Civility

To be civil is to be courteous and respectful. While we sometimes employ the concept in describing rather intimate relationships, as in “They are still living together, but they are barely civil to each other,” it more accurately applies to more public interactions. Originally civility had a direct connection to how people behaved in cities. The word comes from civitas, Latin for “city.” It was in the ancient urban center that a person was most likely to encounter strangers. The public square was a space in which people interacted on a basis other than kinship or friendship.

Cities are still very impersonal places today—even more so than in ancient Athens or Rome. But contemporary human beings typically encounter strangers in many other contexts as well: in air travel, over the phone lines, on E-mail networks, on interstate highways and in national parks. Modern means of transportation and communication have made civility an even more complex challenge in contemporary life.

Civility ranks high as a positive trait in many philosophical systems. Aristotle insisted, for example, that we do not fully actualize our human potential until we learn to be civil. While experiencing the intimacies of family bonds and friendship is necessary to our development, we reach a higher stage of human awareness when we can treat other persons with courtesy and respect, not because we love them and know them, but simply because we recognize the common humanity that we share with them in spite of tribal or linguistic differences. This pattern of thought was taken over by many Christian thinkers who incorporated an emphasis on civility into Christian systems of thought.

Biblical Civility

Civility is not a biblical term as such, but the idea is certainly present in the Scriptures. Indeed, taken as a way of describing respect for strangers, civility is a rather prominent biblical motif. In the Old Testament God regularly encouraged the people of Israel to show courtesy to those who were different from themselves. For example, the chosen people are reminded that they received God’s mercy even when they were still strangers: “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). This theme is repeated in the New Testament: Christians are called to “speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show courtesy to everyone” (Titus 3:2 NRSV).

The Christian community has often been rather uncivil. This has usually been due to a failure to live up to biblical standards. To be a Christian does not mean that all the vestiges of human fallenness automatically disappear. Like pride and greed and lust, intolerance is not an easy sin to purge from human relationships. Unfortunately, Christian incivility has often seriously hindered the witness of the Christian community, as when Christians have actively persecuted those with differing convictions or when Christian thought and practice have been distorted by racism, ethnocentrism and other forms of prejudice and bigotry.

But not all instances of Christian incivility can simply be dismissed as blatantly sinful. There are special challenges associated with the obligation to cultivate civility within a biblical framework. The Scriptures also call us to maintain strong convictions. Christians are commanded to stand firm in the faith, to resist being “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephes. 4:14 NRSV). This means that civility may never be elevated above other virtues, nor may it be treated in isolation from other demands in the life of discipleship.

The Christian sociologist John Murray Cuddihy chose his words wisely when he entitled his book on this subject The Ordeal of Civility. The element of ordeal is never absent from Christian efforts to cultivate a civil attitude toward those with whom they differ on important questions. The writer to the Hebrews counsels us to “pursue peace with everyone” (Hebrews 12:14 NRSV), clearly implying that the pursuit will sometimes be a very strenuous exercise.

Pluralistic Settings

The challenges of civility take on various forms in different historical periods. In some settings Christians have been a persecuted minority. In others they have controlled the patterns of power and wealth. For many Christians in recent times the challenges have emerged in the context of pluralistic settings. Pluralism, as such, is not a negative thing. The body of Christ is intentionally pluralistic, with a membership drawn “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9 NRSV). In the context of Christian community, then, pluralism is not a pattern to be avoided or even merely tolerated; it is to be encouraged as a means of exhibiting the manifold riches of God’s creating and redeeming purposes.

The appropriate patterns of Christian civility become especially difficult to sustain, though, in a larger culture in which relativistic themes are very prominent. The question, Who is in a position to tell other people what is right and wrong for them? is typically meant to be rhetorical. Each person is taken to be his or her own reliable guide to the basic issues of life. But from a Christian perspective, the question has a definite answer: God is in a position to tell us how we ought to think and act. The divine Creator has fashioned us in accordance with wise purposes and has given us instructions for living that, in Lewis Smedes’s apt phrase, “fit life’s designs.” Christian civility can never rightly align itself with an anything-goes relativism.

This does not mean, however, that Christians should simply impose their beliefs and convictions on others. One important ingredient in God’s wise design for humankind is that human beings are created with the capacity for free choice. God does not want grudging service from us—God wants our freely offered obedience. Christians best witness to the truth of God’s revelation when they invite others to consider the convictions and values that are associated with the way of discipleship: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8 NRSV).

