Dr. Howie Batson Lecture Transcript (Edited)
West Texas A&M University, Civil Discourse and Civics Education Symposium
Mar. 31, 2026
The late Fred Craddock, Distinguished Professor of Homiletics and New Testament in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, was once flying back to Atlanta from the Ontario, California, airport. He had been visiting the Seventh-Day Adventist community in Loma Linda. Craddock inquired of his seat mate, just being neighborly, “Do you live in Atlanta?”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I used to live there. Now, I’m going back to see my grandkids. What were you doing in California?” she asked, continuing the conversation.
“I was in Loma Linda,” Craddock replied.
She said, “That’s that Seventh-Day Adventist place, isn’t it?”
Craddock replied, “Yes.”
“Are you a Seventh-Day Adventist?” she asked.
“No, no, but they invited me.”
“You went to a Seventh-Day Adventist place, and you’re not a Seventh-Day Adventist?”
Craddick replied, “Yes.” He thought to himself, “What’s got this lady so worked up?”
She replied, “I know what you were doing.”
“What?” he asked.
“You were ‘othering.’”
Craddock said, “I was?”
She said, “Yes, you were ‘othering.’”
“What’s ‘othering’?” Craddock inquired.
“My preacher preaches on it every Sunday. ‘We need to do more othering.’ What he means is to get acquainted with people who are different from yourself - establish friendships, share in work and play, in prayer and praise, in everything together. Other people. The ‘other.’ Get acquainted and relate to the ‘other.’ He calls it ‘othering.’ He preaches on it every Sunday. I am so sick of his talking about ‘othering.’ It’s just a fad,” she said. And she got all bothered about it. “It’s just a fad. I’ll be glad when it passes. If he says one more word about ‘othering,’ I’m going to throw up right there in church. I am so....”
“It’s not a fad,” Craddock interrupted.
She said, “It is a fad. Look here.” She opened the Sky Magazine, the airline magazine, and there was an article in English and Spanish and Japanese. She said, “Now look a-there. The airline thinks they are ‘othering.’ A few years ago, it would just be in English like it should be. And we’ll all get back to just having it in English. It’s just a passing fad.”
Craddock replied, “It’s not a fad. It’s as old as Christianity.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
Craddock replied, “When Jesus died, Pilate put a sign on the cross: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.’ And it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.”
The woman didn’t say another word the whole trip. Craddock said he hated to pull his Bible card, but that lady was starting to get on his nerves.
“Othering.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s best work in my opinion, Life Together, opens its first chapter with the proclamation of Psalm 133: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” He opens his greatest book with a clear call for unity.
The reality is that, like Craddock’s airplane companion, many people have given up on “othering” all together. Anger exists in our voices, hatred in our hearts, and piercing in our glances at those who are “other” than we. We lack tolerance for folks who hold other values, worship other gods, embrace different philosophies, or form an ethical matrix which contradicts or calls into question our comfortable conventions of conduct.
Truth be told, incivility has escalated to such dangerous proportions that folks feel threatened in their community, workplace, house of worship, and schoolhouse – especially if the schoolhouse is a university. In 2,000 years, education has drifted far from the open dialogue of the Athenians who welcomed all philosophies, old and new, to be presented and defended in search of a greater truth (Acts 17:21). Now we only search for affirmation of our own well-worn worldview as we shout down speakers who dare think differently than we.
Our teeth are set on edge, our fists are clenched, and, most unfortunately, our pistols are packed.
Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Please Don’t Punch the Orderly: Why do Americans need warnings not to commit violent acts?” In the article, Bob Greene describes what once would have been unthinkable. Warning posters have been popping up in America’s hospitals and doctors’ offices in the past few years. In Oklahoma, one reads: “Warning. Assaulting a medical professional who is engaged in the performance of his or her official duties is a serious crime.” In North Carolina: “Violence Toward Team Members, Patients, or Visitors Is Not Allowed….Everyone inside this facility deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.” And, in Vermont, the health care providers have posted, “Caring for you shouldn’t hurt us. Assaulting a health care worker is a crime. This means actions like hitting, biting or making threats could give you a criminal record instead of the care you need.”
Of course, hair-trigger anger is not new. But the notion that people must be reminded, formally and in advance, that it’s wrong to beat up their nurse feels next level.
