A key contribution of feminist ethics is the concept of the “ethic of care.” This comes out of the work of Harvard developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan, who noticed that boys and girls reason about ethical decisions differently. Boys tend to depend upon abstract notions like “fairness” while girls tend to focus on preserving relationship. Here’s the briefest online defintion I was able to find:

The Ethics of Care is a theory inspired by feminist approaches to morality. It holds that our decisions and actions should reflect the love and care we have for other people. This theory de-emphasizes abstract notions like justice or duty and emphasizes the development of caring relationships.

The two approaches—concrete care versus abstract principles—are not in an either/or relationship. The two are complementary as far as I can see, each providing a necessary counter-balance to the other. The ethic of abstract principles, for example, would seem to tend toward a cavalier sacrificing of others for the principles’ sake, while the ethic of care would seem to tend toward masochistic self-martydom under the guise of helping others.

Here’s where I’m going with this. One way the ethic of care can be put into practice is by going out of your way to make room for the needs or wishes of others who in one way or another are “in your care.” (In theological circles this is often called the ethic of hospitality and is considered to have significant biblical support.) As its simplest form, this means being a good host and being a good guest.

Welcome to the “nice” committee

But when put in an organizational context—say a church committee meeting—the ethic of care gets much hairier. Sincere efforts at “including people” and “being nice” can unintentionally lead to excruciatingly long meetings and byzantine bureaucratic procedures because, quite sincerly, folks want to be doubly sure that all perspectives are included in the process, even (especially) at the cost of efficiency. Process over product.

Consider for a moment, though, the consequences of such a decision. Is an hour-long meetingg become a three-hour meeting respectful of others’ personhood? What does that say about how we value their time outside committee—say, time with family and friends? Do byzantine procedures respect the time and energies of someone trying to make something happen, no doubt something intended to be for the benefit of the community those procedures are meant to serve? Couldn’t this prevent needed reforms, reforms which could remove harm from the system?

And thus the ethic of care goes awry and begins to serve powers-that-be (those who sit on committees and make those byzantine procedures) and not the development caring relationships. You’d need to look at it on a case-by-case basis, but it seems entirely possible that this scenario could actively thwart the development of caring relationship, all the while purporting to be about just that.

Now to take a departure from this post’s measured tone: Why is this so damn difficult for those advocating the ethic of care—“church folk,” in particular—to wrap their caring little heads around?? Why is it so unfathomable that “being nice” could actually lead to harm? Why aren’t they already in the habit of making sure that that doesn’t happen? Isn’t that their responsibility as members of a community of faith—to at the very least avoid needlessly harming one another?

The only reason for this behavior that I’ve been able to fathom is that they so get off on “being nice” that even in cases where harm could result they will actively avoid being aware of the potential (or real) consequences of their “being nice.” To get back to more theological language, in their efforts to practice a false ethic of hospitality they are prepared to violate the ethic of empathy or even commit real harms. The real deal breaker for these folks is feeling like they’re hospitable. As a rule, enough hospitality happens in spite of their false hospitality that they are able to ignore real harms that result. Because, after all, they were only trying to be nice.

Bringing emotion into ethical and theological deliberation was and still is a much needed correction to business as usual, but to assume that deliberation that is exclusively emotional will result in good is at best naive and at worst negligent and reckless. “Process” does not equal “people.” But, again, we are told, they were only trying to be nice.

A prophet’s salvo

One of the prophet’s oldest methods is “symbolic speech.” When I was a teenager, a church camp I went to every summer had a ritual we called “care cards.” On the first day of camp every camper and counselor would decorate a small manilla envelope, all of which would be posted in the rec room. Campers were encouraged to write a short note on an index card saying something nice about every person in their cabin, in their small group, and from their home church. You were also encouraged to write notes to anyone else you had a connection with that week. Many crushes were expressed on the sly.

Some ambitious and kind souls would take upon themselves of writing “care cards” to every single person at camp. When the care card ritual began, the camp involved no more than a few dozen people. When I was a participant, it regularly exceeded 400. And yet the extreme sports version of care cards continued, a feat that could only be accomplished by getting a mere handful of hours of sleep the entire week of camp. This was considered by those who did it to be both good and necessary.

A friend of mine offered some clever commentary on the whole process. He too gave a care card to every person at camp. And he came prepared. He brought his own note cards, of course, as most extreme care carders did. But he also went to the trouble of bringing a custom made stamp and stamp pad (green ink). The stamp read, “I care. Owen.”

He was well respected at camp, and his point was well taken. The next year the exteme care carding was forbidden, which was easy enough because it was perpetuated by the college-aged counselors—who had received the more extreme version of the ritual as campers from counselors who had themselves been campers when the camp was quite small. Popular veteran campers were no longer inducted into the practice of giving a care card to everyone at camp, even though it meant there was a slight possibility that some first time camper might only get three or four care cards.

And then she would cry. Which wouldn’t be nice. Which would be a good reason to beat yourself up because you could have written that pimply faced freshman a care card. Which makes you doubly not nice.

Owen’s action of symbolic speech wasn’t all that nice when you think about it. In spite of explicitly expressing care it would be a complete misunderstanding of its message to take the note that way. In fact, Owen risked making that pimply faced freshman, whose fragile ego would no doubt be crushed by the green-inked stamp pad, cry even more. (We can only assume at this point that our pimply faced freshman spends most of her waking hours in fits of sobbing and weeping.)

And yet Owen stopped the process that informally recruited veteran campers each year to push themselves past the point of exhaustion because, they were led to believe, they should feel bad knowing that some imaginary prone-to-weeping freshman might feel bad that a popular older camper didn’t write them an impersonal five-word note on an index card. He stopped the practice of hazing-via-hospitality.

A place for anger

The following words don’t describe my friend Owen (who is a mensch) but could fairly describe his note, as read by someone who doesn’t know him on their way home from a week of camp: angry, bitter, vengeful, sarcastic, fecetious, cutting, mean, impolite, malicious, snarky, galling and cynical. (Perhaps you can add others.)

Fundamental to the false ethic of hospitality is the belief that “mean” and “angry” always equal “bad” and “hurtful.” But in Owen’s case, what could justifiably be received as mean and angry was actually redemptive and transformative. How can this be?

Perhaps it’s because I’m tired now, but I don’t feel I should have to answer that question. Maybe I’ll get to it in a later post. In the meantime, I’ll suggest the following exercises, at least for my Christian readers, who seem to have the most trouble with this issue:

1. Find a copy of your Bible. Find all verses in the four gospels where Jesus isn’t nice. Cut those verses out of your Bible and burn them. Good riddance.

2. Write Jesus a care card. Explain to him how being mean and angry makes other people feel bad. Explain to him why he should be nice more often.

Unless that wouldn’t be nice.