Sunday December 23, 2007
When paradigms clash
How long have we humans been around? Anthropologists say about three million years – that\’s when the proto-human named Lucy roamed the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Biblical literalists say 6,000 years.
Whichever view you support, it\’s a very long time.
In that time, we have developed amazing powers of reasoning. But we have developed lamentably few capabilities for resolving conflicts.
In a worst case, we turn to war. At lesser levels, we engage in excommunication, shunning, family feuds, and long-term hostilities. In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants nurture grievances dating from 1690; in the Middle East, lingering hostilities go back to the Crusades.
We think we\’ve improved our behaviour when we resort to litigation. But we haven\’t – an adversarial system hardly ever leads to reconciliation.
Case study in conflict
I write this lament, thinking about the congregation of Penticton United Church.
For about 30 years, I\’ve been told, the congregation has consisted of two distinct factions.
One faction wants to make the congregation a vital force in the community and beyond. It expects the minister to be a sparkplug who organizes and inspires the membership to action. It\’s often passionate about new programs and ideas.
The other faction is devoted to its 80-year-old church building. It expects the minister to serve existing members – pastoral visits, predictable worship, traditional hymns, and comforting sermons. It resists anything unfamiliar: music, theology, programs, models of governance…
There\’s also a third group, of unknown size, that has done its best to avoid getting involved, to sweep the conflict under the carpet, to pretend everything will work out if we\’d all just be nice to each other. It doesn\’t work. It never has.
My own sympathies are probably obvious. But I don\’t want to take sides here, because the point is not which side is right but how we deal with conflict. Or how we fail to.
The universal split
The same underlying conflict is found everywhere — between out and in, left and right, liberal and conservative, progressive and traditional… Only the details differ, depending on whether examples come from business, politics, church, or community organizations. But the essential division stays the same.
It happened when Scouts Canada decided to open its ranks to girls – and earlier, when it moved from a near-military model to a more democratic style. It happened when Paul Martin rebelled against Jean Chretien, when RCMP officers challenged Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli\’s rule, when Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity, when feminism upset generations of patriarchy.
This year, I was introduced to the writings of Thomas Kuhn.
Kuhn limited his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, to the narrow world of science. But I\’ve found it remarkably descriptive of all social change.
Whenever a new paradigm emerges – a new way of thinking, of seeing, of discerning – it starts with a small number who are not satisfied with the existing paradigm\’s solutions. They find too many anomalies, too many inconsistencies.
Adherents of the existing paradigm invariably attack both the new paradigm and its supporters. They have to. The new paradigm threatens perceptions and understandings to which they have devoted their lives and their careers.
With a few exceptions, Kuhn wrote, the traditionalists will never be converted to the new paradigm. They have too much invested in their traditional perspective.
Rather, the new paradigm gradually gains wider support, mostly from newcomers. Eventually, it becomes the new norm – until it, in turn, is threatened by a still newer theory.
But the emerging paradigm does not vanquish the existing paradigm. Rather, the two exist in uneasy parallel — until the proponents of one view die or grow weary.
Different strokes
In social contexts, these conflicts focus on individuals. In sports, on the coach. In business, on the CEO. In politics, on the leader.
And in churches, on the minister.
But it\’s rarely one individual\’s fault. Rather, the conflict derives from two different ways of seeing the same data. People think they\’re talking to each other; in fact, they\’re talking past each other. A vast chasm separates their expectations.
Theologian Marcus Borg may have been thinking of Kuhn when he named two diverging streams in Christianity the “Emerging Paradigm” and the “Existing Paradigm.”
The Emerging Paradigm looks forward, to what could be. It finds many past practices and convictions irrelevant – not necessarily wrong, just irrelevant. They don\’t matter any more.
The Existing Paradigm reveres those same practices and convictions. They shaped their world. To abandon them, to treat them as unimportant, threatens the very core of their self-image.
Typically, the supporters of the Existing Paradigm – in any field – threaten to withdraw if they don\’t get their way. They\’ll quit the club, cancel their donations, resign from their positions.
It\’s blackmail. Usually it works. But not always.
When the Episcopal Church of Scotland proposed women\’s ordination in the 1990s, traditionalist opponents threatened to walk out if the vote passed. To their surprise, the progressive side retaliated. If the church refused to ordain women, they announced, they would quit.
The “Old Guard” realized that winning the battle would leave them with a fragment of a church no longer worth defending.
Irreconcilable differences To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to [email protected]. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
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For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
At Penticton United Church, the progressive faction did walk out.
Kamloops-Okanagan Presbytery, the body that oversees United Church congregations within its boundaries, appointed a professional consultant to examine the situation. The consultant, Joan McConnell, heard from over 100 people.
“The congregation,” McConnell concluded, is “made up of two distinct groups, separated along lines of theology, finances, and power, and a third group who is totally confused about what it happening to their church… They exist in a culture of distrust, power struggle, and angst.”
Seeing no possibility of reconciliation, McConnell recommended a “process of enabling the establishment of two congregations from the existing membership of Penticton United Church.”
It\’s not a desirable solution. It is realistic.
But Thomas Kuhn would probably say, “I told you so.”
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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