American blind spots are challenging my own

Last night I got back from a work trip to The Gospel Coalition’s Women’s Conference.

Over 8,500 of our American sisters gathered in Indianapolis for three days of teaching, worship and fellowship. For me, it was three days of author meetings, networking, and interacting with customers at the The Good Book Company stand. (As luck would have it, the US Olympic swim team trials were happening in the very same square mile, although out on the street it was pretty easy to guess who was there to see what, based on what they were carrying: signed swim float or stuffed book tote.)

A friend messages me and asks how it was. ‘Good,’ I say, ‘American women are so infectiously positive.’ ‘I find it annoying,’ she replies, ‘but I’m glad you were infected! I know what she means.

We may speak the same language, but this was definitely a cross-cultural experience. It’s in the greetings: all the hugging and effusive ‘Hi, how are you?’ ‘Good! How are you?’ feels unnatural.

It’s in the dress: most of the conference attendees seem impossibly well put together. How do these women manage to look so young when they have so many children?

Plus everyone we meet seems to have some kind of side hustle – from Uber drivers giving rides for their kids’ college fund to exhibitors selling Christian merch (or yes, authors writing books). Maybe this is why their GDP per capita is so much higher than ours.

Yet the very elements of this subculture which I perceive from a distance to imply fakeness and materialism – and which can, I’m sure – up close, I find to be vehicles of something admirable, one interaction at a time in the exhibit hall. I’m challenged by the warmth I encounter: the genuine gratitude with which people thank us for our publishing; the willingness of one person to speak enthusiastically about another’s ministry; the ease with which authors encourage me about my gifts.

Such words and sentiments do not flow from my own mouth so readily. But I want them to. These women know how to ‘build each other up’ (1 Thess. 5:11) and ‘outdo one another in showing honour’ (Rom. 12:10).

Even the side hustles come in for a reassessment. They start to seem more like an outflow of a positive, can-do attitude; a belief that I can make a difference; a hopefulness about what God might do as we step out in His service. These too are good things. At an event with some of our authors on parenting, I’m struck by the hunger in the room: the seriousness with which these mothers were taking the task of discipling their children.

And the eternal youthfulness? ‘Maybe it’s all the preservatives in our food,’ laughs a US colleague.

As I reassess my American sisters’ perceived blind spots, I find I get a glimpse of some of my white, middle-class British ones: too quickly cynical; too easily defeatist.

It is, I think, quite easy to quietly harbour a negative view of the church in the US from this side of the Atlantic: to dismiss it as entirely and hopelessly rich, flashy, celebrity-driven, racially divided, and politically idolatrous. Their zeal on moral issues is often expressed in a tone that our British ears find vaguely embarrassing.

A few years ago our church voted to change our name to exclude the word ‘evangelical’, partly (but not wholly) because the word seemed somehow tainted from across the pond. And as the US gears up to vote on 5 November, I expect we’ll have as many opportunities as ever to roll our eyes, even at those with whom we share one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13).

But last week I met plenty of people all too aware of their own issues, and doing what they can to change. So I’ll be aiming to resist the temptation to ‘give the side-eye’*, without first looking in the mirror.

* A US term for disapproval.