Book Reviewed: Naaman Wood and Sean Connable (eds), Humility and Hospitality: Changing the Christian Conversation on Civility (Pasco, WA: Integratio Press, 2022).
Journal of Christian Teaching Practice, Volume 11, 2024 (January – December)
Reviewed By: Tim Muehlhoff
Reviewer Affiliation: Biola University, La Mirada CA
Total Pages: 214
ISBN-13: 978-0-0991463-6-1
For the past five years, I’ve served as the co-director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project (WCP) whose aim is to reintroduce compassion, perspective-taking, and civility back into our public disagreements both inside and outside the Christian community. The WCP is funded by donors who share the concern of a majority of Americans (98%) who, when surveyed, state that incivility is a threat to our country. While an overwhelming majority of us recognize the problem, solutions to incivility are not that obvious.
As a communication professor, I’m always looking for insightful resources on fostering civility. I’m delighted to say that I found such a resource in Humility and Hospitality where editors Naaman Wood and Sean Connable pull together academics to offer a much-needed perspective, and even corrective, on current approaches to civility.
Rethinking Civility at an Unconference
In June of 2017, teachers, students, and scholars came together to explore the theme of “Civility and Virtue in a Multicultural Public Sphere.” Rather than filling the time with mere formal presentations, this unconference tried to change things up through “strategies of cooperation, informality, and improvisation as means to foster realities of creativity, connection, and growth” (p. 4). It’s not that formal presentations were abandoned, but rather, the space was constructed to dive deep into them. In fact, one presentation by Geneva College president, Calvin L. Troup, serves as the genesis of this volume. Rather than asking, “What can we do to be more civil,” Troup sought to move toward a deeper, more spiritual way of understanding the prerequisites of civility.
To understand how Troup has reconceptualized civility for the contributors of this volume, the editors identify three Christian authors that have, in their opinion, shaped “the current discussion on civility in the public square” (p. 5). Full disclosure: not only am I reviewing this book, but I am listed as one of those voices. In addition to myself, the editors focus on the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard Mouw and social critic Os Guinness. While the editors adopt a respectful tone toward our work—no small accomplishment in today’s argument culture—they are clear in their assessment. In short, our “works are centered on the recovery of civility as a technical, practical, or rhetorical practice. This means that all the authors think, as any of us at the unconference did, there are things ‘to do’ right now that will solve the problem of incivility” (p. 5). Ultimately, they argue, the approach ascribed to us has taken the civility discussion in an unproductive direction.
Changing the Conversation
The goal of Humility and Hospitality is to reframe the discussion of civility by asking a different question offered by Troup. Rather than focusing on “How can we be more civil?” we should ask, “What are the conditions for the possibility of civility?” In contrast to Mouw, Guinness, and myself, Troup “wants to go deeper than the technicalities of civility because he believes unless we get to all the things that make for civility, we are doomed to fail” (p. 11).
Since it is Troup’s insights that dominated the unconference and serve as the inspiration of the entire volume, the book wisely starts with a framing chapter by Troup entitled “Humility and Hospitality: Two Conditions Necessary for the Possibility of Civility.” For this reviewer, this chapter alone is worth purchasing and reading the entire volume. His chapter will be standard reading for my rhetoric students.
Troup’s goal, to set the necessary conditions that make civility possible, reminds me of a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend in 1951: “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.”[1] For Troup, it’s clear that proper communication techniques or strategies must be second: “Some suggest that . . . if we can train people to employ the proper techniques, then voila, civility and virtue will flower. I think such a proposal is nonsense. We will not address the root problems of incivility until we acknowledge that we are personally and directly involved in the problem” (p. 19). If “proper techniques” are clearly second things, where can we find the first things that could serve as the foundation?
For Troup, the answer is found in one of the churches’ greatest theologians and rhetoricians—Saint Augustine. What follows is Troup’s insightful presentation of four themes gleaned from Augustine’s masterful work, City of God. The themes are commonwealth over empire, well-ordered loves, households (not merely marriages or families), and localities of civic laws and cultures (p. 23). From these rich themes, Troup hones in on two conditions or virtues that serve as the title of this volume, humility and hospitability. What brings these two virtues together is taking the focus off oneself and placing it on others. The focus of humility is “directed toward the neighbor, toward the sojourner or stranger, toward the brother, and toward the enemy” (p. 27). Troup reminds us that humility isn’t merely for followers of Christ; humility was practiced by Jesus himself. “He simply does not pay any attention to himself. His focus of attention is entirely on his Father in heaven, on obeying God’s will, and on the people in his presence, who he was teaching, healing, training, and helping” (p. 27). Similarly, hospitality is, in its essence, “welcoming neighbors in and going out of our way for our neighbors. In our civic life, we need to love our neighbors as ourselves” (p. 27).