Theological Reference Points

There are no simple, fail-safe rules for cultivating and sustaining civility. It is helpful, however, to coordinate our efforts at civility with some practical theological reflections. To be sure, becoming civil persons requires more than our having the right kind of theological thoughts. But attempting to think clearly about the demands of civility can provide us with guidance for this important spiritual exercise.

One important reference point for a practical theology of civility is God’s creating purposes. All human beings are created by the Maker of heaven and earth. By virtue of this created status, each human being is greatly valued in the sight of God. One reason why we ought to be civil toward people, even those with whom we disagree significantly, is that they are valuable products of a special creation.

This emphasis is an important counterweight to the Christian tendency to see our non-Christian opponents primarily in terms of their fallenness, especially when we are caught up in heated debates with them. Fallen human beings are nonetheless created persons. The biblical reference to humankind as created in “the image of God” is a much-debated theological topic. Whatever our specific interpretation of this theme, the Genesis account clearly implies that God created human persons with special—and highly valuable—capacities. It is also true, of course, that the creation story is immediately followed in Genesis 3 by the sad tale of human rebellion against the will of God. But Christian theologians, even ones who have given special emphasis to the devastating effects of the Fall for the human condition, have typically insisted that some glimmerings of God’s creating design shine through the gloom of original sin.

Human beings can be thought of as precious works of divine art. Even those products that have been seriously bruised and vandalized by human rebelliousness are still greatly valued by the divine Artist. Every human being, no matter how sinful he or she has become, deserves to be treated with the reverence that is appropriate to a creature who has been lovingly fashioned by God.

A second theological reference point is the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ. The Incarnation is, in an important sense, the model for Christian civility. God did not wait for human beings to earn the love of their Creator by first of all cultivating pleasing beliefs and actions: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 NRSV). Jesus explicitly described his earthly ministry in these terms when he answered those who criticized him for associating with disreputable characters: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32 NRSV). To be sure, Jesus also on occasion used rather uncivil language (“hypocrites,” “whited sepulchers”—Matthew 23:27) against some of the people he encountered. But these judgments were usually unleashed against religious leaders who took a condescending attitude toward the poor and outcast of society.

A third reference point for developing a practical theology of civility is the sanctifying mission of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Spirit has been sent by Christ to cleanse us so that we might live the kinds of holy lives that are appropriate for the demands of discipleship. The contours of Spirit-filled holy living, as spelled out in the “fruit of the Spirit” characteristics in Galatians 5, have direct links to the cultivation of civility: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23 NRSV).

Most of these characteristics are primarily other-directed, having to do with the Christian’s attitudes and behaviors toward other persons. When we think of how this fruit applies to fellow citizens and coworkers whose beliefs and values differ significantly from our own, the relevance to civility is obvious. We must be loving toward them, striving to live at peace with them. They should expect us to be kind and gentle toward them, exhibiting a generous spirit in our relationships.

Some of the other fruit characteristics are primarily inner-directed: they have to do with traits within ourselves that we have cultivated by the power of the Spirit. Patience and self-control are especially crucial for the nurturing of civility since they are linked, in the Christian life, to our sense of what God is doing in history.

God’s dealings with rebellious creatures are regularly portrayed in Scriptures as long-suffering. We are living, to use a Mennonite phrase, “in the time of God’s patience.” In accordance with a wise and mysterious plan for the creation, God has chosen not to rush to judgment. The arena of human activity, as we presently experience it, is one wherein people are relatively free to follow through on their basic life choices, for good or for ill. This state of affairs will not continue forever. Divine judgment is coming.

Nurturing Civility

Two lessons in particular are important for the nurturing of Christian civility. First, it is for God to decide when the final accounting will take place. Until that decision is revealed, Christians must share in the divine patience, tolerating the beliefs and values that people have chosen as their framework for living. In such a context, the primary Christian obligations are to demonstrate, to all who will pay attention, what it means to live in obedience to God and to invite others to join in that way of life through faith in Jesus Christ. The second lesson is that God alone will do the final judging. The decisive verdict as to who is “in” and who is “out” is for the Lord alone to make. On that day no one will be saved except by sovereign mercy. To absorb these supremely important lessons is to learn humility, which is foundational to Christian civility.

To repeat: none of this can be taken as an excuse to conform to an anything-goes permissiveness. Christian civility can never be divorced from sound biblically based convictions. The relationship between a civil spirit and a love of the truth is stated succinctly by the apostle Peter: “Always be ready to make your defense,” he encourages, “for the hope that is in you”; then he quickly adds, “yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15-16 NRSV).

» See also: Citizenship

» See also: Civil Disobedience

» See also: Love

» See also: Witness

References and Resources

J. M. Cuddihy, The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1974); R. Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992); L. Smedes, Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983).

—Richard Mouw