It is Time to Cool Down the Rhetoric
For those readers who have been following this conversation on American Evangelicalism, there can no doubt that some strongly held points of view and robust disagreements have been presented with deep conviction, especially on the fourth topic of conversation that was just completed (Evangelicalism and Morality).
There appears to be mixed opinion, however, as to how “respectful” the conversation has been. One recent commentator has suggested that “sadly, the moderators of this ‘conversation’ [that would be me] continue to see fit to post reactions which traffic in … disrespectful vituperation …” I regret that this participant feels this way. I have no idea as to whether this is an isolated point of view or a general consensus.
Some readers may find it helpful if I explain the challenge I have faced as a moderator in balancing two of my posted criteria for approving submitted comments. In the “Guidelines for Conversation” page on web site, I state that submitted comments should be “respectful in tone and language,” and should “contribute something positive or new to the topic” (”should advance the conversation,” in other words).
It is obviously a judgment call as to when these two criteria have, or have not, been satisfied (and any reader is certainly free to disagree with the judgment calls I have made). In cases where a submission have been strong on “advancing the conversation” but weaker relative to the “tone and language used” (sometimes even judged by me to be “borderline disrespectful”), I have generally been swayed by the “advancing the conversation” criterion and have approved the comment for posting for the sake of having a “robust conversation.”
In retrospect I may have been too lax relative to the “tone and language” criterion, given the purpose of my web site to model respectful conversation among persons who disagree with one another.
Therefore, I am posting this piece, at the beginning of our fifth round of conversation (on “Evangelicalism and Politics,” which is sure to elicit some strong disagreements) to let all readers know that I will not henceforth approve any submitted comment for posting that gives the slightest hint of a “disrespectful tone or language” directed at those with whom one disagrees. When a comment is submitted that I find questionable relative to tone and language, I will extend the person submitting the comment the courtesy of an email in which I explain why I am not approving the comment for posting, giving that person the opportunity to submit a revised draft that reflects a respectful tone and choice of words.
I will welcome any comments that readers would like to submit relative to the content of this posting. And I look forward to the remaining months of a very robust, yet respectful conversation on present conditions and future prospects for American Evangelicalism.
Thank you, Harold, for your vision for a “respectful conversation.” Your rebuke prompts me to write to say why I think, as laudable as the project may be, it is unlikely succeed. On reflection, I think the online format dooms the project. Respectful conversation is a distinctly human activity and I think there is something ultimately inhuman about online dialogues. Genuine conversation, I am coming increasingly to believe, requires incarnate, face-to-face contact. This is partly because we must first learn to respect our conversation partners before we can have a meaningful discussion. That requires a prior conviviality that has not be part of our format. Most of us know one another only by our CVs or occasional conference venues. Instead of taking time to get to know one another, the format thrusts us into the topics and, thus, into almost immediate contentions without ever really getting to know one another.
Second, it is too easy in an online conversation to hurl epithets. Calling entire swaths of our evangelical brethren “jingoist,” “bigoted,” and “tribally-minded” hardly advances the conversation. This wouldn’t happen in a conversation over dinner, at least not without an immediate challenge either to defend one’s rhetoric with evidence or to retract those epithets in favor of a more charitable critique. Those are grenade words, not language conducive to respectful conversation. And, in an online format especially, they invite reciprocity: one grenade for another. But since that’s not a respectful way to respond, when someone hurls a grenade, we reach an impasse and just stop posting.
Third, because of these dynamics, many of us either talk past one another or just post our offering and move on. It’s too frustrating to try to have a meaningful discussion in an asynchronous format. Even though it’s not an unfamiliar medium for most of us, the online discussions tend to lack connections to the nuances of the conversation and the real-time give and take of an embodied dialogue.
Finally, I think the aim of the conversation is unclear. We do not have a clear goal, at least not the way we would if we were convened in a room together. So, the participants are not really engaging with one another as much as offering idiosyncratic essays (including my own bloviations) loosely related to the overly broad topics. We are really talking in generalizations with no one to corral us back when we stray too far from the heart of the question on offer. I suspect if you had a dinner party discussion on these questions, you would bring us back to the topic when we strayed too far afield.
