I remember a workshop participant at a church with a history of tension and discord, who even as she said these words laughed at herself, “I wish we could do everything with graciousness and goodwill like they did in the Bible.”
The Old Testament narratives are rife with dissension and rebellion, competition and conflict. The positioning and rivalries among the disciples dismayed Jesus. And virtually no one signed aboard for a second missionary junket with Paul. It doesn’t take reading between the lines to see how deep the conflict was between Peter and Paul, though Acts 15 narrates its resolution. Biblical characters, failing to close the gap between differences, bridged them. The issue is not whether there will be broad and ardently held differences of opinion, but how those differences will be expressed. In a time when civility is in collapse, when public discourse is riddled with innuendo or outright assault, the church can model an alternative. Sometimes it does. Too often it does not.
In this article for the Alban Institute, Friend describes a four-step strategy congregations can use to engage difficult social and political questions in a civil way.