Benefits of Lunch Outside the Office: A Response

“Grab drinks?  We don’t even share the same elevators!”

For the past five years, in addition to being a professor of communication, I’ve served as co-director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication between people entrenched in ideological, political, or theological disagreements.  When I was asked to respond to Peter’s thoughtful essay on the benefits of having lunch with others, my co-director and I had just returned from a week on Capitol Hill talking to self-identified Christian politicians, exhorting them to reach across the aisle with those with whom they disagree.  We offered as an example the habit of Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton, who after debating noted secularists like H.G. Wells or George Bernard Shaw, would go and have drinks together a local pub to decompress and continue the conversation. I’ll never forget the look on faces at my seemingly naïve suggestion, prompting one high-level politician to utter the response that opened this essay, “We don’t even share the same elevators!”

Within that context, I read through Peter’s view of the benefits of lunch.  I took note when he asserted that many today only engage with those who have similar views resulting in a deep feeling of separation from others. To Peter, lunch “looms as the simple yet subtle go-to resource for breaking these barriers, and thereby relaxing (if not eliminating) the contentious effects they have built into the culture.” For the space remaining, I’d like to focus on his idea that lunch is both a resource to break down barriers and yet, seemingly simple.

  Power of Rituals

Scholars have long identified two different ways to view communication.¹ First, let’s consider the transmission view of communication.  Imagine watching 16 full-length movies every day! The average person today processes as much as 74 GB of information a day—the equivalent of 16 full-length movies. The information comes through computers, cell phones, tablets and other electronic enticements. Consider, that “only 500 years ago, 74 GB of information would be what a highly-educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories.”² We are awash in information and often feel that the goal of communication is to pass along more information. Welcome to the transmission view where communication is fundamentally viewed as a process of creating, sending, and interpreting messages.  Words like imparting, sending, and transmitting are most associated with this version of communication.

When we find ourselves in a disagreement with a friend, or co-worker, we easily kick into this mode and think that best way to engage is to provide facts, stats, studies, arguments, and experts. When embroiled in a disagreement, we recommend they check out the latest CNN or FOX survey, or podcast where an expert makes our point. The response?  Even while we are talking the other person is thinking of websites, experts, or podcasts that support their position.  Information begats more information and we quickly hit an impasse. “Our basic orientation to communication remains grounded,” notes culture watcher James W. Carey, “at the deepest roots of our thinking, in the idea of transmission.”³ Much research today strongly suggests that due to myside bias, group think, and tribalism, the transmission view has fallen on hard times and people are insulated from counter-evidence.

The ritual view of communication predates the transmission view and is linked to terms such as shared experiences, association, fellowship, commonality, participation, and most importantly, cultivating bonds with others.  “A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages” but toward “the maintenance of society.”⁴ This view builds off the notion that the roots of communication are inseparable from concepts such as commonness, communion, and community. The ritual view derives its name from the idea that our commonness is particularly created by daily rituals. People may have disagreements, but we all observe holidays, try to have family meals, send our kids to school, work long hours, find ways to unwind, mourn loss of loved ones, celebrate new births, create traditions, and on and on. While today’s information age separates and pushes us toward ideological silos, the ritual view attempts to “draw persons together in fellowship and commonality”⁵

The ritual view is where Peter’s essay is so insightful. While not mentioning it directly, he’s advocating that bridging barriers requires a simple return to a ritual of lunch. For Peter, this ritual “exists as a platform for reviving the imagination, social as well as intellectual.” It’s an opportunity to “exchange ideas spontaneously” and to even be playful. I couldn’t agree more that lunch is a viable option for people who already have relatively stable communication climates between them. It’s a ritual we desperately need in our churches, communities, and universities. Yet, what about people who have deep ideological, theological or political disagreements?

Pre-conditions for Lunch

Since the 2016 presidential election, nearly a third of people report they have stopped talking to a friend or family member due to political disagreements.⁶ Why have many decided to cancel each other or separate, rather than talk? It’s not that the past was some idyllic time where no relationships were severed, but it seems there was a different attitude.  Is the change that we are angrier? “We don’t have an anger problem,” states Harvard researcher, Arthur Brooks, “we have a contempt problem.”⁷ Brooks asserts that recently contempt has entered our communication, which he describes anger mixed with disgust. What’s the difference between anger and contempt? I can be angry or disagree with a spouse, co-worker, or church member, but still want to protect the relationship. Co-workers may not see eye-to-eye as they discuss issues over lunch, but they still eat together. Contempt is not only that I am angry but that I no longer care if the relationship ends. I’ll state my position and then shake the dust off as I leave. People who harbor contempt or have deep ideological differences are the very people who need to have lunch. However, my experience since being the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project is that they will not.

What might need to happen to make lunch a viable option for those who need it most?  Perhaps, there is much we can learn from Supreme Court Justices who engage in the very ritual advocated by Peter. When the Supreme Court building had a make-over in 1935 it included a private room for justices to eat together if they desired. Having meals together—especially when the Court was in session—has had its ups-and-downs. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed in 1981 and made it her personal mission to invite and even cajole others to attend with mixed results. Their hesitancy is understandable since each justice is busy and it might be nice get some work done or to eat with like-minded jurists after butting ideological heads on volatile issues. If ever there was a group where anger, resentment, or contempt might take root, it must be with this diverse group. Yet, what has made them open to eating together?

When Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court in 2020, she was unaware of this lunch tradition and a little apprehensive. Over time, she made eating with other justices a priority.  Why? She was taken back and pleasantly surprised by a simple gesture by fellow justice Sonia Sotomayor who unexpectedly showed up at her office with Halloween candy for her kids. These two scholars could not be more different and most certainly have strong differences of opinion that often get played out in public. Yet, this simple act opened the door to more conversations and eventually eating together.

The giving of Halloween candy strikes a personal chord with me. While in graduate school, there was a brilliant fellow grad student with whom I didn’t’ see eye-to-eye. Along religious, political, and social lines we couldn’t disagree more. We often presented papers in class that stood in stark contrast to each other. During breaks, we politely, but carefully avoided each other. Needless to say, we weren’t having lunch. The day after Halloween, she went around the grad office handing out bags of goodies. We happened to leave at the same time, and I playfully said, “Hey, why didn’t I get any candy?” Without looking at me, she replied, “I didn’t think you’d want candy from an outspoken lesbian. I have extra because most of our neighbors skip the lesbian’s house. Gotta protect the kids.”  I vaguely remember responding that it must be hard to be so harshly judged. “It is what it is,” she said with a wry smile as we parted ways.

The next morning on my grad desk was a bag of candy with a note, “BOO!”  I won’t claim that such an unexpected gesture resulted in our regularly grabbing coffee or sitting down for lunch. It didn’t. But looking at the bag all day stirred something. It made me open to the possibility of lunch. As I write this, I’m saddened that I didn’t pursue that stirring. In today’s argument culture, both the openness and regret at a missed opportunity are a welcomed start.

1. For a fuller explanation of these two views of communication, see my book (co-authored with Sean McDowell), End the Stalemate: Move from Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations (Tyndale, 2024). Sections this essay were taken from chapter 2 of this book.
2. https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2017.00023
3. James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 13.
4. Cary, Media and Society, p. 20.
5. Ibid, p. 15.
6. Jeremy Peters, “In a Divided Era, One Thing Seems to Unite: Political Anger.”  New York Times, August 17, 2018.  www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/us/political-fights.html
7. Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (New York: Broadside Books, 2019), p. 11.