In another forum in which I participated (in real life, not virtual life), for the sake of the conversation, we put aside a major source of significant disagreement among the participants in order to discover what, if anything, we could agree on. In this case the discussion was among advocates of both pro-life and pro-choice positions, both conservatives and progressives. Our topic was the emerging issues in biomedicine and biotechnology. As we met together, first in a very convivial setting, we found somewhat to our surprise that we actually liked one another. And even though we disagreed on a foundational issue like the moral status of unborn human beings, we found that we agreed on many other issues that revolved around those emerging biotechnologies. And even though we come to our positions using diverse intellectual and moral resources, we decided to work together in those areas where we agree on the outcome. And we continue to do so as we are able.
Interestingly—and perhaps related to our discussions here—pushback came from our various constituencies. Pro-life folk couldn’t understand how pro-lifers could be bedfellows with pro-choice folk on human cloning policy. Progressives didn’t like the fact that their leaders were in cahoots with conservatives on genetic enhancement. My suspicion is that we have some of the same dynamic in these respectful conversations. Instead of attending as much to the people “in the room,” we play to our constituencies. It’s inevitable that we want to score points for our team, so to speak. But, again, this doesn’t get us very far down the field. Forgive the metaphor, but it is football time in Tennessee!
Maybe I’m all wrong. But your post prompted me to offer these reflections for the common good, I hope, and for the future of respectful conversations.
I first want to thank Ben for his very thoughtful and compelling comment on my posting, and for the very respectful manner in which he expresses his concern as the whether this conversation on American Evangelicalism can “succeed” (possibly even being doomed to failure) and his related concern that “the aim of the conversation is unclear” (which makes it hard to know what “success” or “failure” might even look like).
Since the nature of “respectful conversation” and the issue of the best venues for fostering such conversation are most pertinent to this present electronic conversation and, in fact, to my own sense of the work to which I believe God has called me, please bear with me as I present this rather lengthy response to Ben (with the hope that many of our Primary Contributors will submit comments on our two comments as a public “meta-discussion”).
First, I agree completely with Ben’s assertion about the limitations of online conversations (To quote Ben, “Respectful conversation is a distinctly human activity and I think there is something ultimately inhuman about online dialogues”). I believe Ben is absolutely correct when he points us to the importance of our “getting to know” persons with whom we disagree as a necessary pre-condition for engaging in respectful conversation.
In my estimation, Ben is also correct in noting that when we don’t get to know on a personal level persons with whom we disagree, it is all too easy to “hurl epithets,” making sweeping generalizations about “entire swaths of our evangelical brethren” in ways that “wouldn’t happen in a conversation over dinner.” In retrospect I now regret having approved a few comments in our present conversation on American Evangelicalism that evidenced disrespect by making such unwarranted sweeping generalizations about evangelicals.
So, in summary to this point, I, like Ben, strongly favor the type of face-to-face conversations that Ben proposes, and illustrates with an excellent example. But, in light of my own preference for face-to-face conversations, why did I even embark on this idea of trying to foster respectful conversations by hosting electronic conversations (eCircles) on my web site (which didn’t come naturally to me, since I am basically a “techno-bozo who has only recently been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century)? Allow me to present two reasons.
First, the topics about which I have hosted online conversations (my previous 9-month “Alternative Political Conversation” (APC) and my present conversation on American Evangelicalism) are, in my estimation, too important to be limited to a relatively small number of small group face-to-face meetings, as important as such meetings are. And my web site has made it possible for a relatively large number of readers to follow these conversations (we had about 24,000 Page views for my nine month APC project, and during the first four months of our present conversation on American Evangelicalism, we have had over 29,000 Page Views).
So, there is evidence that these eCircles have reached a reasonably large number of people. But I have a much more compelling reason for hosting these two electronic conversations: I view them as potential prolegomena to countless face-to- face “follow-up conversations” involving many who have followed these eCircles. I need to carefully explain that long-range goal (especially since my explanation could address Ben’s concern that “the aim of [the present conversation] is unclear”).
In brief, I view these two electronic conversations as “starting points” for ongoing, sustained conversations that will hopefully continue long after my eCrcles are completed, not as the “end of the conversations.” Let me illustrate that with a brief description of what has emerged from my completed APC eCircle.
As background, in my APC project six evangelicals who situated themselves at various points along the political spectrum posted position papers on 12 public policy issues.