Troup concludes his chapter by ending where he started, asserting that civility and virtue cannot be reduced to mere “techniques” or “methods” (p. 29). “We cannot figure out the right persuasive method to become civil. Virtues must be practiced, and we must practice them in the hardest place to practice them, in the household” (p. 26). While practices should not be abandoned altogether, they must be “grounded in Christ and his two-fold law of love in Luke 10:27” (p. 29).
Applying Troup
The rest of the volume is a fascinating read wherein we hear from a vast array of scholars and activists attempting to work out Troup’s conditions for civility in various professional arenas (social work, cross-cultural missions, political discourse) and historical-cultural contexts (Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, Christian-LGBTQ+ relations, white evangelicalism, Nazi Germany). After Troup’s framing chapter, sections include “Foundations for Civility,” “Lived Challenges of Civility,” and “Opportunities for Civility.” Within these sections, readers will be asked to consider thought-provoking questions. Here’s a sampling. As we seek to love others, are all loves equal? Or, are some loves higher and better, while others are lesser, or even wrong (Chapter 2)? In our attempt to influence others, have we rejected solidarity and partnership for a form of “condescending pity” (Chapter 4)? Is the perception of white evangelicals as a “beleaguered minority accurate” (Chapter 6)? Has our misguided interpretation of Jeremiah’s famous phrase, “I know the plans I have for you” (29:11) resulted in a destructive form of individualism (Chapter 8)? Our answers to these questions will help us construct our own conceptualizations of humility and hospitality
While each section contains thought-provoking takes on civility, humility, and hospitality, I found John B. Hatch’s chapter on recovering the cruciform power of prophetic witness and his use of Brueggemann’s notion of “royal consciousness”—where God’s community is enticed to trade compassion and justice for power—to be very helpful as an election year approaches. I was also fascinated to read Annalee Ward and Mary Bryant’s exploration of how Christians adopted differing starting points when considering how to react to the Nazi regime. How one responds to Hitler’s power will ultimately be determined by which starting point a Christian adopts—integrity or civility.
Positive and Concerning Observations
I’m jealous that I was not at the unconference that inspired this volume, but thankful to encounter Troup’s thought-provoking conceptualization of civility and the chapters that follow. In short, this reviewer could not agree more with Troup’s assertion that attempts at civility are “doomed” if our approach is to merely train individuals in certain rhetorical techniques. Such an approach will never, as Troup rightly asserts, “address the root causes of incivility” (p. 19). However, not everyone agrees with Troup’s and my assessment, as I have learned from personal experience.
When I wrote I Beg to Differ, I broke it up into three sections–the first laying out my philosophical/theological approach to civility/conflict, the second exploring ways to organize difficult conversations rooted in the Proverbs, and the last section applying my strategy to case studies. When the book went out to external review from the publisher, two reviewers wrote that Section 1 seemed an unnecessary tangent and readers would be most interested in the practical techniques of Sections 2 and 3. I disagreed. Removing the first section would edit out a chapter that aligns itself with Troup’s views and, for me, is a chapter that most clearly lays out my view of the preconditions for civility.
In this particular chapter, I explain that what separates the Christian communicator from others is not the adoption of certain techniques, but an openness to being transformed by God. “In contrast, Jesus argued that knowing the good and even practicing it are not enough—we must have an infusion of goodness given to us. This infusion is not some abstract dose of goodness but an intimate relationship with God’s Spirit, who indwells each believer.”[2] A. W. Tozer is instructive here and frames my chapter: “We [Christians] go beyond that; we go deeper than that. Jesus says, ‘Ye shall receive power’—a potent force from another world, invading your life by your consent, getting to the roots of your life and transforming you into His kindness [emphasis mine].”[3] What will the Spirit infuse into the life of the believer that lays the ground for civility and allows them to give a blessing for an insult (1 Pet. 3:9)? Peter lays out the necessary virtues by specifically mentioning sympathy, love, compassion, and humility (1 Pet. 3:8-9). What Jesus, Tozer, and Peter commend to us is not a set of rhetorical techniques, but spiritual transformation. Or as Troup reminds us, any attempt at civility will fail if we do not “acknowledge that we are personally and directly involved in the problem” (p. 19).
