Review: End the Stalemate

May 21, 2024May 20, 2024 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Cover image of "end the Stalemate" by Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell

End the Stalemate, Sean McDowell and Tim Muehlhoff. Tyndale Elevate (ISBN: 9781496481153), 2024.

Summary: Addresses how we move past impasses around disagreements to have meaningful conversations.

Our highly polarized cultural atmosphere has led to the breakdown of civil discourse, a rancorous political atmosphere, and sadly, friends and family who no longer talk to each other. It has led to a situation where many do not feel free to share their opinions in their families, workplaces, or in public discussions. It just doesn’t feel safe.

The authors of this book are both engaged in dialogue with those with whom they would disagree, including at times, each other! Sean McDowell, a professor of apologetics, frequently engages in discussions and debates with those who do not agree with his reasons for believing. Tim Muehlhoff is a professor of communication who directs the Winsome Communication Project. Both host podcasts focused on conversations with those who differ on important questions. This book, to which each have contributed chapters focuses on how we may both prepare to engage with those with whom we differ and how we may have those conversations in ways leading at very least to civil disagreement and perhaps growing mutual understanding.

They begin by contrasting a transmission versus ritual view of communication. The transmission view has problems with myside bias that doesn’t reckon with counterarguments and often leaves everyone more entrenched. The ritual view looks for points of commonality where there is an emotional connection, sympathy, with the views of another. This requires understanding the way both we and those we engage with see the world. The writers describe this as bricolage, because often worldview is pieced together from disparate pieces into a whole that makes sense to the person, whether or not consistent. Some of the pieces include our communities, families, hinge moments in our lives, narrative injuries that may have altered our lives and beliefs, and influencers. The goal of understanding as much of this as possible is perspective-taking, where we try to see the world as the person we are engaging does.

All this lays the groundwork for constructive conversations. How then do we have these conversations? One basic principle Sean McDowell uses is: “Show as much grace and charity as you can without violating your conscience.” He believes one has to approach issues with clarity (what it actually is), charity, and critically. But many conversations approached this way still explode because we aren’t ready emotionally, the physical environment is not right, we are not intellectually prepared, and perhaps most important, there is not relational trust.

Tim Muehlhoff says there are actually three conversations. The pre-conversation focuses on getting our hearts in the right place by discerning our snap judgements, cultivating curiosity about the convictions of the other party, and recognizing the power of the words we choose. In the actual conversation he encourages inviting the other to share their perspective first, summarize their main points where they feel heard and understood, acknowledge where there is common ground and ask for clarification. The post-conversation is how we describe it to our friends–how we speak about people privately will be reflected in how we treat them publicly. One of our challenges of talking about others is we often present strawman versions of their arguments rather than “steelman” versions. They even suggest roleplays of arguing the strongest case of the other side. This, I thought, was one of the most valuable ideas of the work, and something we should be prepared to do if we have been attentive to perspective-taking.

One of the other things the authors do is model engaging over differences in questioning each other about their different views of using preferred pronouns. The discussion itself is illuminating, no matter how you approach this and they both model grace and conviction while differing. Then in the final chapter, they put it all together, offering checklists as one prepare for difficult conversations.

Part of what is winsome in this presentation is that the authors share their own failures and convey that, while we will fail at times, there is real hope for meaningful dialogue across differences, where friendships are forged rather than alienated, where understanding grows alongside respect. With a fraught election season approaching, it is a good time for this book.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Holy Disunity

October 28, 2019October 27, 2019 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Holy Disunity: How What Separates Us Can Save Us, Layton E. Williams. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019.

Summary: Proposes that difference ought be viewed as gift rather than problem, that difference, and even disunity, as messy as it is in the church, can be a source of growth.

Within the Christian community, the existence of difference, disunity, and division is viewed as problematic. These seem to betray the oneness, the unity of the body of Christ of which scripture speaks. Layton Williams makes the argument that difference, disagreement, and sometimes even division, is a gift. She roots her argument in the Trinity where three distinct persons exist as one being. She argues that we do not create unity but that we are one, and this is a unity that does not obliterate difference but treats it as a gift.

Williams observes that often our strategy is to suppress difference and the undesirable in the various forms it takes, which she unpacks chapter by chapter: doubt, argument, tension, separation, vulnerability, trouble, protest, hunger, limitations, failure, and uncertainty. Often, our posture is to try to act as if these things don’t exist, or address them with over-simplistic solutions, or to normalize a certain position to the exclusion of others. Worse yet, we often marginalize, demonize, and dispel those who persist in honestly differing. By the same token, sometimes we sacrifice deeply held convictions and perspectives to “keep the peace.”

Instead, she contends:

We don’t have to fear difference. Difference–our own and others’–is how we know who we are. It’s how we distinguish ourselves. Our own unique place in this universe and the experiences and qualities that define us allow us to interpret the world around us and make our own particular mark on it. The world is the way it is–different from how it might otherwise have been–because of us. It’s also different because of others. The ways that others are different from us, their unique experiences and qualifications, expose us to new ways to understand the world.

