Month: July 2018

The Light of Clarity

The Light of Clarity

You’d think in this atmosphere thick with division and the tendency to head to our respective corners of extremism, that we’d have no issues with clarity – with being upfront with our values and convictions.

You’d be wrong.

The pro-life movement recently celebrated a win in a Supreme Court case contesting a California law which would, in part, require pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to post signs stating that the state provides free or low-cost access to birth control and abortion services. Pro-life centers argued that this violated their free speech rights.

I agree. I don’t think pro-life crisis pregnancy centers should be required to in any way advertise the availability of abortion.

But I do believe they should be clear about who they are and what they do provide – that was the purported aim of the law. Clinics that do not offer licensed medical care had to say so, and clinics that offered licensed reproductive care only within the restrictions of their anti-abortion convictions had to say where a full range of services could be found.

You’d think that Christians who are adamant and proud of their pro-life convictions would have no issue with most of that, but you’d be wrong.

While all may not use the tactic, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and hotlines are notoriously deceptive in their signage and advertising. They hope that vulnerable women who are pregnant and frightened will seek them out so they will have the opportunity to steer those women away from seeking an abortion. They believe that the longer they can delay a potential abortion, the less likely it will happen, so they rarely hesitate to use a kind of “bait and switch” strategy with these women.

That kind of deceit is deeply disrespectful of women and the pro-life cause.

While I’m sympathetic to the pro-life argument that they should not be compelled to disseminate information about the availability of abortion services, I have no sympathy with the deceptive practices. Pro-life clinics should proudly post signs stating they are just that: pro-life. “We are a pro-life clinic. We will do everything in our power to ensure you have a healthy pregnancy, support and good options as you choose whether to keep your baby or give it up for adoption with a loving family.”

Clarity. Honesty. Respecting all lives, including those of frightened, vulnerable pregnant women.

For people who follow the one they call “The Way, the Truth, and the Light,” that should be a given. But it’s not the only area Christians have a hard time being clear in.

If you are an LGBTQ Christian with a same-sex partner (or the hope for one) who is looking for a church, you’ll have a hard time figuring out where might find a spiritual home.

When you’re looking at an evangelical church’s website in particular, it will usually be difficult to ascertain whether you will be fully welcome and free to share your gifts with the church. A Master of Divinity degree and a lifetime of navigating the in and outs of evangelical positions and affiliations may help, but even with those you’ll have some guess work to do.

Hint: the vast majority of evangelical churches will not perform or affirm a same-sex marriage.

But how would a visitor know that?

Many churches don’t want to make a straightforward declaration of their policy. Some pastors don’t want to clarify something they know members have differing assumptions about. Others want to “contextualize” their position and explain it on a more individual basis – they want the. Hence to make their case and explain themselves. Some just want to avoid controversy. Still others insist they can take a “take-no-position” position and are in denial about the tenuous place that puts their LGBTQ+ attendees.

Whatever the reason, they resist clarity.

Clarity is the beginning of trust, and what kind of a church will you have without trust?

Even affirming and inclusive mainline churches can struggle with this. Church leaders confused by the array of orientations and gender identities want to “just welcome everyone” without realizing that those who find themselves rejected in most places need to know that means them, too, in their particulars.

A generic “everybody is welcome” means nothing to them. Thee are assumptions embedded in our “everybody,” and they are used to being excluded where “everybody is welcome.” It takes something different to truly welcome some people, whether that’s accessible facilities or gender-neutral bathrooms.

Whatever the position, clarity is vital.

(Churchclarity.org works to encourage churches to be clear about their policies regarding women and LGBTQ+ folks on the primary websites. They don’t rate churches based on what their policies are, rather they rate them based on their clarity about those policies. It’s only reasonable, and you can submit a church for scoring at https://www.churchclarity.org/crowdsource.)

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Surviving Home

Surviving Home

Through the years, as I’ve listened to various friends talk about growing up in abusive homes, often with alcoholics or addicts, I’ve heard several themes emerge.

As young children, these folks adapted to their environments with hyper-vigilance. They observed every nuance of home life and walked painstakingly on eggshells, always bracing for the slightest crack that would set their parent off. In a context where they were supposed to feel safe and nurtured, they were instead defensive and guarded. Survival skills.

They paid attention to every detail, internally charting patterns of response. Avoiding every known trigger of violence.

The thing is, you could never know them all.

No matter how diligently they watched the signs, how quietly they whispered, how carefully they tiptoed around the landmines, there was always something they didn’t see. The explosions still happened.

No home is perfect, but the childhood security that many of us took for granted was never theirs.

As I’ve listened to various black friends talk about their lives in America, it sounds remarkably similar.

Somewhere along the way, they learned to adapt to white America with hyper-vigilance. They observe every nuance of white behavior and walk painstakingly on eggshells, always bracing for the slightest crack that will set us off. In a context where they should feel free to go about the business of their lives in peace, they are instead defensive and guarded. Survival skills.

It doesn’t matter much that I, a white woman, would never call the police because a black teen is hanging out across the street and I don’t think they belong there. They never know what white person will make that call. It doesn’t matter much that my friend who is a police officer works hard to understand the community, counter his implicit bias, and deescalate confrontations. They never know what police officer will pull their gun. Will shoot. Each white person is a mood, a moment, of the whole, and how can you trust the kindness when you never know when the blows will come? And the blows never fail to come. The system ensures it if the individuals don’t.

Like those children in abusive homes who learned to observe their parents closely in order to survive, these black friends know us (white America) and the systems we have built in ways better than we know ourselves. They’ve had to see what we haven’t – their survival depends on it. Ours doesn’t.

