Why telling stories didn't work for the Affirming CRC

Stories changed public opinion on same sex marriage, but not in the CRC.

For some years, affirming CRCs have employed two main strategies: 

1. telling stories to persuade moderates, and 

2. a judicial or legislative approach, where a CRC pastor would perform a gay wedding or a CRC congregation would ordain a gay officebearer in the hopes that synod would not have the courage to condemn the activity. 

Both strategies were laid out at a meeting sponsored by All One Body at Sherman Street CRC on November 8, 2018. Dan Winiarski attended, and wrote the following in a report:

“Another member of the panel shared the focal point of this ‘personal story’ strategy. He said it is all about convincing people, through stories about real people who have embraced the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender lifestyle, that such people bear healthier fruit than those who are non-inclusive.”

And:

“According to the panel members, the power of personal stories is magnified immensely when the LGBTQ+ lifestyle hits close to home. A son, daughter, grandchild, niece, nephew, or child of a close friend who personally claims one of the letters in the LGBTQ+ movement is enough to break down even the strongest defenses. The people on stage at Sherman Street CRC were emphatic about the need to use real-life, personal examples to win people over.”

This advice was reiterated at an All One Body panel on October 3, 2019, when former CRC pastor Jack Reiffer advised those in attendance to “tell stories, be visible, and look for local changes towards inclusion.” 

All One Body’s mission statement even includes the sentence:

“We will create generous and grace-filled spaces in which we can all be informed by direct personal engagement through the sharing of our stories.”

Telling stories has been an integral part of the Affirming CRC’s approach. Several LGBTQ+ current and former CRC members have told their stories in videos posted to the Hesed Project and All One Body websites.

Stories have been an important part of more neutral and officially-sanctioned spaces in the CRC, too, including the Human Sexuality Report (HSR) itself:

• The committee listened to the stories of numerous people in the course of their work.

• The preamble includes six stories.

• The section entitled “Hope” includes six stories.

• The section on gender identity includes two stories.

• The section on disordered sex includes two stories .

Three classes sent overtures to Synod 2022 that specifically noted the incompleteness or inadequacy of the stories in the report:

• Overture 38 asked Synod to receive the HSR as information but to not adopt it. One of the grounds was that “this report has failed to present personal stories of any of our members or former members that would not confirm the conclusions of the committee’s work.” The Overture then includes eighteen such stories.

• Overture 41 noted that “the HSR does not include stories or actual experiences that represent the full range of LGBTQ+ expressions, their experiences with local church bodies, or their faith.”

• Overture 45 asked Synod to reject the HSR on the grounds that it  “does not share the stories of Christian married same-sex couples”

In addition to this, the Council of Delegates’ report to Synod 2022 also contained twelve stories of LGBTQ+ people in the CRC in response to an overture submitted to Synod 2021, along with recommendations on how church councils could hear the stories of LGBTQ+ people in their congregations.

The Affirming CRC is telling stories, but it’s not really changing many minds.

Stories > Facts

It’s rare that someone learns something new about abortion, climate change, Trump or Biden, or same sex marriage, and changes their mind in light of new information. Facts usually don’t change minds. Stories change minds.

Stories have changed minds on matters of human sexuality, too. There’s evidence (ironic, huh?) that stories of personal experiences have been a major factor in shifting public opinion on same sex marriage in recent decades. In one such study, people who opposed gay marriage were more likely to see the validity of the opposing view when they were given a narrative instead of some kind of fact-based evidence. The findings note that stories of personal experience are more effective than fact-based argumentation. 

What’s even more astonishing is that when people’s minds are changed by stories of personal experience, they still (incorrectly) attribute their newly-acquired viewpoints to facts. We’re not even willing to admit to ourselves that stories can change us!

Because stories have been an important part of the shift in public opinion on same sex marriage, it would seem natural to think stories would change minds in the CRC, too.

Why hasn’t this happened?

There are certain instances where stories not only don’t change people’s minds, but they have a kind of opposite effect of solidifying already-held positions.

Morality as an expression of feeling

The reason the Affirming CRC used stories to persuade the rest of the denomination is because stories move people to think differently. By making people feel a certain way, they could make people think a certain way. At first glance, this makes a great deal of sense. But this approach makes an incorrect assumption about how some people hold moral convictions.

I’d like to suggest that those with an affirming view, more than those with a traditional view, tend to hold the view that preference, attitude, and feeling contain some degree of moral weight. Within this framework, the following phrases make sense:

• “You don’t know what it’s like if you haven’t been in this situation.”

• “I know in my heart this is a good thing.”

• “A desire for self-fulfillment outweighs vows or commitments I have made.”

• “This is my truth.”

Only a generation or two ago, few people would have recognized these phrases as having any kind of moral meaning. In fact, they would have been nonsensical. But today, such phrases are used to legitimize behavior, make moral claims, and justify them for oneself and others. Personal testimony has become authoritative and empathy the appropriate response. Thus, it not only makes sense to tell stories, but it also makes sense to make stories themselves a primary mode of persuasion.