Rage also emerges on the roadway. The American Automobile Association says that 96% of drivers admit to engaging in aggressive driving behavior over the last year. AAA declares that the more drivers are exposed to aggressive behavior on the road, the more likely they are to drive aggressively themselves. This self-fulfilling cycle of aggressive driving and road rage is fueling a culture in which impatience and hostility are becoming the new norm behind the wheel.
According to a survey by public relations firm Weber Shandwick, 93 percent of Americans say that the lack of civility is a problem. Yet, James Calvin David of Middlebury College and author of In Defense of Civility stated, “There isn’t even agreement anymore on whether civility is a good thing.” Some now see civility as a sign of weakness. The only thing, therefore, we can conclude with certainty is that civility, treating others with common courtesy and respect, is a nostalgic memory of yesterday.
There are many forces causing our simmering anger to spill over. We are still staggering from COVID isolation and insecurities born by systems that both frustrated and failed us. Additionally, we are unheard people with mounting problems from multiple sources. No one listens to or solves our problems anymore. We call the company help line only to talk to a chatbot who traps us in endless cycles of nonsense, declaring, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.” And the help lines that are actually answered by authentic human beings are manned by scammers, who are more than willing to chat as they pirate our personal data to deplete our assets. Inflation, moreover, creates the $25 hamburger that also now requires an additional tip, while weather patterns are increasingly harsh and unpredictable – 21 degrees today, 90 degrees tomorrow. These ingredients and countless more, cooked together, have all contributed to the boiling point in our once-quaint communities.
I think another worldwide cause of our rising tide of tension is the fact that we must process so much negativity so quickly. Every calamity, every mass murder, every act of cruelty pops up on our social media pages within five minutes of occurrence. And we literally watch the theater of war as it unfolds ten thousand miles away. My great-grandfather only knew when a neighboring farmer had a mule kick out of the fence; former generations never had to process stress over the news of a soccer team trapped in a cave by the rising tide in Thailand. The world’s problems are suddenly on our doorstep.
Add to the equation all of our differences about identity politics, gay rights, transgender ideology, abortion (pro or con), and nightly bombings in the Middle East, and it is safe to say, “We’re certainly not in Kansas anymore.”
Ultimately, we now lack the mooring of a shared narrative with a common goal. Therefore, civility and common courtesy have been exchanged for battle cries and combat fatigues.
In 2023, Baylor University’s Institute for Faith and Learning hosted an event themed “Called Together in an Age of Discord.” While I was one of the presenters, the keynote speaker was James Davison Hunter, an American sociologist and originator of the term “culture war” in his 1991 monograph, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter is a Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and founder and executive director of the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Having the fortune of being seated next to the pioneer of cultural war studies, I took advantage of my ring-side seat.
Before I suggest solutions found at the intersection of faith and civility, I want to pose the problem as understood by a leading expert in interpreting the lack of civility in our midst. Hunter warns that culture wars always proceed shooting wars. They don’t necessarily lead to a shooting war, but you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it, because culture provides justification for violence.
Professor Hunter argues that politics are an artifact of culture – a reflection. Culture comes first, which then underwrites our political positions. Hunter reminds us that democracy is an agreement that we will not kill each other over our differences, but, instead, we will talk through those differences. Part of what troubles Hunter is the emerging justification for violence on both sides of the cultural divide.
Many believe that human beings are created for the purpose of wholeness and flourishing. And, therefore, we protest conditions that diminish our opportunities to flourish. Hunter observes that as we push back against these de-humanizing forces, we begin to have a proliferation of identity groups, groups around which contemporary politics are centered.
Whatever our identity group, we see the world in a particular way, and we cannot imagine any other ways of seeing or acting within it. Hunter calls this “cultural logics or logics of necessity.” Compulsion to think or act in certain ways emerges as we cannot see how life could be otherwise.
For example, if we are not intentional, the world of higher education can become a mono-culture. Powerful scripts at universities dominate the space in which scholars live and dwell. And anyone is considered dangerous if they offer an alternative perspective. Thus, they lose the benefits of career mobility. A certain kind of conformity is not only expected but demanded if you’re to have a seat at Academia’s table. So, unlike the Athenian call to openly debate on Mars Hill, minority voices are not only marginalized, but also threatened – yes, even threats of violence.
