Ever bit into what you thought was a chocolate cookie and it turns out to be oatmeal raisin? It’s disappointing, even if the cookie is delicious.
Likewise, it’s a pity that a well-known book in your religious circles is being misunderstood and poorly framed, undermining the very work it is meant to do.
Authorial Concerns
Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner (previously featured here) does some incredible behind-the-scenes research into the authorship of the “The Anatomy of Peace.” The book has been a mainstay resource for a critical United Methodist committee and has been required reading by many Annual Conference gatherings and delegations.
Read the whole blog post, but here’s a key point from it regarding the main characters’ fictitious origin:
The only problem is, these men do not exist. There is not a Dr. Yusuf al-Falah who teaches at Arizona State University. There is not a Camp Moriah in the wilderness near Phoenix.
Technically the authors have themselves covered because there is a sentence in the preface, if you were diligent to read it, that states, “Although some of the stories in this book were inspired by actual events, no character or organization described in this book represents any specific person or organization. In many respects, these characters are each of us.”
Despite this subtly placed disclaimer, however, the clear intention of the book is to get the reader lost in the story and drawn into the characters; and, thereby, to use the experiences of those characters to lend credence and authority to the teachings.
The white authorship is problematic when you re-read certain scenes from that point of view:
…”Does it bother you that you were drawn into a story about a Palestinian Muslim and an Israeli Jew who had both experienced trauma and built Camp Moriah in response, with a superfluous amount of information and opinions about Palestinian/Israeli relations, only to find out that that camp is actually directed by a group of white folks with degrees from schools like Brigham Young and Liberty University?”
Rev. Bonner ends with:
It wants us to say “there were good people and bad people on both sides.” When we take all these teachings and critiques of the oppressed out of the mouths of a fictitious Palestinian Arab and a fictitious African American scholar, and place them in their rightful context in the mouths of the white men that truly created them, it becomes quite a different conversation.
Why place this between an Israel and Palestinian man? It may interest you to look at the recommendations at the beginning of the book to see that among them are two Former Director Generals of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Former Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister of Israel. Not a Palestinian in sight.
“It doesn’t matter if you have power,” one of the statements from the fictional Arrig, is something that in actuality only people with extreme power could desire or afford to say.
An Unhelpful Obfuscation…
Rev. Bonner names an uncomfortable reality: in a climate of concern over “who is speaking,” the temptation is great for White Men to put their experience in the mouths of persons of color (POCs) and cultures rather than their own. The line from the preface “These characters are each of us” isn’t right when it is mostly white males writing it. While some characters are based on real-life people, most of the Persons of Color are not.
The problem is that the “white people writing POC characters” worked: the book was a success and is part of the underlying process to remake United Methodism. Large swaths of The UMC may believe they are reading the first-hand narrative when they aren’t. I ran an informal Facebook poll, and as of this publication, 60% of my educated friends didn’t keep in mind the characters were fictional.
…At Exactly the Wrong Time
The authorship matters because it undermines the book’s actual good goal: We need the Anatomy of Peace.
- We need to get out of the boxes we put ourselves in.
- We need to stop justifying our betrayal and develop hearts of peace.
- We need these things because advocacy groups continuously drum-beat the heart of war and are so good at it. We need hearts of peace, and we can’t fight fire with fire and come out unburned.
But we also need to be honest when we say that this is a white committee’s claim to what African American protestors and what Palestinian tear-gas-endurers need to be doing differently. Are they right? Maybe. But by using fictional POCs as vehicles for white people’s beliefs, they have delivered a treatise on the heart of peace by using their hearts of war through objectification.
I get that the forces wanting to keep churches and cultures from progressing forward together don’t like this heart of peace process and want to keep us from embracing it. The temptation is to urge us to see the forest through the trees. But there are many problematic lines that need reframing and reinterpreting in order to better use this resources moving forward in the very difficult scenarios in the church and world.
Read it again for the first time
So, what do we do with this book when it is revealed it is white men telling black protestors that they “want the tear gas” or Israeli endorsements on a book about the Holy Land conflict?
- Do we hold it the same way as when we eat at a white-owned Mexican restaurant: we know we are not eating the real thing, but we like the experience anyway??
- Or do we set it aside entirely and say its process for delivering its method is flawed?
For me, I would say read it again and the lines you underlined or felt impacted by, add in the margin “a white man says” and see how it changes the context. If it doesn’t change the meaning to you and a community of POCs that you are connected with, then hold onto its truth. If it does change, then let it go and read more literature by Persons of Color, or liberation theology by people in the Middle East or the Black Lives Matter movement in order to hear from actual lived experience instead of the theoretical.
