{"id":14,"date":"2010-05-14T15:45:14","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T15:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html"},"modified":"2010-05-14T15:45:14","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T15:45:14","slug":"civility-the-problem-of-being-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html","title":{"rendered":"Civility: The Problem of Being Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div>In March, I signed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/index.cfm?action=action.display&amp;item=100308-civility-covenant\">The Civility Covenant<\/a> issued by the folks at Sojourners. &nbsp;Believe it or not, the Civility Covenant wound up being somewhat controversial as critics from both the political right and left attacked the document. &nbsp;From the left, commenters said that calls for civility are nothing more than tactics to protect white male privilege. &nbsp;From the right, pundits claimed that it was a whitewash to cover up conservative dissent and a cover for heresy. &nbsp;At least <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/04\/assemblies-of-god-leader-bows.php\">one signer was forced to withdraw his name from the document<\/a> because of theological pressure to do so from his denomination. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In today&#8217;s episode from <a href=\"http:\/\/godcomplexradio.com\/\">God Complex Radio<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reyes-chow.com\/\">Bruce Reyes-Chow<\/a> (the Moderator of the PCUSA) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/carol-howard-merritt\">Carol Howard Merritt<\/a> (author, pastor, and Huffington Post blogger) interview me on the pitfalls, politics, and personal struggles of civility and niceness&#8211;including a discussion of internet nastiness and how <i>not<\/i> to respond in public arguments. &nbsp;There&#8217;s good material about the difference between graciousness and civility, as well as a somewhat embarrassing public confession that will, I promise, make you laugh. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>You can listen or download to &#8220;Diana Butler Bass on Civility and Graciousness&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/godcomplexradio.com\/2010\/05\/season-2-episode-1-diana-butler-bass-on-civility-graciousness\/\">linking here<\/a>. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In March, I signed The Civility Covenant issued by the folks at Sojourners. &nbsp;Believe it or not, the Civility Covenant wound up being somewhat controversial as critics from both the political right and left attacked the document. &nbsp;From the left, commenters said that calls for civility are nothing more than tactics to protect white male&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-media-and-religion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Civility: The Problem of Being Nice - Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Civility: The Problem of Being Nice - Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In March, I signed The Civility Covenant issued by the folks at Sojourners. &nbsp;Believe it or not, the Civility Covenant wound up being somewhat controversial as critics from both the political right and left attacked the document. &nbsp;From the left, commenters said that calls for civility are nothing more than tactics to protect white male&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-14T15:45:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Civility: The Problem of Being Nice - Christianity for the Rest of Us","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Civility: The Problem of Being Nice - Christianity for the Rest of Us","og_description":"In March, I signed The Civility Covenant issued by the folks at Sojourners. &nbsp;Believe it or not, the Civility Covenant wound up being somewhat controversial as critics from both the political right and left attacked the document. &nbsp;From the left, commenters said that calls for civility are nothing more than tactics to protect white male&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html","og_site_name":"Christianity for the Rest of Us","article_published_time":"2010-05-14T15:45:14+00:00","author":"Diana Butler Bass","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/05\/civility-the-problem-of-being-nice.html","name":"Civility: The Problem of Being Nice - 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}