Criticism of the Book’s Framing
In my serving as co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project for the past five years, one of the most distressing and unproductive communication practices today is taking complex topics like Critical Race Theory, use of preferred pronouns, mask mandates, or Black Lives Matter and presenting them in a hurried or surface manner that often strips them of points that counter a person’s specific critique of them. Unfortunately, in the introduction of Humility and Hospitality, the editors attempt to summarize my work and the work of Guinness and Mouw in just 3.5 pages. In doing so, they create an incomplete description of our work that creates an easy foil for them to address.
Since I’m writing this review, allow me to use myself as an example. After describing my work in one page, they conclude: “Taken together, all three books assume that practical communicative interventions—either engaging in successful conversations or rhetorical messages—are the main effort that will bring about more civil conversations” (p. 7). What’s concerning about their analysis is that they omit one book entirely, inaccurately summarize another, and, in my estimation, leave out key parts of the other two that seemingly contradict their conclusion—such as an in-depth discussion of the virtue of humility.[4]
For the sake of space, consider the book that was omitted, Authentic Communication: Christian Speech Engaging Culture (IVP Academic), which I co-wrote with the former chair of Biola University, Todd Lewis. In this book, we address the need for the hospitality and humility advocated by Troup. In a chapter entitled “Abnormal Communication” we assert that what distinguishes Christian communicators from others is the fact we’ve been called to love others before we even communicate: “Followers of Christ are not called to merely be tolerant of others. We are called to love those who disagree with us.”[5] Love is not a communication technique, but a prerequisite for civility. The following chapter, “Social Justice: Speaking for the Marginalized,” argues that hospitality—defined by Troup as “welcoming neighbors in and going out of our way for our neighbors”—should especially be applied to the marginalized: “All Christians should be troubled and spurred to action when we encounter individuals who are oppressed, devalued or neglected.”[6] We do not offer hospitality to the marginalized as a means to convert them, or to make our message more effective; rather, we acknowledge a person’s dignity because each person has uniquely been made in God’s image.
Concerning my book I Beg to Differ, they summarize it as presenting a four-part communication strategy and offering a series of case studies (p. 6). In their summary, they do what the external reviewers suggested: skip Section 1 entirely and focus on Sections 2 and 3. Thus, everything I say about Tozer, Jesus, and Peter’s call for internal transformation is excluded—the very points that most align with Troup.
If the editors felt it necessary to frame their book by invoking three Christian writers that have formed “the current Christian discussion of civility in the public square” (p. 5), then it would have been wise—and fair to the authors—to devote an entire chapter to their thoughts, allowing space to quote sections that both support and seemingly push back on their interpretation. This is especially warranted when the editors make the alarming claim in the conclusion that, in their estimation, Mouw, Langer, and Muehlhoff’s truncated views of civility “make unintentional room for violence” (p. 165). That is a serious allegation that needs appropriate space to unpack and justify. It is particularly distressing that Mouw—who has served as a mentor to me—is invoked since the common theme found in his books is that love must precede what we say, and humility trumps rhetoric. By quickly summarizing the complex work of prolific authors such as Guinness and Mouw, and my modest contribution of four books, Wood and Connable miss an opportunity to model for readers what deep interaction with fellow authors looks like in practice.
Bottom Line
Do not think my issues with the introduction and conclusion of Humility and Hospitality mean I do not greatly value this volume. I do, and will gladly recommend it to students, fellow faculty, and anyone interested in considering the preconditions to civility. Troup’s insights not only transformed a conference and inspired a book, but could also move us to reconsider a distinctly Christian approach to civility in today’s troubled communication climate.
Notes
[1] The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. III, Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963, edited by Walter Hooper, HarperSanFrancisco, 2007, p. 111.
[2] Tim Muehlhoff, I Beg to Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations with Truth and Love (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), p. 66.
[3] Ibid. The original quote can be found in: A.W. Tozer, Tozer Speaks to Students, ed. Lyle W. Dorsett (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1998), p. 9.
[4] To read our discussion of humility, see: Tim Muehlhoff & Rick Langer, Winsome Persuasion: Christian Influence in a Post-Christian World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2017), pp. 72, 86, 108, 110, 148.
[5] Tim Muehlhoff & Todd Lewis, Authentic Communication: Christian Speech Engaging Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010), p. 192).
[6] Ibid., p. 200.