All Grown Up? Part One
Aiken Unitarian Unversalist Church
January 8 2012
There is a short quote from Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, in the box above the Order of Service – here is the complete quotation:
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/quotations
csmonitor.com
However, maybe not all Unitarian Universalists know that our liberal religious tradition offers us the perfect way to get back into right relationship with each other when we have acted out, or have burnt, not built, our bridges with one another. Today we will explore the nature of conflict, how we get caught up in it before we know it, and how we can see it as a positive learning experience when we pay attention to Unitarian Universalist congregational polity.
1. Expectations of church perfection and harmony
What do we believe about the way congregations should get along? Peter Steinke in his book Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, says that most of us have very idealistic expectations of the church: it will always reflect and demonstrate love; if any division is acknowledged, that is admitting to being a defective organization; and in some fundamentalist theologies, conflict is sinful or of the devil.
Christian churches have an interesting role model – the early Church, which is described in the New Testament Book of Acts. And what a picture of harmony, peace, love, charity! (Steinke, p104) But this utopian community soon gives way to lies, ruptures, and theological disagreements! And of course, once the apostle Paul begins his church-planting ministry, he soon is writing letters advising, admonishing, and haranguing churches that are going off the rails and losing sight of the agape love to which Christians should aspire.
2. What is conflict?
Gil Rendle in the book Leading Change in the Congregation reminds us that conflict is not the same as a fight! His definition is from a different perspective: “Conflict is two or more ideas in the same place at the same time” (165). Given that definition, maybe it is a miracle that we are still in business, because with UUs there are always at least two ideas in the same place at the same time! But it’s a helpful definition that normalizes the idea of conflicting ideas.
3. How can conflict arise?
However, conflict can arise in several ways, due to the structure of our congregations and how power is seen to play a part in them (‘Finding the Optimal Level of Conflict’ by David R. Brubaker, Alban Institute 2011).
Maybe conflict comes about when there is an attempt to shift the power imbalance by those with less power, trying to take it away from those who have centralized power. Or it can erupt when responsibilities overlap because roles are poorly defined, and once they become contested, tension and conflict arise. Maybe the common ground between parties in conflict is that they all love the church and want what is best for it, and just have different ways of expressing that. But sometimes people come to church “with their own agendas, which might not benefit the congregation as a whole” (Michael Durall, The Almost Church, 47).
Whatever the cause, we know that conflict can escalate into full-blown warfare before we know it! In churches, conflict often arises from anxiety. Peter Steinke has identified ‘13 Triggers of Anxiety’ (Steinke, 15-17); you can, if you choose, check off in your mind which ones you think your church is experiencing:
1) money – raising it, distributing it, managing/mismanaging it
2) sex/sexuality – be here for next week’s sermon!
3) Minister’s leadership style – either a lack of or too much of leadership
4) Lay leadership style – is it enabling or threatening, is it hands-off or hands-on?
5) Growth/survival – when congregations feel attendance is in decline or growth has slowed
6) Boundaries – when people overstep their authority
7) Trauma/transition – emotional reactions to key events like extreme weather damage to the physical structure of a church or retirement of a minister
8) Staff conflict/resignation – emotional upset due to staff disruption
9) Harm done to or death of a child – stirs up a sense of helplessness in a congregation where normally children are protected and nurtured
10) Old and new – worship practices like changing from candles to stones in joys and concerns or changing the time of worship
11) contemporary versus traditional worship – intense connections to styles of worship
12) gap between the ideal and the real – when the church’s ideals or mission is disrupted by self-concerns of members
13) building/construction, space, territory – modifying existing space, or when growth squeezes usable space and threatens congregational activities and meetings.
However many times we are told that anxiety is normal, just one of the most common triggers of anxiety can heighten tension…and having more than one of these at any given time will be a sure cause for conflict.
When we do have conflict erupt in our midst, it pretty much takes a pattern where first there is escalation of a disagreement, perhaps with painful exchanges that hurt people’s feelings. Conflict quickly becomes competition, and the primitive brain kicks in with an ‘us versus them’ polarity. Reason is overtaken by passion, and we fail to respond with either reason or love. The more aggressive we become, the more we are likely to lie, take advantage, or ignore rules in order to promote our own sense of righteousness. Edward de Bono says, “ Being right is not too difficult. You choose your perception, you select your information. You leave out what does not suit you, you drag in some general purpose value words, you throw in a sneer or two about the opposition, and you are a fine fellow who has made a fine speech.” (107)
The reaction to one another, more than to the issue that began the conflict, is what can disturb a congregation’s balance (106).
