Salvaging “Catholic Spirit” in the Context of Contempt
Except for the several hours of each day spent by my wife’s beside, I sit amid 4,000 books. I have “read in” all of them, and read closely, many of them, but only a few have substantially changed my life. A recent book that opened up a new vista into the significance of civil relationships is Love Your Enemies—How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Arthur Brooks serves on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Business at Harvard. Ten years after high school he was a French hornist, both in Barcelona and Baltimore. Finishing college at age thirty, he earned his PhD and became a full professor at the University of Syracuse, hardly a politically conservative context. For ten years he was President of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that leans conservative. Politically he is registered “Independent.” In mid-life he converted to Roman Catholicism, then the Dalai Lama became his religious mentor. He is Anglo; his wife is an immigrant from China. He lives in Washington, DC and writes for the Washington Post. It is from this ideologically diverse vantage point that he writes in 2018 of the dangerous polarization within American culture. Two years before January 7, 2021, he writes, “We are being driven apart, which is the last thing we need in what is a fragile moment for our country.” There is an African proverb, “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers,” meaning that when those who wield great power clash, it’s those lower in the hierarchical structure who often bear the greatest consequences of the conflict. This is true for political leadership, and it is true for ecclesiastical leadership.
As I read his book, the significance of Brooks’ analysis of American culture resonated with my own concerns about the United Methodist Church. Like American politics, our denominational heritage held disparities of belief together with some modicum of what Wesley called “catholic spirit.” The General Conference of 2019 revealed that after generations of “loving alike when we did not think alike,” the gap of belief has irreparably widened and exposed long simmering resentments. United Methodism has slipped into a culture of contempt. We still claim to embrace sentiments of respect, kindness, and love, but a superficial examination of the United Methodist social media groups and news outlets demonstrates otherwise. Has the time-honored term “catholic spirit” become little more than a euphemism?
As United Methodists fight, our witness to those outside our tradition suffers. It might well be our own children and the spiritually marginalized who suffer most as they become disenchanted with our church. For generations, religious surveys repeatedly found that when Christians in the United States were asked, “If you were not in the denomination of your present membership, what would you become?” and the majority would answer, “I would be a Methodist.” That might no longer be true.
Arthur Brooks’ book taught me more than I ever knew before about the word “contempt.” When we hold someone in contempt, they virtually do not exist as a human equal in any sense. Like Americans in politics, we in the body of Christ have adopted a cultural addiction to contemptibility. According to Brooks, “Contempt says, ‘Your disgust me; you are beneath my caring about.’” If you hold me in contempt, you are not interested in my opinion; indeed we shall hardly have a conversation because the two of us speak a different language. Disagreements over issues of political correctness and social justice have bred contempt. The labels we tend to use to define each other are not “Sister” and “Brother,” but rather “Traditionalist” and “Progressive.” We prefer to know one another according to our ideological tribes. The recent prayer of a United Methodist pastor on the floor of the United States Senate which ended, “Awoman,” exposed our dogmatic cleft, its virality illustrating how quickly our dividedness can flash.
It doesn’t appear as if contempt is a morality issue of concern pertinent to those who find themselves in disagreement. People on both sides of the social justice issues that divide United Methodists consider themselves Christians. Indeed, persons of each posture consider themselves “more Christ-like” than those with different convictions on issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and ordination of self-avowed LGBTQIA Christians. The pandemic of contempt is poisoning friendships, work relationships, next-door neighbor favors, family reunions, and ecumenical cooperation. The American Psychological Association reports that the feeling of rejection associated with contempt increases “anxiety, depression, jealousy, and sadness.”
Agreement on social justice issues or recovery of a common vocabulary is not realistically possible. However, let us pray for relationships in which we can say, “I do not agree with you, but what you have to say matters because we both stand under the shadow of the same Cross.” Wives and husbands approaching divorce can sometimes be civil; they can share parenting without sarcasm or contempt, and can even remain friends. United Methodism will divide as soon as COVID-19 allows a General Conference vote, but the spirit of that conference could be far different from that of 2019. Can we salvage Wesley’s “catholic spirit?”
In Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, “To love is to will the good of the other.” Plato, in Republic, wrote, “Can there be any greater evil than discord, distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign?” Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics, “Even if we have all other goods, no one would choose to live without the unifying bonds of friendship.” The Dalai Lama begins every day by praying for China, a country that conquered and eviscerated his native Tibet of its religion and its culture. When Brooks asked him, “What do I do when I feel contempt?,” His Holiness answered, “Practice warm-heartedness.” How much of the wisdom of Wesley, Aquinas, Plato, and the Dalai Lama are we willing to embrace towards bridging relationships since we have lost so much of the former bonding relationships? If non-Christians like Plato and the Dali Lama understand the dangers of contempt, how much more should we Christians turn from harboring such scorn in our hearts?
The most hopeful demonstration of warm-heartedness we have seen is the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation and Restructuring. It was drawn and signed by six disparate caucus groups of The United Methodist Church as proposed legislation for the May, 2020 General Conference. The proposal states any church desiring to leave the United Methodist Church may do so by a 57% majority vote and may take their real and liquid properties without penalty. Then came COVID! Now a year has lapsed and some pundits fear that support for the document has faded. Among the worst case scenario outcomes would be the return of the contempt that prevailed in February, 2019.
Brooks illustrated contempt with reference to Monty Python’s movie Life of Brian, which is about two Jewish dissident groups who are the bitterest of enemies. Their titles? One is “Judean People’s Front,” and the other is “People’s Front of Judea.” When I read that, I wondered if the branches of Wesley’s progeny will go that same absurdist route. One thing we know; contempt is no match for love. If we can salvage some modicum of spiritual unity, let us make the theme song of the next General Conference one of Charles Wesley’s hymns:
Come Holy Ghost (for moved by thee the prophets wrote and spoke);
Unlock the truth, thy self the key, unseal the sacred book
Expand thy wings, celestial Dove, brood o’er our nature’s night;
On our disordered spirits move, and let there now be light.
Dr. Donald W. Haynes is a retired UMC minister in the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. He is the author of A Digest of Methodist Grace Theology and a two-volume set of Methodist history, The Methodist Story—1703-1791 & 1760’s-2019.