As in our present conversation, these postings often read like “serial monologues” rather than “dialogues” (due to the limitations of online conversation that Ben points out). So, to counteract that limitation, I created a “follow-up” project, which consisted in my authoring a book in which, for each public policy issue that was considered, I carefully plowed through all the electronic postings and identified “common ground” among my primary contributors relative to the issue and “questions calling for further conversation” (reflecting either disagreements among my primary contributors or aspects of the public policy issue that my primary contributors did not address). This book, titled Evangelicals on Public Policy Issues: Sustaining a Respectful Political Conversation will be published by Abilene Christian University Press sometime this fall. It is my hope and prayer that the content of this book will be discussed in numerous face-to-face conversations in political science courses at many Christian colleges and in adult education classes in many Christian churches (hope springs eternal!).
Now, it is far from clear to me at this point in time what such a “follow-up” project for our current American Evangelicalism project may look like (it may be a book – my co-moderator, Rob Barrett, and I are currently in conversation about the possibilities). In any case the long-range goal of the follow-up project will be to continue the conversation that we have only begun electronically by means of numerous face-to-face venues. Within a week or two I will be sending all my Primary Contributors for the present American Evangelicalism project an exploratory email that shares some ideas that Rob and I have for a follow-up project and requests your reactions and alternative suggestions.
Well, I hope the above helps to clarify the aim of our present conversation. To those of you who may be saying “why didn’t you explain that up front,” I can only say that this has all been a slowly evolving dynamic process; on-the-job training, to be sure – when I solicited your participation in the American Evangelicalism project, it wasn’t even clear to me what the nature of a “follow-up” project for my earlier APC project would look like. I apologize for any confusion that I may have caused by my lack of clarity.
I am hoping that a number of Primary Contributors will decide to comment on this posting and the earlier posting from Ben, so that this “meta-discussion” can give all of us greater wisdom as to the best venues for proceeding into the future toward the goal of modeling respectful conversation among persons who disagree strongly about important issues.
I first want to thank Ben for his very thoughtful and compelling comment on my posting, and for the very respectful manner in which he expresses his concern as the whether this conversation on American Evangelicalism can “succeed” (possibly even being doomed to failure) and his related concern that “the aim of the conversation is unclear” (which makes it hard to know what “success” or “failure” might even look like).
Since the nature of “respectful conversation” and the issue of the best venues for fostering such conversation are most pertinent to this present electronic conversation and, in fact, to my own sense of the work to which I believe God has called me, please bear with me as I present this rather lengthy response to Ben (with the hope that many of our Primary Contributors will submit comments on our two comments as a public “meta-discussion”).
First, I agree completely with Ben’s assertion about the limitations of online conversations (To quote Ben, “Respectful conversation is a distinctly human activity and I think there is something ultimately inhuman about online dialogues”). I believe Ben is absolutely correct when he points us to the importance of our “getting to know” persons with whom we disagree as a necessary pre-condition for engaging in respectful conversation.
In my estimation, Ben is also correct in noting that when we don’t get to know on a personal level persons with whom we disagree, it is all too easy to “hurl epithets,” making sweeping generalizations about “entire swaths of our evangelical brethren” in ways that “wouldn’t happen in a conversation over dinner.” In retrospect I now regret having approved a few comments in our present conversation on American Evangelicalism that evidenced disrespect by making such unwarranted sweeping generalizations about evangelicals.
So, in summary to this point, I, like Ben, strongly favor the type of face-to-face conversations that Ben proposes, and illustrates with an excellent example. But, in light of my own preference for face-to-face conversations, why did I even embark on this idea of trying to foster respectful conversations by hosting electronic conversations (eCircles) on my web site (which didn’t come naturally to me, since I am basically a “techno-bozo who has only recently been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century)? Allow me to present two reasons.
First, the topics about which I have hosted online conversations (my previous 9-month “Alternative Political Conversation” (APC) and my present conversation on American Evangelicalism) are, in my estimation, too important to be limited to a relatively small number of small group face-to-face meetings, as important as such meetings are. And my web site has made it possible for a relatively large number of readers to follow these conversations (we had about 24,000 Page views for my nine month APC project, and during the first four months of our present conversation on American Evangelicalism, we have had over 29,000 Page Views).
So, there is evidence that these eCircles have reached a reasonably large number of people. But I have a much more compelling reason for hosting these two electronic conversations: I view them as potential prolegomena to countless face-to- face “follow-up conversations” involving many who have followed these eCircles. I need to carefully explain that long-range goal (especially since my explanation could address Ben’s concern that “the aim of [the present conversation] is unclear”).
In brief, I view these two electronic conversations as “starting points” for ongoing, sustained conversations that will hopefully continue long after my eCrcles are completed, not as the “end of the conversations.” Let me illustrate that with a brief description of what has emerged from my completed APC eCircle.