Each of her chapters explore how the various facets of difference save us. Each includes a reading of a biblical text that develops her position. In the chapter on tension, she contends for the hard work of wrestling with tension with a discussion of Jacob’s night of wrestling with God in human form, emerging both blessed with a new name, and limping. Difference often means walking into hard things that both leave their marks on our lives and lead to growth and greater self-understanding.

There is an important autobiographical element running through the narrative that makes Williams wrestling with and embrace of difference significant. Williams self-identifies as LGBTQ, and with other “out” LGBTQ Christians. Her own perspective of the gift and “holiness” of difference emerges from her own experience of growing up in a home, and a church in the South where she both experienced deep love, and yet also deep pain as neither could fully embrace her LGBTQ identification. In a chapter on “the gift of separation” she writes movingly about what this has meant for her and her mother:

It isn’t that I don’t wish, deeply, that my mother and I could be equally at peace in the same church. It’s that I know that it takes at least as much love and commitment to look in the face of one of the people you care most about in this world, and to know that at this time you cannot be theologically reconciled, and to let them go to pursue faith in a way that doesn’t prevent you from doing the same, hoping all the while that your paths might one day come together. For all the ways we disagree, my mother and I have both done that for each other.

I was impressed with the perspective that allowed for the possibility of disagreement and even separation, whether of individuals or church bodies, while also allowing for the possibility of continued love and charity toward one another. It is a perspective that refuses to diminish or disrespect the theological commitments of either, without minimizing the disagreement, or allowing the disagreement to degenerate into rejection of, vitriol toward, demonizing of, or hatred of the other. This note is exceedingly rare and welcome in what has often been a hurtful area of contention within the contemporary church.

The question I might pose would be how far would the author extend her argument about difference within the church? How would she have responded to the differences in the church in the United States around the issue of slavery? How would she respond to an embrace by the church of a nationalism that diminishes the value and worth of other human beings and obligations as Christians to them, as occurred in Nazi Germany? Is difference always a gift? And if not, by what criteria ought such difference be deemed unacceptable; not a gift but a matter for repentance and re-formation?

At the same time, I found much that resonated deeply. Allowing room for doubt and dispelling the false god of certainty has been a vital part of ministry among university researchers. Getting further on in life, I recognize the gifts of limitations and failure. When people can be more vulnerable in a bar than among the people of God, this challenges the church with the question of what we must become to be places where people can truly disclose themselves. As a cis-gender heterosexually oriented male who might identify more closely with the theological commitments of the author’s mother, it was illuminating and important for me to listen to and sit with this LGBTQ woman’s journey and to see the church through her eyes. I needed to read of her fears and hopes, and to be challenged with the call to love across our real differences, and to believe with the author that even in the mess of the moment, “[w]e can trust that God is at work.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Do We Need to Fight Over Books?

July 11, 2019July 10, 2019 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Image by RyanMcGuire via Pixabay

A couple of interesting things came across my screen today that suggest that even book lovers may act in very unlovely ways toward each other. One was an article on Literary Hub titled “Chuck Wendig on the Time He Enraged a Bunch of Tolkienites.” It seems that the author committed the unforgiveable sin of admitting on Twitter that he just could get through The Lord of the Rings. He learned that you don’t question this holy trilogy of books. Angry Tolkienites even made YouTube videos in response. I read that and thought, “These people need to get a life!”

Now I am a fan of LOTR, having read the books five or so times over the course of my life. But I have many friends like Wendig–and we are still friends! A friend of mine saw this story and commented, “I just don’t understand people’s rage against someone who likes different books, movies, etc than they do.” Truth is, I don’t either. This is like getting into a spat over what flavor of ice cream is best. It seems to me far more fun to celebrate how good ice cream is in all its flavors.

It seems to me that it ought to be that way among lovers of books. I’ve hosted a Facebook page over the past year liked by over 2000 lovers of books. I like the thought both that there are so many like me who delight in this wonderful gift of what we find between the covers of a book (or on our e-reader) but also how different we all are. As I write, people have been responding to a question I posted on how they organize their books. It is fun to see the differences between those who have highly organized systems and those who say, “organize?” I’ve enjoyed times when people could disagree without becoming disagreeable, and discover different perspectives. For example, a recent discussion explored whether you could help a reading averse college grad to come to love reading. There were those who said “impossible,” those who suggested ideas from their own experience, and a few who said, “I was once one of those people and now I love books.”

That brings me to the other thing that crossed my screen. I’m in another Facebook book group, and saw a post from an admin who apologized for an individual who was bullying others in the group, and informed everyone that the individual had been “blocked.” I’d seen similar messages elsewhere on Facebook, but never in a book group. I did not see the offending posts so have no idea what was said, but I guess people can be trolls, or at least very obnoxious, anywhere. I appreciate admins like this one who act promptly to keep pages or groups from going toxic.

It is ironic, and frankly puzzling to me, that there are people who love reading, but haven’t had their minds opened enough by their reading to discover that people see the world differently, have good reasons for doing so, and that people like different things. I suspect it has to do with wounds in other parts of their lives that take more than books to heal. Sometimes it is the case that “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1, NIV). Sometimes all you can do is block continued abusiveness online, and celebrate all the others who enjoy the common love of books, and all the different ways we love them. That’s actually pretty good, and often, pretty good is good enough.