Gavin Ortlund, The Art of Disagreeing: How to Keep Calm and Stay Friends in Hard Conversations (The Good Book Company, 2025)

It will not surprise many readers to hear that my involvement in the ministry of Living Out means that many people disagree with me and regularly express their disagreement.

There are those non-Christians who disagree with me because they come from liberal, western cultures and think that anyone who restricts sex to heterosexual marriage is a harmful relic of our homophobic past. There are other non-Christians who disagree with me because they come from traditionalist, non-western cultures and see my same-sex attraction as a harmful liberal disease that their part of this world needs protecting from.

And then there are the Christians! The many in my own denomination (the Church of England) who disagree with me because they maintain that the Bible does not condemn consensual, same-sex sexual relationships and that God wants to bless same-sex marriages. There are others who think I am undermining biblical truth in sometimes describing myself as a gay Christian, or in talking of the divine worship that can result from me noticing a good-looking man.

This short read covers a huge amount of ground and is full of wise, biblically-grounded advice that I’ve been missing for years. 

The result is that I was very keen to read a book with the title The Art of Disagreeing: How to Keep Calm and Stay Friends in Hard Conversations. I’ve often struggled to know how to disagree well with others, have panicked when disagreement has come from all sides, and have sadly lost some precious friendships along the way. So I pre-ordered this book, with high hopes of getting the help I desperately need.

I was not disappointed. This short read (under one hundred pages) covers a huge amount of ground and is full of wise, biblically-grounded advice that I’ve been missing for years. It is good at diagnosing your posture when it comes to disagreement – are you a natural hedgehog or rhino? It sets out the upsides and downsides of both. It is wonderful in reiterating the need for that forgotten fruit of the Spirit: kindness. It is constantly practical, providing useful checklists like this (p.32):

• Does this person’s behavior suggest that engaging with them has a realistic chance of being productive?
• Is addressing a disagreement likely to create further harm?

• Do I have any formal obligations that require me to resolve this difference, or can it be left unresolved without negligence?
• Could a season of waiting or reflection be beneficial before working through a particular disagreement?

In a chapter on courage, there is this priceless diagnostic tool to help you work out whether you are in danger of the cowardice of conflict avoidance:

‘Ask yourself this question: are there people or issues you talk to yourself about, but you avoid facing directly? When you find yourself having lots of mental conversations with someone but avoiding them in real life, you probably need to do something!’ (p.42).

This paragraph felt as if it were written for me! The book’s call to listen well is also one I need to keep hearing – especially so I am attentive enough to hear the understandable reasons for someone’s different view or perspective.

The penultimate chapter on persuasion is excellent in its analysis of how disagreements can sometimes be unhelpfully started and unnecessarily prolonged:

‘…when we fail to identify where a particular disagreement lies, we often make assumptions about the other party’s convictions. Many disagreements suffer from a lack of clarity; the two sides don’t actually know where they disagree, and thus they talk past each one another. Calmly wading through a disagreement to identify where the real fault lines of difference lie often brings clarification’ (p.81).

I can think of a few painful disagreements I’m part of where this is exactly what needs to happen next.

The book ends with a reminder of Christ’s call to love – something we seem to find especially hard to do when the disagreement is with another Christian. Good disagreement is particularly important for sisters and brothers in Christ to model ­– especially in our increasingly divided world.

The Art of Disagreeing is, in short, a priceless book. I will be urging everyone at Living Out to read it as we continue our disagreement-provoking ministry. But I will also be seeking to persuade my local church leaders to read it; it will be so helpful in that context too. I just hope they don’t disagree…