As background, in my APC project six evangelicals who situated themselves at various points along the political spectrum posted position papers on 12 public policy issues.
As in our present conversation, these postings often read like “serial monologues” rather than “dialogues” (due to the limitations of online conversation that Ben points out). So, to counteract that limitation, I created a “follow-up” project, which consisted in my authoring a book in which, for each public policy issue that was considered, I carefully plowed through all the electronic postings and identified “common ground” among my primary contributors relative to the issue and “questions calling for further conversation” (reflecting either disagreements among my primary contributors or aspects of the public policy issue that my primary contributors did not address). This book, titled Evangelicals on Public Policy Issues: Sustaining a Respectful Political Conversation will be published by Abilene Christian University Press sometime this fall. It is my hope and prayer that the content of this book will be discussed in numerous face-to-face conversations in political science courses at many Christian colleges and in adult education classes in many Christian churches (hope springs eternal!).
Now, it is far from clear to me at this point in time what such a “follow-up” project for our current American Evangelicalism project may look like (it may be a book – my co-moderator, Rob Barrett, and I are currently in conversation about the possibilities). In any case the long-range goal of the follow-up project will be to continue the conversation that we have only begun electronically by means of numerous face-to-face venues. Within a week or two I will be sending all my Primary Contributors for the present American Evangelicalism project an exploratory email that shares some ideas that Rob and I have for a follow-up project and requests your reactions and alternative suggestions.
Well, I hope the above helps to clarify the aim of our present conversation. To those of you who may be saying “why didn’t you explain that up front,” I can only say that this has all been a slowly evolving dynamic process; on-the-job training, to be sure – when I solicited your participation in the American Evangelicalism project, it wasn’t even clear to me what the nature of a “follow-up” project for my earlier APC project would look like. I apologize for any confusion that I may have caused by my lack of clarity.
I am hoping that a number of Primary Contributors will decide to comment on this posting and the earlier posting from Ben, so that this “meta-discussion” can give all of us greater wisdom as to the best venues for proceeding into the future toward the goal of modeling respectful conversation among persons who disagree strongly about important issues.
I first want to thank Ben for his very thoughtful and compelling comment on my posting, and for the very respectful manner in which he expresses his concern as the whether this conversation on American Evangelicalism can “succeed” (possibly even being doomed to failure) and his related concern that “the aim of the conversation is unclear” (which makes it hard to know what “success” or “failure” might even look like).
Since the nature of “respectful conversation” and the issue of the best venues for fostering such conversation are most pertinent to this present electronic conversation and, in fact, to my own sense of the work to which I believe God has called me, please bear with me as I present this rather lengthy response to Ben (with the hope that many of our Primary Contributors will submit comments on our two comments as a public “meta-discussion”).
First, I agree completely with Ben’s assertion about the limitations of online conversations (To quote Ben, “Respectful conversation is a distinctly human activity and I think there is something ultimately inhuman about online dialogues”). I believe Ben is absolutely correct when he points us to the importance of our “getting to know” persons with whom we disagree as a necessary pre-condition for engaging in respectful conversation.
In my estimation, Ben is also correct in noting that when we don’t get to know on a personal level persons with whom we disagree, it is all too easy to “hurl epithets,” making sweeping generalizations about “entire swaths of our evangelical brethren” in ways that “wouldn’t happen in a conversation over dinner.” In retrospect I now regret having approved a few comments in our present conversation on American Evangelicalism that evidenced disrespect by making such unwarranted sweeping generalizations about evangelicals.
So, in summary to this point, I, like Ben, strongly favor the type of face-to-face conversations that Ben proposes, and illustrates with an excellent example. But, in light of my own preference for face-to-face conversations, why did I even embark on this idea of trying to foster respectful conversations by hosting electronic conversations (eCircles) on my web site (which didn’t come naturally to me, since I am basically a “techno-bozo who has only recently been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century)? Allow me to present two reasons.
First, the topics about which I have hosted online conversations (my previous 9-month “Alternative Political Conversation” (APC) and my present conversation on American Evangelicalism) are, in my estimation, too important to be limited to a relatively small number of small group face-to-face meetings, as important as such meetings are. And my web site has made it possible for a relatively large number of readers to follow these conversations (we had about 24,000 Page views for my nine month APC project, and during the first four months of our present conversation on American Evangelicalism, we have had over 29,000 Page Views).
