Having the Right Accent

Dialogue is difficult when there is no trust.
Anyone with a little experience in group dynamics will bear witness to the fact that a conflicted group is unlikely to make serious inroads into resolving that conflict until they have established a bare minimum level of trust. I will call this bare minimum level of trust mutual forbearance, which means that both sides of the argument have agreed to a certain level of co-existence.  Sometimes that certain level is just barely enough to keep them from strangling each other, other times that certain level may actually involve a willingness to actually listen to the positions and opinions of the other.
Unfortunately, in many conflicted situations, mutual forbearance is actually the only achievable form of peace.  I think of the detente that existed between the Soviet Union and NATO during the Cold War and the tenuous, volatile situation in Israel/Palestine.  Sometimes mutual forbearance is only a temporary stay of an inevitable violent conflict, sometimes it is a foundation to an actual discussion or negotiation.
Thanks to technology and the complex web of developments that is vaguely referred to as "globalization" there are more and more opportunities for groups of people holding disparate social, economic and ideological opinions to be put into a situation where dialogue is necessary.  You no longer have to just get along with the people in your neighborhood, you could be required, by something as simple as calling technical support about a troublesome printer, to interact with someone on a different continent, from a different culture, with a different accent.  This depending on your disposition at the time, and whether or not the person is able to actually help with your problem, may result in certain discomfiture.
The companies that outsource things like customer service and technical support to foreign countries are well aware of the lack of mutual forbearance that is triggered in the American consumer by an unfamiliar accent, and thus, they train their people to mask their accent and use American sounding names and thus Raj becomes Tom and Suki becomes Stacey, in the hopes that they will gain your trust or at least prevent an immediate negative response to their attempt to help.
As an interesting experiment, one of the companies ought to attempt to train their Asian folks to speak with a British accent when dealing with Americans,  In my experience, though I'm not sure why, we colonists still attribute intelligence and dependability to the Queen's English, even if we don't particularly care for her tariffs.
Which brings me to my main point, which has to do with debates and discussions in the church.  I attended my first meeting with National Capital Presbytery this week and listened to a presentation by Dr. Joseph Small, that was an expansion on an article he wrote called Internal Injuries, about the moral divisions within the PC(USA).  Dr. Small made some excellent points about how majority rule inherently disenfranchises the minority.  This is particularly salient in regard to certain moral issues that are now being debated by the national church, where percentages are precarious indeed (often running 52%-48% or even narrower margins of difference).  I think I heard, somewhere in about an hour and half of talking, a challenge to try, particularly as the church, to try and do more than just achieve detente and narrow "victories." Amen to that.
The problem is, as I saw it, not with the idea, but the presentation.  The talk was DULL.  Wow, was it dry and well... Presbyterian.  I thought of how important some of the ideas were, and how unlikely they were to ever be heard by the majority of the people who really ought to consider how exactly they engage in dialogue with their brothers and sisters in Christ.
But it's not just being dry and boring that will get you in trouble in the world of the church today.  You can be too slick and engaging as well.  Enter Rob Bell.  Bell is the poster boy for the emerging church.  He has been a mega-church pastor with the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids Michigan and now he is out there doing his rock-star-author thing.  And he has some really good things to say, some things that really twist the knickers of his former brethren in the evangelical movement, and he says some things that just don't bear very close theological scrutiny, but he delivers good, bad and indifferent with a certain style and hipster coolness that makes you want to unquestioningly agree with what he says.
I have read several critiques of Bell who seem to be leveling the accusation that perhaps he is just a little too cool to be trusted.  Maybe he is, there certainly are aspects to his theology that push the edges of what conservative/evangelical Christians would call orthodoxy.  Then again his ideas seem rather tame and perhaps even passe to progressive Christians.  What I find about Bell is that he is a skillful compiler and illustrator of theological ideas.  He finds little flecks of gold among tons of gravel and holds them up and says,  "Hey, look at this! Isn't this cool?"
They may be out of context, they may be heretical in some people's mind, but they are, in fact, pretty cool.
Bell takes some very old ideas, and puts them in a blender with some of the better modern theology.  He gathers a smattering of Origen, Clement and Augustine and then dashes them with Calvin, Barth, Tillich and Buber and then finishes it off with a little N.T. Wright and Eugene Peterson and it just goes down smooth like a mocha latte.  But most of it is derivative, and it all is presented with a certain non-threatening, "hey whaddya think?" attitude.
He may not be the most careful and consistent theologian, and he certainly has his critics, but he definitely has the right accent.
So in the church, when we sit down and try to discuss and deal with difficult and seemingly intractable issues, we have to deal with this sort of dynamic as well: it's not just what you say, but how you say it.  You can have some good ideas, but if you're dull, you may not get traction.  You can speak with a prophetic voice, but don't be too slick about it, or people will sit around and dissect your hipster persona. You could actually have an idea that might just "fix our printers" permanently, but if you talk like a furriner, we ain't gonna trust you.
Lord, have mercy on us, poor sinners.