The ugly boycott of Christ Church-member businesses has shown once again that Moscow is not only a deeply divided community, but one that lacks basic civility. That needs to change.
I’m optimistic that it will thanks to Tom Lamar and the election of a new city council.
I have no illusions that the fundamental disagreements in our town will go away anytime soon. The issues of homosexuality, abortion, property rights, educational choice, and religious freedom are really too important to sweep under the rug. Pretending we can all just get along, while ignoring our disagreements on these national hot-button issues, won’t magically make them go away.
Neither will the trash-talking and name calling we’ve endured the past few years. Accusing more than 1,000 of our fellow citizens of being racists, sexists, homophobes, or even the Taliban—when they are demonstrably nothing of the sort—says more about the inability of the name callers to make persuasive arguments than about the actual beliefs and actions of those they defame. Such smear campaigns do nothing more than cause collateral damage to our neighbors and our community’s reputation.
Boycotting businesses just because the owners happen to attend Christ Church is, as Jim Fisher rightly put it in his Lewiston Tribune editorial (Nov. 15), “religious bigotry . . . against people who attended the wrong church.” It requires passing an ideological test to do business in town. It may grant that all people are equal, but some are more equal than others. It terminates civil discussion about others. Such a boycott reveals, according to Fisher, that religious “bigotry has grown into a cancer” in Moscow. I agree.
Yet I’m optimistic civility can make a comeback in Moscow, thanks to the recent example of re-elected City Council Member Tom Lamar. When one Christ Church member hoisted a pre-election protest sign mocking the “Bigot Party” (meaning the MCA-endorsed candidates) and mentioning Lamar by name, Tom and his family were understandably upset. But Tom did something truly remarkable. He didn’t lash back with a volley of epitaphs. He didn’t vent his spleen on Vision 2020. He didn’t unleash scorched earth letters to the editor.
In the heat of the moment, Tom calmly walked down to the office of Christ Church Pastor Douglas Wilson to find out why one of his parishioners would raise such an accusatory sign in protest. Pastor Wilson welcomed him. They talked. They listened to each other. And they both came away better understanding their mutual concerns—all without inflammatory rhetoric or name calling.
Tom handled that protest situation following basic Sunday school ethics. He defused a potentially dicey conflict with basic civility. He made sure he honestly understood what others meant, what they were actually trying to say, what they actually believed. He implicitly acknowledged that he might have misunderstood them or even been wrong himself. He wanted to be sure he got to the heart of the matter.
He didn’t jump to conclusions. He recognized that most of the recent unpleasantness in Moscow has come from people being too quick to judge and too slow to check their facts. Tom was unwilling to think the worst of others simply because of where they went to church. Gladly, he was unwilling to engage in old fashioned prejudice.
Our community will no doubt remain sharply divided for many more years over the hot-button issues that lurk beneath the surface of Moscow’s tensions. But using boycotts and bigoted power games to end discussion will only rip our community apart. Again, Fisher is right, “The time for people of conscience to speak up arrived some time ago in Moscow.”
I commend Tom Lamar for showing us by example that people of conscience have a better way out of the Moscow quagmire, a way to restore civility to our community. I encourage all Moscow citizens, on all sides of our local disagreements, to follow Tom’s example. If we do, I’m optimistic that Moscow can once again embrace civility, despite the differences in our deeply held beliefs.