Alastair MacIntrye calls this emotivism and defines it as “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.” He writes in After Virtue: 

“Moral judgments, being expressions of attitude or feeling, are neither true nor false; and agreement in moral judgment is not to be secured by any rational method… It is to be secured, if at all, by producing certain non-rational effects on the emotions or attitudes of those who disagree with one. We use moral judgments not only to express our own feelings and attitudes, but also precisely to produce such effects in others.”

Within such a framework, stories have the ability to evoke an emotional response. Carl Trueman writes of emotivism in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self:

“Much of the debate about sexuality in Christian circles likewise tends to operate in terms of personal narratives isolated from any metaphysical or theological framework. Even in the church, personal stories have a powerful emotional impact that can easily transform the chief end of human beings into the personal happiness that stands at the heart of the therapeutic culture.” 

What I do not mean by this is that those with a traditional view are grounding their position in the Bible or confessions and those with an affirming view are grounding their position in an emotivist moral framework. What I do mean is that, very broadly, the affirming camp places more emphasis on “expressions of attitude or feeling” in constructing a moral framework, and in such a framework, stories have the capacity to evoke empathy and change minds. Those with a traditional view, more than those with an affirming view, would generally reject statements like “you haven’t been in my situation so you don’t know what it’s like” ostensibly on biblical or confessional grounds. The mistake the Affirming CRC made was assuming the Traditional CRC thinks the same way they do.

(I’d argue that both rational and emotivist moral frameworks are equally biblical and equally unbiblical; that both are primarily products of culture; that the strengths and weaknesses of each are balanced out; and whether one tends toward one or the other has more to do with cultural factors than anything else. I digress.)

Let’s take a closer look at how this works.

Are LGBTQ+ individuals victims of their situation or agents who control it?

Stories only change peoples’ minds when the hearer of the story has empathy for a victim in the story. This is called the identifiable victim effect. 

• A meta-analysis of 41 studies of this effect found that “not all stories produce empathetic responses, and empathy does not always guarantee audiences' support for the story's message. Instead, it depends “on a number of conditions, among them, that the victim was a child, that the source of need was poverty, and that the victim was not seen as responsible for his or her plight.” 

• Another study found that when “it was possible to blame the victim, exposure to an identified person decreased subjects' willingness to help.” 

• A 2007 study determined that “audiences need to be convinced of the victim's blamelessness in order to be persuaded of the story's message.” Additionally, whether or not you think a victim is either blameless or responsible for being in their situation has less to do with the victim in the situation and more to do with your priors. 

• Another study finds: “If stories work the way they are supposed to, the empathy they spur for the story's protagonist should provide a counterweight to audiences' prior individualistic beliefs. But, again, this may not be true. Exposed to a description of a person in economic need, research subjects with strong individualistic beliefs blamed the person for his plight and opposed government action on poverty.”

Thus, a story is likely to change your mind when the following four things are true:

1. You can identify with the victim of the situation described in the story.

2. You have empathy for the victim’s plight.

3. You believe that the victim is in the situation for reasons beyond his or her control.

4. You believe people have the ability to shape the situation they are in and that their plight is not determined by their context.

The Affirming and Traditional CRC would generally disagree on #3 and #4:

• The Affirming CRC broadly believes, on average: that LGBTQ+ people are in their situation for reasons they did not choose and they cannot control. They were born with a certain sexual orientation and such orientation is part of the created order. This means, among other things, that people in committed same sex relationships are not only operating within a framework of what God designed, but also should, naturally, be included in the full life of the church.

• The Traditional CRC broadly believes, on average: that LGBTQ+ people are in their situations for reasons within their control. Though I doubt many think same sex attraction is a personal choice, many would think gender identity is. People who hold the traditional view think same sex attraction is a product of the Fall. Thus, whether or not people are same sex attracted, they must never act on their desires. Though people are not necessarily responsible for their orientation, they are always responsible for their actions.

Because the Affirming CRC tends to believe LGBTQ+ individuals are victims in contexts beyond their control, they believe stories can operate as a powerful mechanism for changing people’s minds. But because the Traditional CRC tends to believe LGBTQ+ individuals are agents in contexts within their control, stories that portray LGBTQ+ individuals as victims not only don’t convince those who hold the traditional view, they actually caused their existing beliefs to become more entrenched.

Thus, those for whom stories might be persuasive are already persuaded. And those who aren’t persuaded won’t have their minds changed by stories. In fact, stories will only push moderates to hold more conservative and less risky views. This is why All One Body’s goal of “convincing people, through stories about real people” did not, and will not, work.

But what about the other goal, taking a “a judicial or legislative approach”? More on that in a future email.

Thanks for reading.

Kent