Your turn
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading, writing, and commenting. And be sure to read Rev. Bonner’s blog post!
Someone said something to the effect that if you are a leader of any kind in the UMC, you have probably been invited to read “The Anatomy of Peace.” I guess I’m not a “leader” in the UMC, because I never got the invitation. I haven’t read it, and I won’t. I’m only slightly curious; it’s hard to believe it deserves a place ahead of all the other important reading I have yet to do. Right now I’m reading “Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham” by Melanie Morrison and “The Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World” by Kathleen Dean Moore. Both hold for me greater promise to dismantle my silos and inspire me to action for the common good. But like “The Anatomy of Peace” neither names the elephant in the room regarding the church’s impasse over authority. Is it really worth reading twice?
I found the first book incredibly helpful, but I’m glad I’m not the only person who found the over-reliance on fictional characters to make the point of this book troublesome.
The third book is somewhat redemptive, imho, though.
But they could likely have stopped at the first book and its accompanying training.
I read the book. Kept looking for real life case studies where this process was put in practice and actually worked or didn’t. I was unimpressed.
Maybe it was just me but I saw this as purely fictional but giving us the opportunity to explore the basics of what they are saying. I didn’t realize the authors or their colors and as a white male, I might have felt a subconscious comfort in how the words were written. However, I know that there was/is a camp in Maine where young people from Palestine and Israel come together to explore peace. Maybe that is why I thought such a relationship was possible and plausible. I plan to listen to it again, not to judge the authors but to pick up the lessons that are taught within the book. Boiling it down with the hope of experiencing an amazing maple syrup (It takes 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of maple syrup) of grace and hope moving forward.
As a well-educated, well-employed, straight, upper-middle class white women (i.e. privileged), I found the book helpful in examining my own actions and thoughts. It is – IMO – obviously written from a position of privilege, and found the dialogue a little contrived and the resolutions to swift to forget it was fiction. That said, I do think your suggestion to consider the source when evaluating comments is helpful, but I would suggest the corrective, “a person of privilege/power says …”
I also find it interesting that you raise the issue in regards to your denominational struggle over homosexuality, yet you do not suggest readings from those seeking justice for LGBT community.
Having read the book, I was intrigued and did the research into the stories. While I suspected that they were produced to make the points of the book, I still found that the message is important to getting out of our self denial and opening our minds to a larger concept, one that most denominations claim to embrace, “that all persons are of worth,” but to which we all have hidden barriers that need to be overcome to truly live out that concept.
While reading the book, I didn’t frame the ideas as black, white, jew, or arab, female, male, but internalized it to examine my own boxes and self denial.
I do find it uncomfortable, that the stories are not disclosed in a more open manner as fictional illustrations to a great concept. That being said, I also realized that it was a baby step to opening our minds to better possibilities in dealing with conflict in our personal lives. It left me hungering for more in depth tools for self examination in how we deal with conflict and disagreement, and the better possibilities that could change lives and our world.
I can see why the book has been embraced by so many as many of us long for peace in our lives, our county, and the world.
Thank you for sharing. I was not aware that this book is highly popular in Christian communities (or maybe specifically Methodist?). I learned of this book from a YouTuber who is also a licensed therapist, and who seems neutral on the topic of religion.
I’m responding to add another point of view, and ask some questions; not to criticize or say anyone is wrong.
The fact that the story is fictive doesn’t bother me. I thought the scenarios, the individual problems, were relatable enough, and good enough examples to think about how to apply the concepts in my own life. It’s a technique used quite often in other effective books on a variety of topics.
The fact that the authors are not persons of color (POC) also doesn’t bother me. I did notice the author is listed as “The Arbinger Institute” instead of a name, but it didn’t occur to me to search for actual names. One of the lessons from the book is to see people as individuals, rather than lumping them into whatever group we may perceive them to belong to. For example, assuming that a Jew will hate all Muslims and vice-versa, is inside-the-box thinking. However when they are able to step out of the box of prejudice, they are able to make peace with each other.
I see a parallel with this post. Focusing on the fact that the authors are white, and using that as justification that the lessons of the book are less valid – it just doesn’t sit well with me. It feels like a major point has been missed. I don’t know anything about the actual authors, their names, much less their backgrounds and life experiences. I don’t know them as individuals. Knowing they are white men still does not help me to know about them as individuals. And I’m uncomfortable in going along with the idea that just because they are white men, this book is questionable. Because what does White Men mean? It’s such a loaded question, it deserves it’s own post.
By the way, in case anyone is wondering, I am a POC, and a woman. Which color? Does it matter? If it does, why?