Enemy pen pals

The Board doesn’t know this yet – except for Jaime, who winced when I mentioned it to her over lunch in Fort Langley in June – but our editorial team has an idea that might solve polarization. It’s called Enemy Pen Pals.

Through this experiment, I’ll start connecting Christian Courier (CC) subscribers who might, at first glance, disagree with each other on a few key issues – one who leans politically conservative, for example, with one who staunchly supports the Liberals or the NDP – and they’ll start a regular correspondence. What would happen if the deacon in a disaffiliating Christian Reformed Church (CRC) started sharing bits of her life story with a delegate to Synod from a more traditional congregation, and vice versa? The goal wouldn’t be universal consensus, but empathy.

Years ago, there was a CC columnist with whom I did not see eye to eye. We butted heads regularly, debating every column draft. Eventually, in desperation, I played the human card: “This week has been hard,” I wrote. “I can’t keep up with laundry and we’re out of milk and two kids are sick.” That tiny bit of honesty shifted the tone between us – not perfectly, not even permanently, but I remember that it helped. How much antagonism can you muster up, after all, for an Enemy that gets behind on their laundry?

Because this idea was already percolating during my book tour, I decided to test it in public as part of a panel I was moderating at The King’s University. With a short preamble but no other warning, I asked the three panel participants, “If you had an Enemy Pen Pal, who would it be?” Looking somewhat taken aback, they gave this left-field question their best shot. (Even though presumably, people of faith don’t have enemies except the devil, church history is rife with a series of arguments about who to hate. The Jesuits. The Catholics. The Reformers. People who shop on Sundays. The ones who left. The ones who stayed.)

Adrian De Lange, Pastor of River Park Church in Calgary, took an interesting angle. He said that two halves of himself need reconciling; that sometimes he is his own worst enemy. Amy Bratton, Director of New Leaf Press and a member of the Free Methodist Church, pointed out that historically Methodists and Calvinists were enemies. It was jarring to realize that, in another era, the person I’d been happily travelling with since Saskatoon would have been an automatic adversary rather than a friend.

Advice from an Auschwitz survivor

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, was recently interviewed by the BBC for her 100th birthday on July 17, 2025. Because she was given the chance to say “I used to play the cello,” her life was spared to play in the camp orchestra.

Her message to the world today? “Talk to each other before you kill each other. Find out who you are. Be curious about yourself and about other people. Hate is a poison and in the end you poison yourself.”

Assumptions & stories

Now you might be wondering what difference a few letters can make, in the face of all that. Well, if Enemy Pen Pals really took off, I think it would accomplish three things. First, it’s human nature to make assumptions about other people. If I know you believe x, then I’m going to assume y and z about you too. But reality is more complicated, which is why novels about WWII with a nuanced character, like a member of the Nazi party quietly resisting, are so compelling. Pen Pals get to know each other, and that process can – crucially – untangle the sets of assumptions both sides bring to the relationship (usually without realizing).

Let me also note that the courtesy of listening to someone we disagree with should be the bare minimum Christians offer each other. Imagine if the first thing your Enemy did was rip up your letter! How would you have any kind of conversation after that? I think the CRC’s recent Synodical decision to excise “diverse positions” from The Banner will impede members of the CRC from understanding each other. I empathize with the subsequent resignation of Editor Chong, who said in his farewell editorial that “this will not help the denomination’s collective spiritual health in the long run.”

A third benefit of corresponding with your Enemy is that, over time, you’ll see the links between position and experience. In fiction, that’s the character’s backstory – their motivation. It’s trendy right now, in movies, to dig into the origin story of villains. Go back far enough, they seem to say, and every Cruella was once the recipient of cruelty herself. This doesn’t justify evil decisions (or it shouldn’t, which is a tricky line to walk), but it does help explain them. Each of us has been shaped by our experiences, which is why villainous backstories are so interesting. Imagine bringing that level of curiosity to the life of your Enemy Pen Pal! You’d never see each other as caricatures again.

I know the idea of Enemy Pen Pals sounds naïve. Childish, even. Just about as foolish as turning the other cheek instead of lobbing an insult back, or quietly forgiving someone who wronged you.

But the Canadian government just allocated $9 billion to defense spending over the next 12 months, while military spending in the U.S. has sky-rocketed into the trillions – numbers so high they defy gravity and, frankly, reality.

Meanwhile, one postage stamp costs $1.44, and enemy-love – the best plot twist in God’s redemptive story – can change lives.

Whose plan is crazier?