The identity groups provide a sort of “we-ness.” But behind these identity groups is the cultural logic of ressentiment (a French word that I’m doing injustice with my Western pronunciation). The English “resentment” is not deep enough of an experience, so Nietzsche [knee chuh] and others abandoned both German and English words for the French “ressentiment” to describe something much more profound, deep, and lasting than the passing English resentment.
Ressentiment begins with the shared narrative of injury, a story of woundedness. The wounds can be real or imagined – sometimes both. But woundedness is the operative narrative, and truth really doesn’t matter, as perception itself becomes the reality in identity politics, both – let me quickly add – on the right and the left. As Hunter describes, its memory may be contested, but, for those who see themselves as victims, it is the paramount reality. And it typically festers into malice, hatred, and vindictiveness. Max Scheler, a generation after Nietzsche, called it “self-poisoning of the mind.”
Ressentiment for the Left depends upon the existence and ubiquity of such distractions as the “radical right,” “toxic masculinity,” “white supremacy,” or just “whiteness,” “Christian nationalism,” and the like, as the enemy.
On the Right, ressentiment depends upon the existence and universalization of such abstracts as “the radical left,” “socialism,” “woke elitism,” the “deep state,” “secular humanism,” and “snowflakes.”
Ironically, each side needs the other in order to portray themselves as victims. Neither wants to ultimately win the war because if the enemy is gone, there is no more hurt, and, thus, no identity. That’s why identity groups often look for, repeat, and exaggerate atrocity stories to exemplify the evil that must be repudiated. This revenge becomes construed as righteous indignation by both sides, and the perpetrators must be subject to their just deserts. Nietzsche [knee chuh], of course, would have nothing of it. In his view, it was nothing more than the effort to “sanctify revenge with the term justice.” “Punishment,” he observed, “is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical lie, it creates a good conscience for itself.”
In this strange calculus, a culture emerges which demands the more rage, the better. Thus, conservatism is no longer defined by a coherent set of certain affirmations of principles or ideals. Rather, it finds its solidarity in opposition to the woke. The same is true of progressivism. No longer are coherence and solidarity around affirmations of principles, but, rather, the opposition to the basket of deplorables who get in the way of their agenda. Politicians, media celebrities, influencers, movement leaders, even ordinary citizens become “rage-traitors” in our present political cesspool. Fury fuels the American fire, and no one really wants to put it out, lest we have to change how we think, live, and interact.
Now to my assignment. “How does faith fit into the formula?”
First, I’m not arrogant enough to think that other world religions fail to contribute to the conversation. There is a Golden Rule in almost every culture, every religion. And certainly, some tenets of tolerance found in other religions would be more than helpful if put into practice. Buddhism’s call to metta comes to mind. However, since many of us are primarily influenced by Christianity, and since my own faith tradition is the only world religion wherein I can exercise expertise and authority, I’ll limit my comments to Christianity.
Love of Enemy
At least four operative biblical principles are at play at the intersection of faith and civility. The first is found in Jesus’ most challenging sermon, The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43ff.). “You have heard it said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax gatherers do the same?”
In loving the enemy, Jesus asks the hardest thing He ever required. Something must be different about those who are influenced by the words and works of the rabbi Jesus. He calls His disciples to do the unthinkable: actually love, forgive, pray for, and bless their enemies. Pray for those who persecute you? Does the one from Nazareth ask too much?
We learn through the teachings of Christ to deeply love everyone. Love of enemy is an effort to value people based on the fact they are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). And it’s impossible to love God, whom I have not seen, if I do not love my brother who is before me (1 John 4:20).
As irreconcilable as my ideas may be from yours, I’ve always believed that if we sit down and break bread, we can find common ground with table fellowship, even if only on a small island of agreement surrounded by a sea of deep discord.
Fruit of the Spirit
The second scriptural operative comes from the Book of Galatians as the Apostle Paul describes a life overpowered by the very Spirit of God. After giving us the deeds of the flesh, Paul gives us a description of living in Christ. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against these things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23). If we really walk influenced by the fruit of the Spirit, our lives will be overpowered by civility. Devoted disciples of Christ clearly have an antithetical relationship with the age of rage.
