inter-national conflict

A couple of weekends ago, my church's leadership team spent a weekend doing a retreat at a mountain monastery to discuss our goals for the year and do some "visioning," especially since I am still, relatively speaking, a newbie pastor. As I prepared for the weekend, I found myself pondering how I could bring in some of my passion and training - cross-cultural studies - to be relevant to the conversation. And I found myself return to a model I had learned in my seminary days, and ended up presenting it to my team:

Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America

I have blogged about the nine nations before, back when I first learned about this concept in one of my classes at Fuller. The idea that the national distinctions between Canada, the USA, and Mexico are less culturally significant than the distinctions between Dixie, Ecotopia, New England, and so on seemed to unlock a door in my understanding of my own life. As noted in my Xanga post, I grew up in a "border land," heavily influenced by Dixie, the Breadbasket, and Mexamerica.

In the almost five years since I learned about this, I've returned to the nine nations idea time and time again. My wife strongly identifies with Ecotopia and spent a good chunk of her childhood in The Foundry, not to mention some family influence from Dixie and New England; some of the conflicts and adjustments in our relationship have been the result of our innate assumptions that we grew up with as products of different cultural influence. When I spent time in Canada in the summer of 2009, this model helped me explain myself to my Canadian friends who often asked what's different between living in the US and living in their country. (My answer: If you're comparing southern Ontario and New York state, probably not much; if you're comparing Ontario and either Texas or California, possibly a lot.)

But now, as I live in Utah (decidedly part of The Empty Quarter), I find myself applying this model to my life possibly more than ever before. It is not uncommon for the demographic breakdown at non-LDS churches in Utah to be something like 40-50% local ex-Mormons, 10-ish% locals who weren't raised Mormon, and 40-50% transplants from other parts of the country.

That sizable transplant population actually caught me by surprise somewhat when I moved here. These are often people who moved to find work, and often intend to stay for only a few years and then move home or somewhere else. Many of these who come out intending to move away end up inadvertently setting down roots, falling in love with the area, and making their peace and staying; however, there are also plenty of people who stay true to their plans and move on to their next job or retirement destination after two-to-ten years in the Beehive State.

But this also means, when we look at things through Garreau's lenses, that Utahn Protestant and Catholic churches are deceptively diverse! When you have a committee with a chair from New England and members from The Empty Quarter, Mexamerica, and The Breadbasket, the opportunity for miscommunication becomes magnified. The Breadbasket native may find the New Englander to be rude, while the New Englander becomes frustrated that The Breadbasket native won't speak up; meanwhile, the Mexamerican comes off as superficial and the native of The Empty Quarter is perceived as naïve, even if neither characterization is actually fair.

I'm not suggesting that all conflicts and difficulties in communicating can be reduced to "inter-national" difficulties, since personality types, faith backgrounds, life experiences, and so on clearly shape each person in great ways. I do think, though, that if churches like mine better understood the differences in regional cultures of North America, we could learn to be gracious and open with one another. After all, the church is supposed to be a cross-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic community spread out over geography and history; I believe this is an under-appreciated expression of that reality.