beyond their ‘official’ metanarratives where we all dwell in weakness and dependence on the Divine Presence.This is why I hate religious ‘meetings’ as they give no time for this essential process of listening deeply to each other’s stories – to go back to a previous thought by Pete more spirituality is communicated through a coffee in a shopping centre than a 100 ‘church’ services.In hearing the other in their story we will hear the voice of the Divine.Listening is where it’s at but rarely in the new market driven consumerist spiritual marketplace we call ‘Christendom’.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:08 am
[...] In his typically insightful way Pete Rollins asks some difficult questions about our interactions wi… We may say that we want to live in a society of difference and that we are enriched by this wealth of diversity. Indeed we may even spend our time fighting for such a society. However, so much of this seems to spring from a deep horror and fear of the other. Is it not the case that we can celebrate others only so long as they occupy a public space with us within which they do not air their potentially exclusive, racist and sexist attitudes? [...]
June 6th, 2008 at 5:18 am
In wishing not to make absolute faith claims I find it necessary to kick and scream – and I say to kick and scream because it requires passion and tears, grit and a sense of irrational behaviour like that of believing in God – against a daily whirlpool slowly alluring me into a downward spin of relativism.
This all connects with what has been talked about because of how I practically kick and scream – which is also a way of me saying, how I live out a life of passion and tears – is by giving my full self away. What I am referring to here as my full self is simply and extravagantly every thing I have, my personal history up to my present situation along to my thoughts of the future and even further along to my hopes of an absolute future. Thus interring into a dialogue (dare I say relationship) openly and seeking not to make the others mind up for them on what they can handle digest and comprehend. An apprehension of dialogue because of thinking ‘this is my journey, I don’t want to impose it on anyone else’ is not only disrespectful (because it is a limiting judgement of the other), and living out of fear (in so much that opening your self up to be heard is also opening your self up to be hurt) it is also un-loving.
To give your full self is to tell a truth that is transformational and what else do we have that is more transformational than being honest. Every thing else is just plastic or paper, metal or can be transferred through bluetooth. And are those things really worth their wait at all?
June 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Maybe it is inherent in liberalism to avoid conflict. There maybe isn’t anything wrong with a wee bit of conflict over some irrelevancies. Never hurt no-one…well? maybe it did. But, maybe we are all too keen to please people, and not rufffle feathers. Just say it like you see it, and see what happens. If people don’t like it, then that’s just getting to know what they like. It’s good to listen too. But, then, I wonder if a load of people listen, cos they want to keep the arrogance of their dogmatically held beliefs a secret, cos they don’t want to look bad; or maybe cos they feel insecure and unable to back up what they believe with any coherence. And i wonder when people speak…why they speak. Do we speak cos we want to be heard…or cos we are like Narcissus trying to get an echo back; trying to reaffirm the world that we think already exists. Is the other person irrelevant in our “conversations”, cos all we are doing is using them as a sounding post? Who knows. Why the hell do we talk to people anyways?
June 12th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I think theological intolerance can cut both ways. For instance, a lot of people in the emerging church seem to be fleeing from a fundamentalist/evangelical background, and are therefore most likely to be reacting against fundamentalist/evangelical theology. But I was raised in a liberal protestant household, and fell away from any consistent religious practice my first couple of years of college. Then I saw Tony Campolo on The Colbert Report and I read one of his books and it got me interested in the whole “Christianity” thing again. Despite Campolo’s liberal political activism, he’s definitely from the evangelical wing of theology in that he stresses the divine and transformative nature of Jesus. I’d always thought that being an evangelical meant being closed-minded, homophobic, jingoistic etc. But Campolo caused me to question a lot of my previous assumptions, as well as rethink the nature of Christianity. So while I still don’t know where in the hell I am theologically, I am grateful to Campolo for giving me that other window in evangelicalism, whereas before I was just completely dismissive.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Nice idea, but when it comes to religion often the conversation can barely begin. Like the old saying goes, it’s impossible to reason someone out of a position that they weren’t reasoned into.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
[...] that requires healing. Fortunately, there are voices that consider doubt a virtue, such as Peter Rollins. He is a rare breed in an arena crowded with voices claiming with all certainty that God is this [...]
September 18th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Jason, i agree with you on this one.
Your quote is by Jonathan Swift, and I often quote it in this context, along with a quote by Karl Barth that “Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it”
http://qmonkey.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/talked-out-talked-in/