I am fully convinced that the Right needs radical transformation as much as the Left. If I followed the dictates of some, I would stand in the pulpit every Sunday and cast aside God’s gospel of grace. Alternatively, I would assail identity politics on the Left – shouting across the aisle and the airwaves demanding the deplorable change and acknowledge that, for the moment, the Right are the winners, and the winners intend to take all.
While Charlie Kirk’s death was an absolute tragedy for everyone, the Sunday following his assassination, I chose to preach the gospel, scripture. I wonder if the same people across our nation who demanded preachers discard their planned homily and focus on identity politics from the bully pulpit following Kirk’s death have equally demanded that preachers address the tragedy of an innocent immigrant wrongly imprisoned and bullied by ICE?
Well-intended people, not even members of First Baptist Church of Amarillo, sent me long emails demanding to know why I did not turn the Sunday following the Kirk tragedy into a political pep rally. They really don’t have the eyes to see the transcendent importance of the gospel. They have been pulled into the muck and the mire of identity politics. Neck deep, they seem unlikely to escape their own quicksand. Unfortunately, while moments of Kirk’s memorial service were heart-warming and hope-filled, politicians seized the memorial service to peddle their identity politics.
In like fashion, on the Left, I was aghast that politicians hijacked a solemn service, the funeral of Jesse Jackson, to fan the flames of identity politics by spewing their venom of division. Funerals once were occasions when everyone dropped their swords at the church door. Co-opting an occasion set aside for personal and community grieving, the politicians not only dishonored the power of resurrection gospel, but also the family who felt betrayed by the words of three U.S. presidents. Speaking against the misuse of the sacred occasion, Jesse Jackson’s oldest son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., said, “I listened...to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson.” Both the Right and the Left have such myopic vision that they see no one and acknowledge no ideas beyond their ever-shrinking worldview.
In exploring the intersection of faith and civility, we would do well to follow Reinhold Niebuhr who saw within the prophetic witness of Judaism and Christianity, “the spiritual discipline against resentment.” For Niebuhr, such discipline discriminates between the evils of a social system and the individuals who engage in it. “Individuals,” he argued, “are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. Making these distinctions, we can begin to see our adversary as human.
Following this line of thought against wallowing in resentment, Niebuhr also calls upon both sides to lay down their part as a victim. Of course, victims of injustice are entitled to resent their treatment. But, lest victimization confers a claim of moral superiority that permits them to seek revenge, they, too, need to repent every bit as much as their oppressors. Remember, love your enemies.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a third biblical tenet sitting at the intersection of faith and civility. “The religious ideal of forgiveness,” Niebuhr wrote, “is more profound and more difficult than the rational virtue of tolerance.” It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who proclaimed that “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”
If the church is going to make a difference, going to be the living body of Christ, we must be broken on behalf of a broken world, and less an identity group defined by its grievances and our own thirst for revenge against perceived enemies. Thus, of course, the church has much work to do.
In Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Someone once asked, “Do I have to forgive [my enemy] if he doesn’t repent?” It is the wrong question, isn’t it? Maybe the real question is this: “Can [my enemy] repent if I don’t forgive?”
Jesus says from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Who had repented of the crucifixion when Christ forgave from the cross? Who? Pilate? The high priest? The Romans? The silent masses? The cowardly disciples? Who?
No, not one. And yet Jesus cried out from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”
(Luke 23:34). No one had repented, and, yet, Jesus forgave. Who knows, maybe, by forgiving your enemy he may repent and become all that God intends for him to be (Randall O’Brien).
Friendship
There is a fourth and final idea that I would place alongside forgiveness, and that is the idea of friendship. Perhaps identity politics causes so much division because it focuses on defining what is “good” for our culture. What is ultimately “good” becomes extremely personal. In Public Discourse, Micah Watson says,
“Like any virtue, civility only takes root in our character through habit, and thus, if we are unaccustomed to interacting regularly with those who differ from us on matters of the good, we will find civility difficult. And, of course, it is difficult. Civility is one of those virtues that you don’t need when people are singing the same tune….Civility is by definition exercised only when it’s needed, and that’s when we disagree about what is good and what we love.”
