Litmus Tent

One of the great stories of history is the presidency of Abraham Lincoln who gathered A Team of Rivals as chronicled in the book by the same name by Doris Kearns Goodwin to be his advisors. President Lincoln gathered people who disagreed and even ridiculed him to work together on behalf of the country. If you saw the film Lincoln, you saw this play out on the screen.

I was watching the news when a Republican lawmaker was asked about high gas prices now and he told the reporter to be patient. The reporter then quoted the lawmaker from a few years before complaining about gas prices during the last presidential administration. At the time the gas prices he was complaining about were a dollar cheaper than they are now. He replied to the question something along the lines of “I don’t have to talk to you right now,” touched his arm and walked away.

Oops.

Granted in 1861 there weren’t hundreds of news outlets where you could pick and choose how and who you talked to as a politician like there is now. And to be fair some Republicans would not even speak to non-conservative news outlet. And would a Democrat do the same in a similar circumstance?

Well, I actually think that “retreat” is a human condition. We often see it in polarity with extreme aggressive. The cornered animal who attacks is an example.

I saw it happen in congregations. A board would not be relationship with the rest of the congregation. Those involved in religious education would be in their own community and not really interact with anyone else and then be mad that no one “got them”. The social justice committee who wanted everyone on board with them but instead getting frustrated with questions over what they were doing and what the commitment expectations were.

I think some of the most extreme examples I saw were search committees initially in my work. Often the search committee was so locked up in their own world and their perception of who the congregation was in their minds had lost touch with the congregation. They would get caught up in their internal ideals.

A prospective minister would interview with the search committee and believe to have gotten a good handle on what the congregation wanted from ministry. Then they’d be surprised at the disconnect they found, often after they’d arrived to serve the congregation, between what the search committee presented to them, and what they found to be real.

One of the common pieces of advice from ministers that began to circulate to those in search was the incredulous question, “You actually believed your search committee?”

So, we stressed staying connected with the wider congregation and the interim minister during the search process. Once I was told that was going to be a lot of work. Sure, I responded, but the diligence may mean you’re not back in search again in three years because the minister missed information, lost trust in the search committee, and decided for something that felt more like what they had hoped for and been told was true.

We often tighten our circles because it feels safer, yet that’s often its own polarity. The wisdom of having more connection and information makes intuitive sense but it may not feel comfortable or safe. Yet it may be safer, more productive, and ultimately better.

It’s not always though about safety. Sometimes it’s about those ideals. The Litmus Test.

For years, the Republican Party said it was a “Big Tent.” Now, you may be only one disagreement away from whipping out your golf umbrella and wandering aimlessly why you aren’t allowed in.

The Democratic Party until recently had a harder time with being the “Big Tent” party and often seemed to project a line that could not be crossed. A Kentucky Democrat had to look and talk like a San Francisco Democrat. Now, it’s Republicans who are clearly towing a party line. As promised the president “Primaried” the Indiana Republicans who refused to gerrymander, and he was successful…in the Republican primaries this week. We’ll see if this plays out well in the fall and across states. All the gerrymandering could backfire.

And why it could backfire is about messaging as much as anything else. It says my priority is to be re-elected and not accountable to voters. It will be interesting to see if newly elected representatives next year will be referred to as representing a Gerrymandered District.

As we’ve seen the more of a one-sided district you’re in, the less likely you are to interact with the other side.

The same is true for congregations. Historically, they’ve been called committees. In some ways, this was a little better since it resembled more of a parliamentary system than a two-party system. But we’d also see committees shrink and shrink because they become rigid about what they believed.

I was working years ago with a Welcoming Congregation committee made up of 8 women and one man. The committee had one lesbian and one gay man. I met with them and discovered that two of the women had taken the rest of the committee hostage. They had created a litmus test of what you needed to believe in order to be on the committee. They could recite their test song and verse.

The minister had asked me to meet with the committee as she had not been able to help them herself. She had also wanted someone else to help the lesbian woman in particular who not only felt she had to meet the litmus test but also felt like a poster child for the committee.

So, I preached at the congregation and met with the committee after church. I still think of that weekend as my trip to Gilligan’s Island. What was supposed to have been an hour meeting ended up being a three-hour tour. One where people felt trapped on the island as well as lost.

