Justin Welby
Bloomsbury, 2022.
I’m not sure who the target audience is for this book. As a general reader, I gained some spiritual insights and an idea about the professional work of reconciliation, but the technical science didn’t really apply to me because I’m not in that role. Whereas a professional reconciler may be interested to read the Christian approach to their job but find the technical stuff too basic.
I am also uneasy about the “good disagreement” concept. Archbishop Justin writes:
“the definition: reconciliation is the transformation of destructive conflict into disagreeing well.” (Page 265).
That doesn’t seem to fit with the biblical concept in 2 Corinthians 5:18, “…God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself”. If we used Archbishop Welby’s definition it would mean that through Christ, God enabled us to disagree well with God – and surely that can’t be the correct meaning!
I am also uneasy where he writes about a reconciliation process in a context of marriage breakdown:
“It may be that in a family dispute the end vision needs rethinking. Perhaps, rather than putting the marriage back together, it may be parting well with care for all those affected.” (Page 240).
That may be realistic, but divorce doesn’t feel like reconciliation to me.
I am more comfortable with his point that reconciliation does not mean uniformity:
“Reconciliation accepts difference because in God we see difference in perfect unity.” (Page 34).
Also, reconciliation is not a simple matter of compromise, or short-term fixes:
“Reconciliation is not a series of compromises to reach a weak middle ground on which all stand, equally unhappy and with no basis for action together. That is kicking the can down the road, or into the long grass or wherever. Fuzziness of that sort is the evasion of the challenge of difference. What should be sought is a transparent and clear-eyed blessing and welcome of diversity so that all, without exception, may have an equal opportunity to flourish as individuals and groups.” (Page 156).
He takes the counter-cultural example of Jesus. Reconciliation cannot be forced. Transformative power comes through weakness:
“In him [Jesus] God is revealed in all his forceless glory and power. This is the God who draws worship not by compulsion but by fragility that is real and deathless. […] This baby will live some thirty-three years and die on a cross with his mother unable to hold more than his dead, tortured body. This baby will be the cornerstone of stories of peace, the foundation of a community that is more diverse than any other on earth.” (Page 4).
In a dispute it is the stronger of the two parties that should make the first move:
“The person or the group that is more powerful must be the first to begin the journey, to set aside the power they have and to offer what is needed to the weaker.” (Page 39).
“In John’s Gospel 3.16 either John or Jesus says: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that anyone who believed in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ It is because reconciliation matters so much that it requires sacrifice, a principle in both divine and human practice at all levels. […]
The difficulty is that the powerful have become so by avoiding concessions when they are in a position of advantage. Sacrifice demands that they take a different attitude, even acquire a new heart towards the weak.” (Pages 47-48).
Peace making should have a higher priority in Government policy:
“the UK’s ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’ has only 13 mentions of the word ‘peace’ in 114 pages and only two of them relate even in passing to thinking about how peace can be built. There is no mention of reconciliation and one of mediation. To put it another way, the idea that the best form of dealing with one’s enemies is to make them one’s friends, or at least to be reconciled to them, does not appear at any point at all in the UK’s 2021 foundational strategy about security in a competitive world.” (Page 14).
He identifies what is actually behind many conflicts, including the sin of pride (page 8), and the struggle for identity (page 22).
Any reconciliation process needs to recognise the importance of identity and not seek to override what people hold dear:
“Overreach is the setting of entirely unrealistic goals that are of themselves so frightening in terms of their emotional demands that conflict parties do not feel able to engage even in the beginning of the process. The potential cost seems overwhelming. They cannot imagine what seems like the possibility of losing something that makes them who they are.” (Page 30).
The importance of recognising identity in any process is one that I can vouch for. When I was on the General Synod of the Church of England, the first draft legislation to enable the ordination of women bishops had included a clause acknowledging that traditionalists who disagreed did so on the basis of their “theological convictions”. That phrase was removed from the draft legislation before the final vote under pressure from those who wanted the change and did not want to acknowledge that those who disagreed could have any motives other than pure sexism. I said in my speech at the November 2012 vote:
“I have always said to those who elected me that I would vote for women bishops legislation if it provides provision that meets the theological needs of traditionalists […] But when the phrase “theological convictions” has to be deleted from the Measure because some didn’t want those theological views to be given official recognition in legislation. Do we really expect traditionalists to sign up to that? To expect them to agree that their theological convictions have to become the new “love that dare not speak its name”?” (Link: https://o7r7ac.n3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/201211-report-on-the-November-2012-General-Synod.pdf)
That draft legislation was voted down, and then in November 2013, different draft legislation was offered, accompanied by a draft House of Bishops’ Declaration which acknowledged:
“Since those within the Church of England who, on grounds of theological conviction, are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its life and structures” (GS1924, Page 17).
When I read that recognition of the identity of traditionalists, I felt that the outcome was going to be alright. It was no longer a “winner takes all” process. I voted for the new legislation, and it was passed.
Another point that Archbishop Justin makes is that any major reconciliation process needs to engage all levels:
“Inclusion matters. Deals done on high without a top-down, middle-out, bottom-up approach will lack approval and thus fail to gain a social license to operate in practice. Grassroots deals will be subsumed in overall, elite based conflict. Those who can wield a power of veto and have an interest in the dispute continuing will do so unless there is significant grassroots pressure that overwhelms obstructions.” (Page 175).
He also challenges us to have personal engagement with, and understanding of, those on the other ‘side’, so as to break down the barrier that creates ‘sides’ in the first place:
“We are all aware that the tendency of social media is to draw us into bubbles of the like-minded. Many people will know the somewhat illicit satisfaction emotionally that comes from hearing a good speaker telling them how right they are and how wrong their opponents are. Its known as preaching to the choir. […] Try doing an audit of those who you follow on social media, of the podcasts to which you listen, of those you follow on Instagram, TikTok and all the other forms of media that spring up and die down. What proportion are those with whom you disagree?” (Page 207).
“Go to places and meet people you normally are distant from. Cross boundaries.” (Page 221).
Having begun this review by saying I’m not sure whether this book is for the general reader or for the specialist, the following quote applies to all:
“The only force that can cross the boundaries is love. The role of the people and groups that facilitate reconciliation is not a functional and mechanical one characterized by technique, but a relational one characterized by love. Of course, love is not all we need (sorry, The Beatles), but any action not based in love and driven by love is, to quote St Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, nothing but a sounding gong or a clanging symbol. It is noise without substance.” (Page 106).
Adrian Vincent
January 2023.