Of late, I have intentionally tried to make friendships with people with very different worldviews from my own. If I drink punch from the same bowl every day, I will not develop a taste for much of anything else, will I? Never has our media exposure become such a silo of self-curated content. Our social media algorithms ensure we are only exposed to people who look, think, and act like us. Yet, believers of all faiths and philosophies must become friends with neighbors who bow at different altars.
Scripture is full of unlikely moments of friendship. Jesus, a Jew, sits at the well with a cultural enemy, a Samaritan. A man conversing with a woman is an unlikely event. A Samaritan conversing with a Jew is almost impossible. And He asks her for a drink of water. She responds, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (John 4). The friendly exchange over a cup of water leaves the woman forever changed. What life-changing conversations do we need to have with an unlikely friend sitting at the village well?
Paul Wadell, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College, says,
“Something must change because there is nothing hopeful, nothing promising, and certainly nothing magnanimous about a political discourse that is characterized more by suspicion, mistrust, selfishness, and animosity than by good will, respect, generosity of spirit, and even charity. Something must change and, strangely enough, a way out of the mess in which we find ourselves may be through friendship.”
Wadell says philosophers such as Aristotle and Cicero, and theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, were part of a tradition that understood friendship not only as a key personal relationship of our lives, but also as essential for how we envision our lives together socially and politically.
Friendship means we open our lives to strangers whose viewpoints, values, and belief systems may be very different from our own. Friendships call us to be concerned about and responsible for someone’s well-being – someone who doesn’t think like we do. And when we form civic friendships, our attention is not focused exclusively on our private good or the good of our identity group, but on the larger common good. Therefore, we cross ethnic, religious, racial, and economic lines because it reminds us that, despite all our differences, there is a deep root in human good that calls us together.
Friends do not agree on everything, and it would be boring if they did. But friends look for common care and common good.
Love of enemy, fruit of the Spirit, forgiveness, and civic friendships all meet at the intersection of faith and civility, an intersection that many intentionally avoid because one cannot pass through unless one leaves his or her baggage behind – baggage of arrogance, pride, small-mindedness, superiority, and hate.
Emory’s late homiletician Fred Craddock was completely correct: “Othering” is not a fad. “Othering” is not some new agenda whose taproot must descend into a political agenda. “Othering” is us. “Othering” is when God calls all people from all nations, all cultures, to make up His community of humanity.
In Latin, Hebrew, or Greek, in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Swahili, in Russian, Persian, French, Hindi, in 7,000 languages accompanied by 100,000 dialects, in sign language and Braille, we must speak words for the other’s good – love of enemy, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness and friendship.
If your faith doesn’t make a difference in the way you treat your neighbor, I would look for a different Lord, a different book – for faith must bear fruit that fosters civility toward every citizen – even those we perceive as our enemy.
Christian scholar, apologist and philosopher, Jim Denison, remembers a moment of cultural transformation that occurred in his church’s pulpit. He writes,
It was our annual racial reconciliation Sunday. A pastor of an African-American church in our city [Atlanta] agreed to preach in my church [Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church]. Our congregation was located in the wealthiest part of the city [Buckhead] and was known for its historic significance, with origins dating to 1854.
The pastor stepped into our pulpit, which had been in use for half a century, placed his hands on it, and began to cry softly. He then told us of growing up in our city when the Ku Klux Klan was staging rallies and parades. He described what it was like to have crosses burned in the yards of his community.
Then he told us that, as a teenager, he was employed as a custodian in our church. He recounted the times he stood in the back of our expansive sanctuary, looked at our pulpit, and wondered if he would ever be permitted to preach from it.
On that Sunday, he was. As he wept, we wept.
I will never forget the gracious way this man of God responded to the hate he had experienced. Rather than condemning those who had condemned him, he chose to speak of them as lost souls who needed the word and love of God.
The civility and charity of his words and spirit made a lifelong impression on me.
This pastor made a difference not only for himself, but for countless members of that congregation. He, for one, had learned well to linger at the intersection of faith and civility – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Love your enemy; forgive your foe; and make an unlikely friend. Together, both sides can change the world. Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.
Primary source used:
Hunter, J.D., Transcript of “The Problem of Solidarity,” Baylor University, October 25, 2023, at the “Called Together in an Age of Discord” conference.
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