In the past few years, one of the most influential books I have read is Wayne C. Booth’s masterwork, The Company We Keep, his attempt to look at the role of ethics in literature. Booth is one of the most influential literary thinkers of the last half of the 20th century, and is responsible for the concept of the “Unreliable Narrator”, the now widely used idea that you can’t trust what the narrator of a story is saying. Unfortunately, most of those who use the term don’t know that it originated with Booth’s 1961 book, The Rhetoric of Fiction. LDS Church members will be interested to know that Booth grew up LDS in American Fork, Utah, served an LDS mission in Chicago and married in the Temple before he decided to stop attending. However, through the rest of his life he did maintain connections and interest in the Church.
I’m fascinated with the ethical questions that Booth asks about literature. In The Company We Keep he asks a series of ethical questions, including what the author’s responsibility are to the book and to the reader. While that might seem an obvious question, he also asked a provocative and not-as-obvious question: What are the reader’s responsibilities to the author and to the book?
Does this also apply to what happens in Church?
Like with authors of all kinds, we are accustomed to thinking that the creator of a work or the person who runs the meeting has responsibility for what is created or what happens. They have the most control over the content, after all. I don’t know about your experience, but whenever I have heard complaints about sacrament meeting talks or teaching in classes, it’s always assumed that the responsibility lies with the leaders or with the person talking. The audience doesn’t have any responsibility (unless they make a comment).
This understanding is common in our culture. At least with the introduction of radio and television (if not with other mass forms of communication before that), the audience became passive recipients of media—the audience sat at home and listened or watched the broadcast. Clapping and booing and other expressions of approval or disapproval were no longer heard by anyone. Responses were reduced to sending letters or calling the broadcaster, both of which were delayed until well after the broadcast. Even if the audience wanted to respond, or thought that it had some responsibility, the means for reacting were limited, and essentially discouraged.
And worse, the lack of an immediate ability to respond often gives the feeling that everyone else is accepting the work. You might have seen this phenomenon in a theatre or concert—you end up clapping because everyone else is clapping, or giving a standing ovation because everyone else is standing up. There is a kind of cooption that happens when we are in a group. We go along to get along.
Is it really the case that the audience has no responsibility? Is Booth wrong about the responsibility of the reader or audience? If we say it does, are we “blaming the victim?”
I don’t think so. I’m NOT trying to say that the leaders and the speakers or teacher have no responsibility. I even think that they have more control, so more responsibility. But that doesn’t mean that the audience has no responsibility. What then are the audiences’ ethical responsibilities? While I’m not sure that I can list them all, we clearly have responsibilities to the speaker or teacher and to the leaders or those organizing the meetings. We should be honest in our reactions, letting them know clearly but kindly what we think. We have the responsibility to give helpful feedback. We have the responsibility to recognize the speaker or teacher’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and take those into account when giving feedback. We have the responsibility to pay attention, to give them the same attention we would want to have if we were the speaker or teacher. Or, we have a responsibility to recognize the difficulties that leaders face in assigning talks, calling teachers and training them.
We also have responsibility to ourselves. We have the responsibility to somehow feel the spirit even when the talks or lessons don’t make that easy. We have a responsibility to think about and react to what is said, so that we can process what we have heard and incorporate it into our lives.
How then do we balance all of these responsibilities? What do we do to participate in church and also fulfill our responsibilities as best as possible? Are you thinking about things the way that you want to? Or are you just accepting the assumptions of the culture around us?
In these posts I am trying to suggest that each of us can have better experiences at Church if we take responsibility for our experiences, and if we are open to learning from what happens by pondering it — by thinking about it in many different ways. We can choose to learn and benefit from what happens regardless of whether it fits our perception of what is “good.” Thinking about our reactions and what we understand allows for revelation and for better understanding.
In this vein, I like the statement that President Hugh B. Brown made in a 1969 BYU devotional, President Hugh B. Brown declared that the Church is “not so much concerned with whether your thoughts are orthodox or heterodox as we are that you shall have thoughts.” We should be carefully considering what we hear at Church, regardless of whether what we heard is right or wrong, orthodox or heterodox.
A lot of our thought depends on how we look at it. It is not different from what many artists figure out—they understand that how you see the world before you is more important than what you see. You might call it ‘active listening’ or shifting perspective. It just means that you see differently. And seeing differently reveals a different world.
In my case, I tend to focus narrowly, thinking about groups of words or sentences, sometimes taking them out of context and thinking about what they say, even if the speaker didn’t intend what I heard. It’s not at all like what we’re taught in school, where the focus is on understanding accurately and completely what the speaker or text says. Its about pulling out useful or inspiring thoughts in spite of what was said.
So, if you aren’t thinking this way, maybe try it next Sunday, or the next time you are in a class or meeting. If you have already thoughts inspired by what happened at church, what are they? How did you react to what happened in Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they looking for what God had to tell you? Did your reactions make things better?
This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing a series of weekly posts that started with my post on September 25th about how we receive what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. In these posts I’m asking us all to think about how we listen and receive what happens at Church. If we only listen for mistakes, or things that bother us, what does that say about us? Is it most important to criticize others? Or to try to change ourselves?
The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, or no matter how what happens triggers us, or is objectively or doctrinally wrong, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t conducted in a way that reaches us, we can take responsibility and find a way to feel the spirit.
So please, write down reactions and thoughts to what happened in Church. You might keep your own ‘spiritual journal’, or, if you like, you can post your reactions below. I’m adding my own reactions and thoughts as a comment to this post — instead of as a part of this post, because my reactions aren’t any better than anyone else’s.
Let me emphasize that this is NOT a place to criticize what is wrong with church or your fellow congregants. The point is to post what you learned because of what happened at Church or how that led you to think. It’s about the good things we can get out of Church, not the negative things that disturbed or upset us. It doesn’t have to be orthodox, traditional or even on topic.
If you like, make your response in the format, “They said or did this, and I said or thought that.” Even the things you dislike the most can be turned into lessons for what the gospel teaches we should do.
My hope is that these reactions serve as an example of a better way to treat what happens at Church instead of the perennial complaints about speaker or teacher preparation or ability, or complaints that the Church should do things differently.
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