4. How we survive conflict
It’s interesting to observe how people deal with conflict and how they adopt survival behaviors. Three ways of dealing with conflict complicate the confrontation of conflict: Avoidance is the chosen style of many churchgoers; when it arises in church they walk away, sometimes then leaving those who created the conflict in a greater position of strength. Accommodation or appeasing is a style that also gives control to opposing forces. This style is often the choice of church leaders because they place a premium value on tranquility and stability, a ‘don’t rock the boat’ mentality. And compromise never solves a problem but just leaves both sides with most but not all of what they wanted; this pseudo-solution can almost guarantee the reemergence of conflict at a later date.
But these are the ways we often react, because we just want to survive the conflict. If we rush to a solution then that may prevent us from getting to the deeper issue. It is a way to reduce the motivation for members to stay on the issue and push for substantive change.
Tom Owen-Towle writes in his book Growing a Beloved Community that we should fight fairly, not cruelly; for impact, not injury. He says that sometimes church members must commit to “entering the debating chambers, share their piece, listen to their tablemates, then stay put…even though their first impulse may be to disappear as quickly as possible” (69). He goes on to observe that the Navajo sometimes practice extreme togetherness during times of stress: When someone has violated a principle or person, the townspeople gather to burn the offender’s home down. Then they regroup and, alongside the violator, help to rebuild a new one (70).
The Catholic monk and theologian Thomas Merton also emphasizes the need to stay put, when he speaks of the ‘vow of stability’: “our allegiance to the common values that establish our church’s very being in the first place must always supercede our personal positions” (69).
I don’t like conflict. And it is ironic that my spiritual journey began as a result of a conflict. As a teenager I joined a Southern Baptist church and was baptized there; the young minister and his wife had recently arrived and they were doing a great job building up the youth presence in the church. I felt energized and valued in my faith…and then, the church deacons fired the minister. I could sound uncharitable and say that that is what Southern Baptists do, that they can’t seem to survive without constant conflict – but my mother, who is Southern Baptist, says that so it must be true! Anyway, I decided to leave that church and start looking; I had a bookcase full of Collier’s Harvard Classics, and they contained a selection of holy writings from the major world faiths. I went through them methodically, and quite liked the Buddhist and Hindu teachings I found there. I told one of my friends at school that I was without a church and she invited me to hers; when I walked through the door and smelled the incense, I fell in love with the Catholic church. And remained that way for three and a half decades, until I discovered that I had been a UU all along!
When my home church had a situation two years ago that resulted in the resignation of its minister, I did feel very much like running away again. When the minister left, there were two of us who as ministry associates had pastoral responsibilities for the church until our new interim minister arrived. But the vow of stability that Merton talks about held sway, and my own surrender to the common values we shared as members of the church helped to hold me to it. Why would anyone give up the spiritual connection that has been so important in their formation as a human being because of a conflict? To me, abandoning my church and my ability to worship with my beloved community was not an even trade-off.
The year after a new interim minister came to my home church, she held a reconciliation service for the congregation, and did so with trepidation. Inviting the members to engage in peacemaking was very powerful; in the open forum, only one person spoke in anger against another one present, and after that expression of pent-up anger and sorrow, the other person asked if they could meet afterwards to talk about it, and they did in fact reconcile. It was a powerful exercise of congregational polity and covenant; the minister did not wave a magic wand over the sanctuary and erase all ill will, but she – and we - created a safe space in which everyone who wished to could speak about how they were feeling, and then all of us agreed to go forward in good faith as a united congregation. Being the ‘peace’ you wish to see in the world means that you do not lose your way in the jungle of anger and hurt and blame that is created by conflict.