Theirs shouldn’t have to.

And like too many abusive relationships, there is no satisfying white America. “If only you wouldn’t misbehave, then we could hear your message as valid!” “But you’re doing so well! What could possibly be wrong?!?!? Don’t be ridiculous!” “It’s all in your head.” “Take responsibility for yourselves!”

A riot is the self-defense of the systemically and systematically abused. The breaking open of those who have been told in so many ways again and again that what they experience is not real, not oppressive, not killing them.

With every police shooting of a black man who is running away, every report of a white person calling in someone who looks “suspicious,” my respect for black Americans grows alongside my grief. The patience they give that we do not deserve. The strength that endures in the face of our ignorance and denial.

We have a lot to learn from people who are under no obligation to teach us.

But first we have to be willing to see ourselves, not as we want to be, but as we are.

Kids in abusive contexts respond in different ways – some hide, some escape, some try to please, some fight back. All ways to try to survive until your old enough to get out (which doesn’t mean you’ll ever stop trying to survive and using the same ways to do it).

Black Americans don’t have that kind of hope. The hope they can have is a hope that things can and will change, and that they can survive until they do.

May God help them. May God help us all.

Civility and Non-Violence

Civility and Non-Violence

Civility and non-violence.

They’re not the same thing.

There’s been quite a lot of discussion in the past few weeks about “civility.” In the midst of extreme political differences and polarizing public policy, calls for “civility” have rung out from both ends of the spectrum.

How to engage polarizing discussions is something I’ve been thinking a lot about for the past couple of years – well before Trump’s election. My faith has led me to such different convictions than my family and many friends (themselves people of deep faith and convictions) that I’ve had to wrestle with it.

With some, it’s easier. They may not be where I am, but they wrestle with many of the same questions and can at least accept the possibility that the conclusions I’ve come to might be reasonable or valid. For others, the directions I’ve moved directly contradict some of their most foundational paradigms, and their convictions obligate them to defend what they believe to be true. It can create deeply painful interactions.

I want to stay connected and engaged with them, but it’s hard. I’ve learned to discern how to interact based on the relationship – close family are different from close friends who are different from colleagues and acquaintances. And since most of our interactions are on social media, there can be a mix of friends and strangers in any given conversation. It’s complicated.

About a year ago, in a difficult exchange with a member of my extended family, something clicked for me. I remembered the movie, Selma. When King and the leaders of the movement were planning their march for voting rights, they chose Selma, Alabama because they knew the sheriff there was likely to respond violently. They knew that, however peaceful, they were going to be provocative, and they knew they were going to have to prepare if they were going to respond non-violently.

That’s not easy work. Non-violent protest. Non-violent resistance.

It requires knowing yourself, learning deep self-control and even a different way of seeing. It requires deep confidence – in both who you are and what you are standing up for. It requires the humility and faith to endure unmerited suffering, and trust that it can be redemptive.

It requires something very different from civility.

Civility, in the way we use it, means politeness and courtesy. That’s about social deference, both to individuals and within societal norms. Civility doesn’t work when what you are doing is refusing to defer.

Non-violence does, though.

With non-violence we can refuse to defer, refuse to back down, refuse to go away or be quiet, refuse to be convenient or cooperative, even to the point of persecution or abuse.

Civility itself doesn’t stand for anything. It doesn’t even stand for the dignity and value of every human life – great evil has been done with great politeness and courtesy.

Civility doesn’t stand for anything but keeping the rules, spoken and unspoken. And if what needs to change, what needs to be resisted and protested, are those very rules, civility is impotent. Worse, it can be complicit.

Reformation offends the rules. That’s its point. It can’t be done without deconstruction (and sometimes destruction), but it can be done non-violently.

And that’s hard work – hard work to do, and hard work to figure out how to do and prepare for.

Next week at the Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, NC, I’m excited to be on a panel with Brian McLaren, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, and Xavier Ramey about what it looks like to do that work. The session is called Taking to the Social Streets: Non-Violent Engagement on Social Media, and I’m looking forward from learning with these amazing human beings and everyone who joins us for the discussion. We’d love to have you be part of that conversation – Saturday at 2:00 in the Greater Things Tent.

The roots of the word “civility” are in something much deeper than courtesy and politeness. The Latin civilas means ‘relating to citizens.’ It’s about citizenship, and citizenship is about where the power and privilege in a society lies. Citizenship is at the heart of what divides us today – the legal technicalities of citizenship, yes, but also the full privileges of citizenship – both formal and informal. We disagree on who should have that standing, and we disagree on what it means to be a good citizen of America. In this deeper sense of ‘civility,’ it is about what constitutes civility itself that we disagree.

Those who seek to challenge us to live up to the highest of American ideals are actually the most truly civil – even, especially, when their tactics break the social rules of politeness and courtesy. When they make us uncomfortable with our failure and with our denial of that failure.

A man sitting at a lunch counter where he is neither wanted nor allowed is impolite, but he is civil.

Marchers taking up space on a sidewalk or street are discourteous, but they are civil.

A person naming the realities of systemic racism is not polite, but they are civil.

Servers refusing to wait on a customer who has publicly dismissed and demeaned them are discourteous, but they are civil.

Protestors chanting their protest in front of a public official who defends morally repugnant policy are not polite, but they are civil.

But that’s not the kind of “civility” so many people are calling for. They want the politeness and courtesy that keeps them from feeling too uncomfortable – that keeps issues safely in the abstract and theoretical and doesn’t push too hard for costly change. Or they want the façade that politeness and courtesy can give to anger and pain and suffering and oppression.

That civility is killing us. May we find the non-violent response that will help us truly live.