Have a Nice Church!
by Peter Toon
When I pick up my mail and when I buy some groceries each morning, I am told to “have a nice day.” Then all day I hear about “nice” things, people and events.
Apparently the word nice has been increasingly used since the eighteenth century (with an acceleration in the recent past) to mean “agreeable” and “acceptable” and “pleasant” and “kind” and “attractive” and much else. This is significant since its earlier meaning (from nescius, “ignorant”) was nothing like the modern meaning.
A Nice Religion
Not surprisingly, nice and niceness have become part of the mindset and vocabulary of religion. In fact, one could say that being nice affects much of what is called “conservatism” or “orthodoxy” in the Church. So those who, like John the Baptizer speak as “a voice crying in the wilderness. . . ,” and like Martin Luther cry out, “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God!” are perceived as not nice. They may be admired at a distance but they are regarded as disturbers of the peace. Likewise those who ask difficult questions that folks do not want to face and who challenge short-sighted activism are also not being nice, for they too disturb the peace.
Since much modern mainstream “orthodoxy” feels the need to be nice, this means that it only can be bold to make a stand and to speak out for the Lord when this action comes within (what most conservatives in the pews perceive as) the spectrum of being nice. So, for example, homosexual practice may be condemned but not the modern contraceptive culture in which both homosexual and much heterosexual sex thrive. Apparently, this is because many conservatives do not like the former and, in the main, exist within the latter.
Bishops, especially, seem to feel the need to be regarded by their flocks and peers as nice (i.e., pleasant, kind, agreeable and so on). So for them, to a large degree, orthodoxy is governed by niceness.
At the parochial level being nice is certainly seen as a major value. Since all are trying to be nice there is and cannot be any biblical discipline (see Matthew 18:15ff.) concerning who is in membership, who receives the Holy Sacrament, and who sits on vestries and goes to diocesan councils. Thus a stand can be taken in modern controversies only on issues where niceness can be preserved.
Nice or Godly?Thus, being nice is an important factor in defining what can be called and known as “orthodox.” To be nice means that one cannot in practice truly be “faithful” and “courageous” and “virtuous.” All one can be is “acceptable” to one’s peers (which, if they run the show and pay the bills, is, of course, socially and politically important in a worldly sense).
Maybe we should recover the original meaning of nice from the Latin via Old French and Middle English. Nescius means “ignorant”: and “nice” originally meant “silly” or “stupid” or “wanton.” So we could say that to be nice, when this means pleasing the world rather than pleasing the Lord, is to be silly and stupid and wanton.
Apparently we have gone too far, making being nice a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Perhaps we need to consider the possibility of its transfer to the list of works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19–21), or, at least, to dispel it from Christian vocabulary and pursue instead the biblical virtues.
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