institutions : mackenzian

Big Idea: Force and anarchy aren’t the only two cookies our communities can bake. Given all the theories of freedom that religious institutions have produced over the centuries, they should be skilled at cultivating and honoring free choice, not the least skilled of all and not merely average.

At the end of my last post on this topic, I wrote:

I was once taught that the end-game of this human experiment was that right-being and right-doing would be intuitive and internally driven. If that’s more than a pipe dream, shouldn’t religious institutions be the most skilled at honoring and nurturing free conscience and persuasion and teaching all of us to do the same? Shouldn’t they be leading freedom, not limiting it?

The balance of faith and free conscience in religious communities and educational institutions is a recurring debate. Perhaps the biggest mental block isn’t that our definitions of academic freedom vary or that various groups hold mutually exclusive visions of how much denominations should influence schools. Maybe the biggest mental block is that we have unchallenged assumptions about human nature and capacity, and we rarely expose these assumptions to daylight.

Hugo van der Goes's Fall of Man and the Lamentation (1470-1475) — Hugo van der Goes, “The Fall of Man and the Lamentation” (1470-1475) | Google Art Project

Seventh-day Adventist policy about the church’s influence on its colleges and universities through accreditors and conference-level constituents seems to be based on these premises:

Humans are naturally biased toward the rotten, their discernment and reasoning corrupted;
They cannot be trusted to choose “the good” when offered it so must be herded toward it by church mandates or hosed away from alternatives by disgust and dissociation; and
They require the hedging safety of policy and law post-choice to keep them on the favored path.

We don’t seem to allow for presenting good with sound reasons and without emotional or authority manipulation, though even this allowance assumes that the good we propose has a solid basis to start with.

A system based on the three assumptions listed above has no reason to wait for amazing grace to draw untrustworthy people into a higher moral order, or to leave compliance to the chance and vagary of the Spirit that blows as it will.

So, from universities to international organizations, the religious institutions I’ve observed rarely rely on cooperative rhetoric or community design principles to inspire people to good. [1] Both are used, but neither is indispensable to these institutions’ work or use of authority. Students, staff, or members cannot look in every direction and see trust-based relationships that enliven them. Specific rules emerging from that low-trust context help to keep the system functional, but not flourishing. And alternative modes break through on a small scale from time to time.

I don’t see alternatives to force-and-sanction at work consistently in mainstream society. I see more on the edges, and organizations like the Fetzer Institute, Ode, and Bread for the Journey support and signal-boost examples in their areas. By contrast, the mainstream offers increasing monitoring and multi-system limitation and control, and whether by active lobbying or tepid objections, religion is complicit. We teach that we are “the light of the world” and promote a gospel of grace and mutual submission rather than empire and power-over, yet operate our institutions using “the master’s tools.” So if grace and mutual submission do resonate for students and members now, it has to be in spite of us and not because of us.

A minister recently argued that there are so many things “the world” can do better than “the Church,” so many things from institutional management to community outreach, but modeling the value of grace is the only thing the Church can do better. I don’t know whether that’s true. But if it is true that “the Church” (i.e. us) is supposed to be the planet’s functioning illustration of Christ at work, then my consternation is only heightened. If we are that illustration, then all of our movable parts need restructuring to support our Christ-ing. We can’t get results we don’t build for. And if youth don’t learn alternatives to force and authority-sanctioning from their time in our religious educations, where should we send them to learn? If organized religion drops a ball it claims was made for its hands, who will pick it up?

Three columns and a round tin of M&M and chocolate chip cookies. — Credit: Jennifer Jacobson

I believe in and fully support a healthy, diverse civil society, and I contend that religious organizations are part of civil society but not its master. We have much to contribute to civil society’s common-wealth and will first have to release the urge to dominate it and its people. I think much anti-religious rhetoric is rooted in our peers looking for proof that we-the-religious have released the urge to dominate. Perhaps they’re not yet seeing much.

The burden’s on us to prove our intentions in word, act, and relationship: we all have a lot of cookies to make and eat together.

[1] My current congregation is an exception to this pattern, and that is why I became a member.

Re: Religion May Not Survive the Internet — Valerie Tarico returns with more End of Religion evangelism.

“Religions have spent eons honing defenses that keep outside information away from insiders. The innermost ring wall is a set of certainties and associated emotions like anxiety and disgust and righteous indignation that block curiosity. The outer wall is a set of behaviors aimed at insulating believers from contradictory evidence and from heretics who are potential transmitters of dangerous ideas.” — Valerie Tarico

I think the headlined conclusion is completely wrong: some folks thought the rise of writing and the printing press meant The End of All Good, too, yet here we are.

But Tarico may be right about some important details. The internet has already transformed several conservative denominations in the last 15 years, and changed them irrevocably. For example, a strong, open network of progressive Seventh-day Adventists has evolved out of isolated college and university towns into a global conversation. Even if small in relation to the international membership of its home denomination, the Spectrum and related progressive web forums are influential because they provide information and discussion channels beyond the scope of authorized church publications and Saturday morning classes.

It’s not all light, however. While open and accessible, Spectrum and similar nontraditional channels are also characterized by thick discursive conflict: comment sections feature as much misapprehension and ad hominem detours as insight and open-hearted listening. These channels are also dominated by vocal minorities while the majority of users “lurk” or monitor sites without contributing content. As a Salon respondent writes: “Extremist minorities often drive the conversation because the moderate majority can’t muster enough interest to even engage.”

Complaints about deep social polarization on and off the internet often focus on various “rabid extremists” who (so the story goes) have hijacked the public sphere and who consistently destroy opportunities for mutual engagement and respectful dialogue. It’s easy enough to observe conversations that fit that bill: cable news thrives on stalemates among energetic opposing voices, and reality television is designed to create it.

The Salon comment points to something else just as important: where is the “moderate majority” on this landscape? Are we the passive audience that extremist drama plays for? As much as we might complain about the people running public conversations, do we actively participate ourselves? Of what value are our complaints about degraded public dialogue serve if we’re apathetic about direct, constructive involvement?

As we discussed this article, a friend pointed out to me that the internet has been a boon to many denominations: it supports increased and more symmetrical connection among members. Surely this is good if society at large tends toward disconnection and less engagement person-to-person and denominations have a norm of hierarchical relationships.

But I wonder if the communities for whom the internet has been a good thing are mostly non-traditional from their start: geographically distributed, experimental, intentionally dialogic, and with a strong sub-population of early adopters. For more mainstream congregations, the net has provided some benefits and proactive leaders have capitalized on them. A whole battery of communication channels are now available to churches because of the internet. Centralized PR offices can disseminate more information in more ways: websites, social media, email, list-servs, webcasts, live-streams, and forums. Despite this, there’s almost a species-sized difference between groups that use Twitter or Facebook mainly to host discussions or facilitate support, and groups that use the same media like a univocal billboard service. The latter are often wildly unprepared for the interactive internet and the unpredictable, uncontrollable people who use it and expect feedback from site owners.

So what now? I’m still waiting for some of the internet’s promise to manifest: we were told that the net would democratize relationships and the flow of information. In some ways it has. But in other corners especially those not filled with early adopters, openness, transparency, and cross-function collaboration are second-tier values and reluctantly pursued.

My sense is that the majority of people are still interfacing with the old world’s glacial institutions and that we’re creating at least two distinct realms of experience: one actively interconnected and the other persistently disconnected. If, regardless of our groups and cliques, we need curiosity about ideas and possibilities to grow, is this bifurcation of values the best future we can imagine?

Faith and Freedom II: Beyond Force

Promise of the Internet