It all sounds so easy.
Turn the other cheek.
Be kind to people who hold different opinions.
Be tolerant, understanding, patient.
But when asked to comment on religion and incivility, members of Akron’s clergy immediately knew how hard it is to live a civil, godly life in a very human world.
And many times religious issues discussed by religious people are the most nasty.
“We have lost civility,” said Bishop F. Josephus Johnson II of the House of the Lord in West Akron. “If we can’t be civil I’m not sure we are going to make it.”
He accepts a role in bringing the nation out of a situation where name-calling, personal attacks and innuendo almost became a national sport during the last election.
“At the individual level, to be human is to have to learn to deal with differences,” he said. “You have to live with other people. It could be one of the major roles of religion if we make people understand that you don’t have to be uncivil to be different from other people.”
He had a simple answer for why people lash out: “Sin,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s too complicated,” he said. “I think it’s just not very much tried, it’s been lost.”
Trouble at home
But he said it is pervasive, not just in elections or on TV or at public meetings. It gets into our homes.
“When I have couples in [for counseling] I ask if they have any conflict-resolution models — marital — generally no,” he said. “So if I don’t have any model, how do you handle your conflict? They say ‘I just say what I want to say, and he just says what he wants to say.’ That’s a formula for disaster because you are going to say some things that are not only going to be destructive but you are going to say things that cannot be taken back.”
And it isn’t just a matter of being nice. Hard facts and feelings must be addressed.
Americans must sort through issues like abortion and gay rights and some people don’t want to find a middle ground.
“You don’t reconcile it … through niceness, and you don’t reconcile it easily,” he said. “Those are very deeply held values. … So it’s gotta be a very intense robust debate about that.”
And after that debate is over, when society decides which direction to take, Johnson said there is no sin in living in a society that has values different from your own.
“Even if you disagree with what is determined, you should go with the agreement,” he said. “You don’t have to do it, but tolerate it.”
He said intolerance is one of the ways religion adds to problems.
“Religion, particularly religion that becomes extreme like the society, is often just a reflection of society,” he said. “Even if they are touting what the Bible or whatever book says, they are more formed by the society they are in than by the things they are supposed to be dealing with. For instance I think fundamentalism is an extreme reaction to modernism.”
Keeping control
The Rev. Vince L. Monden, pastor of Wesley Temple AME Zion Church in Akron, said the Bible is clear about how to handle the passion that comes with debates, quoting Ephesians:
“Be angry but sin not. Let not the sun go down on your wrath.”
By no means does that mean to squelch passion, he said.
“It’s more of how you say what you say,” he said. “How you project your faith. It’s one thing to be passionate, it’s another thing to be evil. … it’s another thing to be enraged or to try to be dogmatic or oppress someone for their not agreeing with you. They’re differing with your perspective on religion or on politics. I think we have to have a sense of where we respect that person and that we do not go to the extent of becoming violent.’’
As the leader of a predominantly black church, he knows that racism and other issues can spark reprisals, even violence, and he knows he has a responsibility to keep things calm.
“I do say things that can seem to others as inflammatory or that seems as if I am being uncivil to them,” he said. “When you speak of things honestly it causes people, if they don’t know history or if they do because we differ in our opinions, they don’t see it in that way because they have not walked in the other person’s shoes.”
He draws a line at name-calling and profanity.
“A soft answer turns away wrath but grievous words stir anger,” he said, paraphrasing Proverbs. “So it is how we say what we say, that, yes, you can become very passionate, and you can become angry but when it gets to the point where you have to be profane … that’s demeaning and derogatory.”
Rethinking strategies
The Rev. David Loar, pastor of Fairlawn West United Church of Christ, said he has been changing his strategy for dealing with disagreement and the potential for uncivil conflicts.
“I have said for years you have to be open minded. I’m not sure we can make ourselves open minded,” he said. “I have found in the later stages of my life it is curiosity that’s helping me to move down off my high mountain to listen more and pay attention to others rather than a willful desire to be open minded.”
He explained that “being open minded is almost a prideful thing.’’ He said it tells others: “I am smarter and I am in control of this but it still has the attitude of presumption.”
Instead, Loar said he connects better with others by showing interest and not trying to be the one who knows all and solves everything.
“God doesn’t use heroic people on white horses,” he said. “He uses crazy mixed-up people.”
Judge not
At the other end of the spectrum are religious figures who judge too much.
“The loudest voices in the Christian scene are condemning, even though the one we worship said to a person of notorious sin, ‘I do not condemn you.’ ” He was referring to the Gospel of John when Christ encountered a woman accused of adultery.
Instead of telling people what to do, he wants to show the way.
“If I think I know who’s going to heaven and to hell, then I am going to rant,” he said. “I’ve got to have some passion, some feeling of vulnerability about myself and I’ve got to have some passion to want to know the other person if I want to have civil conversation.”
For him, the first step is humility and there’s a limit to what he can say to change things.
“I’ve screwed up in my life,” he said. “My life does not reflect my rhetoric. I still believe in what I was with my rhetoric because I still believe in a city on a hill. I do believe in a new Jerusalem. But I’m not going to lead there by my life, I know that. I’m not going to push people there by my rhetoric. I think it will be by relationship that we grow in some way to be connected to one another. And civility is at the heart of relationship. So if I want to have any influence with anybody, I’ve got to be civil. And civility does not imply respect because there are people I don’t respect, and yet I want to have a relationship with them.”
Evolving brains
Loar and Johnson, pastor of House of the Lord, both mentioned evolution as a reason for hope.
“We clearly have evolved and yes you can quote me as a minister saying we have evolved,” Loar said. “We have evolved up this way to other types of emotions and thinking, but back here [pointing to the back of his neck] we still have this reptilian brain and at one point it’s a liability. It means we are reactive. We get uncivil. But the other part is that it’s protective. It is that instinctive thing to protect ourselves, but what has happened is that instinctive parts of the reptilian brain we turn it into not trying to protect ourselves but we turn it to attacking others.”
Then he put it more simply. That ancient part of the brain enjoys getting mad, getting uncivil.
“Indignation gets the endorphins going and I think we are more addicted to endorphins than we are crack cocaine in this society,” he said.
But Johnson said there is hope.
He said evolutionary scientists have discovered “the reason humanity survived is that they learned how to cooperate … the groups that cooperated survived over those that couldn’t.”
Dave Scott can be reached at 330-996-3577 or davescott@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Scott on Twitter at Davescottofakro