5. UU polity
And unlike some churches, we have an advantage because of our UU polity. That word is key to any understanding of our formation as a faith. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Protestant dissenters in England and New England based their idea of covenant upon an understanding of the primitive Christian church from the New Testament. The covenant was a radical departure from the practices and polity of the established Church of England, because it held that each member of the congregation had a right and responsibility in matters of decision-making including shaping church policy. This is still a feature of UU covenants today. But what is more, the ancient covenant between the Hebrew god Yahweh and the Israelite people that is found in the Hebrew scriptures still is the grounding for our covenant. The scriptural cycle of right relations takes for granted the inherent aspect of human weakness in any relationship. Being free as humans to break promises and to fail to live up to our responsibilities is not seen as irreparable behavior, because the convenantal cycle is naturally one of rupture, return, repair and reform (Everett, William Johnson. Recovering the Covenant. http://www.religiononline.
org/showarticle.asp?title=1495, 4).
The obligation that binds us who join in covenant is one that resists and absorbs the inevitable stresses and strains in human relationships, and relies heavily upon trust that coexists with a common faith. Dr. Jan Garrett (Toward an Ethics of Right
Relations, http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/ethics/rrelatio.htm, 5) recalls that the long‐term covenant relationship between Yahweh and Abraham and his descendents “had its ups and downs. It seemed at times to be broken beyond repair and yet was frequently renewed.” She goes on to say that, in covenantal relationships, interactions will not always go smoothly, but “one does not merely walk away when the interaction hits a rough spot” (Garrett, 6).
We have through our covenant a relationship that is entered into voluntarily through binding mutual promises; it is not self-serving, and it is not short‐termed in its scope. The covenant helps us weather difficult patches and assumes that adjustments may be necessary.
There is a growing use of a covenant of right relations in UU congregations today. As the theologian Conrad Wright comments, “Our polity is important because it defines the way in which we believe human beings should be related to one another for ecclesiastical purposes, and it may be a guide or model for human relationships of other kinds.”(Wright, Congregational Polity, 1997, 2)
6. Covenanting back to happiness
If a church already has a covenant then why would it encourage its members to create a covenant of right relations?
The sense of continuity of a congregation is valued through the historic covenant, but the identity of the congregation of today should be shaped by revisiting and revising the covenant in order to create and sustain relationship among its members as it moves forward. The UU Church of Silver Spring, Maryland, explains its right relations covenant this way:
It answers the question ‘How do we intend to behave so that we can create a welcoming community, a safe and sacred space?’ Covenants guide us when we are working well together, but conflict is inevitable when people live and work together in community. During conflict, a covenant can also remind us of the need to work through it in ways that are consistent with our community values. (UUCSS Right Relations Covenant, www.uucss.org/relations/Covenant%20FAQs.htm, accessed April 10, 2009).
In these and many other covenants of right relations, the identity of the congregation is clearly linked to its actions and thus to values that drive those actions: openness in communication, mannered behavior, and managed conflict are
ideals, set forth in good spirit and optimism, and aspirational in the sense that, as Rebecca Parker urges, “We need to be what we want to see, and make visible an alternative to the forms of oppression, alienation and injustice alive in our time” (Rebecca Parker, “What They Dreamed Be Ours to Do,” in Herz, Walter (ed). Redeeming Time, 1999, 90).
7. Can there be benefits of conflict?
One of the more striking and perhaps the bravest feature of a covenant of right relations is the expectation that a covenant will be broken at some point. From ancient times, the cyclic nature of failure and repair, estrangement and reconciliation, is explicit in the covenant promise.
That we as humans who live in community need to constantly balance our individual needs with those of our neighbor, is a reality that many of us today ignore at our peril. Perhaps the reason so many UU congregations have worked to produce and enact behavioral covenants is that they see that, at least in this one segment of their lives, they can fashion a relationship with others that then gives them hope for other parts of their lives where mutuality is still an elusive concept.
So perhaps our moment of epiphany today is the realization that conflict can be positive and beneficial, if we can stay in the moment and work through it with the help of our covenant: to quote Thich Nhat Hanh, “For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9074.Thich_Nhat_Hanh)
So, as we sang in our opening hymn, ‘Don’t be afraid of some change’! The power of our shared faith is that within it we have diversity, but also, that we value the need for harmony: Wally Armbruster reminds us: “If everyone’s singing the same note, that’s not harmony, it’s monotony. Harmony happens when people sing different notes – some that sound like discord at first suddenly start to sound great…once your ear gets used to the idea” (Durall, 166).
May it be so, blessed be, amen.
Gaye Ortiz 1/8/2012
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