So, there is evidence that these eCircles have reached a reasonably large number of people. But I have a much more compelling reason for hosting these two electronic conversations: I view them as potential prolegomena to countless face-to- face “follow-up conversations” involving many who have followed these eCircles. I need to carefully explain that long-range goal (especially since my explanation could address Ben’s concern that “the aim of [the present conversation] is unclear”).
In brief, I view these two electronic conversations as “starting points” for ongoing, sustained conversations that will hopefully continue long after my eCrcles are completed, not as the “end of the conversations.” Let me illustrate that with a brief description of what has emerged from my completed APC eCircle.
As background, in my APC project six evangelicals who situated themselves at various points along the political spectrum posted position papers on 12 public policy issues.
As in our present conversation, these postings often read like “serial monologues” rather than “dialogues” (due to the limitations of online conversation that Ben points out). So, to counteract that limitation, I created a “follow-up” project, which consisted in my authoring a book in which, for each public policy issue that was considered, I carefully plowed through all the electronic postings and identified “common ground” among my primary contributors relative to the issue and “questions calling for further conversation” (reflecting either disagreements among my primary contributors or aspects of the public policy issue that my primary contributors did not address). This book, titled Evangelicals on Public Policy Issues: Sustaining a Respectful Political Conversation will be published by Abilene Christian University Press sometime this fall. It is my hope and prayer that the content of this book will be discussed in numerous face-to-face conversations in political science courses at many Christian colleges and in adult education classes in many Christian churches (hope springs eternal!).
Now, it is far from clear to me at this point in time what such a “follow-up” project for our current American Evangelicalism project may look like (it may be a book – my co-moderator, Rob Barrett, and I are currently in conversation about the possibilities). In any case the long-range goal of the follow-up project will be to continue the conversation that we have only begun electronically by means of numerous face-to-face venues. Within a week or two I will be sending all my Primary Contributors for the present American Evangelicalism project an exploratory email that shares some ideas that Rob and I have for a follow-up project and requests your reactions and alternative suggestions.
Well, I hope the above helps to clarify the aim of our present conversation. To those of you who may be saying “why didn’t you explain that up front,” I can only say that this has all been a slowly evolving dynamic process; on-the-job training, to be sure – when I solicited your participation in the American Evangelicalism project, it wasn’t even clear to me what the nature of a “follow-up” project for my earlier APC project would look like. I apologize for any confusion that I may have caused by my lack of clarity.
I am hoping that a number of Primary Contributors will decide to comment on this posting and the earlier posting from Ben, so that this “meta-discussion” can give all of us greater wisdom as to the best venues for proceeding into the future toward the goal of modeling respectful conversation among persons who disagree strongly about important issues.
I have a number of thoughts about how we could better engage (while providing political cover from those Ben mentions). I find it hard to comment on each of the posts. Sometimes, the content is out of my expertise. Other times I feel like I'd made a similar comment on another post or simply reinforced with I'd said in my own. I'd suggest we explore how the Facebook page for RC would be used to facilitate such discussions. Someone could summarize the critical themes from the collected posts and reduce them to a couple of key questions. We could then provide our reactions in a fairly limited time frame and do a better job of engaging each other collectively.
Alternatively, somebody could fly us all to Cancun for intense discussions!
I have a number of thoughts about how we could better engage (while providing political cover from those Ben mentions). I find it hard to comment on each of the posts. Sometimes, the content is out of my expertise. Other times I feel like I'd made a similar comment on another post or simply reinforced with I'd said in my own. I'd suggest we explore how the Facebook page for RC would be used to facilitate such discussions. Someone could summarize the critical themes from the collected posts and reduce them to a couple of key questions. We could then provide our reactions in a fairly limited time frame and do a better job of engaging each other collectively.
Alternatively, somebody could fly us all to Cancun for intense discussions!
I have a number of thoughts about how we could better engage (while providing political cover from those Ben mentions). I find it hard to comment on each of the posts. Sometimes, the content is out of my expertise. Other times I feel like I'd made a similar comment on another post or simply reinforced with I'd said in my own. I'd suggest we explore how the Facebook page for RC would be used to facilitate such discussions. Someone could summarize the critical themes from the collected posts and reduce them to a couple of key questions. We could then provide our reactions in a fairly limited time frame and do a better job of engaging each other collectively.
Alternatively, somebody could fly us all to Cancun for intense discussions!