The two women wanted everyone to hold such a high standard that nosebleeds were possible. There were a ton of words that couldn’t be said. There were phrases not to be used. There were things the congregation “had to learn.”

Interestingly, I didn’t disagree with anything they said. I just didn’t think the rest of the congregation was there and was going to get there with an ultimatum. Indeed, I’d talked with the lesbian, who liked the church and the people, wanted to help out, but she had never lived in a place that adhered to the standards of these two women. In fact, it made her more uncomfortable than supported.

She did appreciate what the women were trying to do. But she also had never seen people just “get it”. She also felt like they were doing it to prove how noble and right they were on some level. Something she could never figure out how to say.

I’d seen this before. I’d seen it around race where a white person would have the “aha” moment and then crucified any person who didn’t. But then that is predictable. Most every denomination will tell you their converts are more fervent than those who’d been with the religion their whole lives. The same is true causes.

In this meeting, I felt like my job was to get people to speak freely, or at least freer. I asked people to share some of their interactions with others in the congregation over the work. Of course, the two women had to speak first. They talked of the ignorance they faced. (It was the late 90s). I asked others if they experienced this. And I added the question, “Was anyone hostile or unkind? Or was it more because they were oblivious and this was newer to them.?”

That got a lot of agreement. Both the lesbian and the gay man talked about how kind everyone had been, that this was one place where they didn’t feel threatened or unsafe. Yes, people would say something that seemed clueless, but no one was malicious. I asked how often this happened and the gay man said, “Maybe once a month.” The lesbian agreed. They both said they were happy to have a place to just be themselves.

I noticed everyone got that, except for the two women whose stridency had not abated. They were a little annoyed at the two of them, but their own litmus test prevented them from speaking their annoyance directly at them. But it clearly bubbled just under the surface and added tension.

Eventually, we took a break. The lesbian found me snacking and whispered, “Do you see why I don’t want to really be here?” I laughed and asked, “And you’ve not been able to say that?” She shook her head.

I told her I thought the congregation’s efforts to be a Welcoming Congregation might be better served if she left this committee. She looked at me. I told her that I would summarize what I’d experienced after the break alongside my work with other congregations and give her an out. I told her she wasn’t letting the work down if she left. She might actually be helping it.

On return, I said I was impressed with the high standards I’d heard and that I’d never encountered a congregation like them in that way. Yet I’d seen and worked with other congregations that had gone on to accomplish what they wanted. I encouraged them to think of the work in stages and that given where they were in the Midwest that they would be in a better position to be two or three steps ahead of where their city was, as oppose to ten for a start.

Since two committee members were in the choir, I used the example of a good music teacher being able to improve and expand a range of singer but would not be able to get the singer to a range of 8 octaves immediately and probably didn’t have that themselves. It would take time.

People nodded, except the two women, one of whom said, “We can’t compromise what’s right.” At this point I was given the opening. The lesbian woman sighed, the exasperation bubbling out.

“Do you even want to be here?” I asked her directly. “You don’t have to be. You can support the work by simply being a member of the congregation that people like and interact with.”

To my great surprise, she thanked me. She said she wanted to support the work but just didn’t want to be on the committee anymore.

I told her I got that, and I wouldn’t think her leaving as a betrayal. She was a church member like everyone else and she got to choose how she spent her time. And then she said good-bye and left.

There was silence for a second before the other strident woman said, “Well, maybe we’ll get more done.” I suspected others would leave after that, though not that day.

Within a month, the committee disbanded. A year later, a new group reformed, this time without the two women, and they sailed through the process. Instead of having a set of standards and demands, they just engaged people where they were. The lesbian woman rejoined the committee. As did 15 others. They represented a wide range in the congregation of people who simply wanted their congregation to be a better place for everyone. It was a litmus test everyone could agree to.

It doesn’t have to be a team of rivals, but getting people together of any kind does mean finding a litmus test that everyone can agree to and connections to others, even when you don’t agree.

It doesn’t mean you don’t keep your standards, but it might mean you don’t try and make your standards everyone else’s without conversation, buy-in, and honest mutuality. There can be all kinds of ways to be in the same tent.