How To Talk To “The Old Guy”

I’m over at Stand Firm today. Enjoy!

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Matt has been going all over the internet reposting one of my first Stand Firm pieces about how I (at least) don’t think we can yet be friends with those who happily self-identify as Episcopalian or some other brand of Progressive Christian. The war isn’t over, I said, it’s actually gotten worse, as many of us expected. Today I want to do a listicle of how to talk to old-timey curmudgeons like Matt (and maybe even me) for those who think, looking at us from across the internet, that we are absolutely what’s wrong with the ACNA and that it’s time finally to move on to a more gracious, less combative pasture. Listicles are the latest thing, and they will allow me to offer what I believe is called “advice,” but hopefully will be more of a window into the soul of the Veteran of Ye Olde Anglican Wars.

One—The old guy (in ancient times referred to as “the elder”) wants to talk about the issue itself. (I’m gonna go ahead and say ‘he’ but honestly, this absolutely applies to women who fought in the trenches of the last two decades, attending interminably dull vestry meetings, getting onto committees, speaking on the floor of convention, making phone calls, writing letters, in short, Showing Up). This is so key. One of the things that ate out the guts of the Episcopal church is that it became dangerous to talk about ugly topics like Biblical Sexuality, Biblical Authority, and the Theological Underpinnings of Belief. You could hint at a lot of stuff, but you weren’t supposed to come out and say anything about it. It was unseemly to say, for example, “Homosexuality is wrong.” I was pressured not to “bring up” anything controversial like abortion…or the gospel. You could nuance the thing all day as long as you never said anything definitive ever. Let your words be winsome or don’t bother to have any was the rule of the day. The chief way to combat this problem, which is now very much worse, is to say out loud what the issues are, clearly and plainly, and keep saying them. If you feel pressure not to speak about something controversial, you have already lost some ground. The way to recover that ground is to speak about the actual issue.

Two—The old guy wants you to own your theological worldview. This is where talking about the Holy Spirit or “being missional” can too often be unintentionally employed as a smoke machine. “God’s call” is often murmured instead of “I don’t want to talk about this because I personally do not think it is important because of the theological values I hold dear.” “I” statements are flung down by the side of the road and in their place comes a lot of jargon about God and the church. Do you think that human sexuality is not the most pressing issue of today? Or whatever it might be? Then own it. Say, “I don’t think the sexuality issue is a problem anymore,” or, “I think racism is more important than____.”

Three—The old guy is not traumatized and in pain and doesn’t need to be psychologized. It is more comfortable to wonder about the personal proclivities of the person arguing on twitter or IRL (why are they so angry?) than to deal with the substance of what they’re saying. This is true about every single issue going on in the world today. I caught myself doing it last week. “What’s wrong with that person,” I started to say, “that he would think that?” But that’s not a helpful question. Better to say, “What is wrong with what he or she is saying?” Try to tease out the issue itself without making any moral assumptions about the person saying it. And then (see number two) own your own reasoning. “I think X is wrong about X because I think the Bible actually says Y,” rather than, “People who really love Jesus would never talk like that.” Psychologizing people is a gentle path leading to dehumanization—“that person is just bad”—and demonstrates to the old guy that…read the rest here!