Musings

In his book Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Protestant Christianity, Kevin Vanhoozer shares the following insightful reflection on why “disagreement is easy” for Christians while uncovering agreements is much more challenging.

“[I]t is easier to disagree than to agree. Agreement requires patient listening, and time. It is more convenient simply to categorize others as “wrong’ Christians. Such mental shortcuts enable able us to make snap judgments, but labeling fails to do justice to others” (207-208).

This reflection adds another important dimension to a primary obstacle to hosting “respectful conversations” about contentious issues that I noted in my last Musing (“My Books May Make Most Readers Mad”). In that musing, I pointed to the primary obstacle of the difficulty in our culture that is plagued by tribalism of finding persons who embrace the rare combination of holding to their beliefs with deep conviction while remaining open to the possibility of learning something from someone who disagrees with them.

What follows is a response to an inaugural posting by Jim Skillen, founder and retired President of the Center for Public Justice, for an electronic conversation he is hosting on “Reformational Explorations.”

In his inaugural posting, Jim Skillen proposes three tasks for our collective consideration, the first of which is to “clarify the norms or standards by which we make judgments about what is positive or negative, constructive or destructive” relative to the “quality of public governance.” He asks specifically whether there are “criteria” for making such judgements.

I will share my initial reflections on this first task, starting with a painful story of what transpired in an Adult Discipleship class that I was facilitating at my home church in Orange City, Iowa.

One of my strongest recommendations, and, many would say, my most naïve and unrealistic recommendation for a “Way Forward” in the concluding chapter of my forthcoming book Reforming American Politics is that politicians and their supporters reach across the aisle in an effort to find enough areas of agreement to forge a coherent position that captures the best insights of those on both sides of the aisle or table, even if neither side receives the “full loaf” they were hoping for.

A while back, my hope for such a bipartisan legislative “compromise” on an important pubic policy issue was buoyed when a bipartisan “gang of eight” in the U. S. Senate passed a bill in 2013 for comprehensive immigration reform that included both improved border security and an arduous pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants that included the imposition of fines for having entered the country illegally (hence not being “amnesty” since amnesty means “no punishment” and fines are a form of punishment). 

But that was only a partial victory that was soon shattered when this bill died in the House of Representatives. In my book, I speculate that a contributing factor that made this victory short-lived was that, unlike the Senate, the House did not call together a bipartisan group of their members to talk through their disagreements in an effort to uncover common ground.

 To invite someone to have respectful conversation with you about your disagreements while stipulating what the results of your conversation must be eliminates the possibility of a genuine conversation. As I never tire of saying, “one cannot predict beforehand the results of a respectful conversation.”

As I heard recently on national news, that charade has happened once again relative to the current bipartisan conference committee negotiations regarding immigration. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi laid down a pre-condition for negotiations: “No wall money in government funding legislation.” If the conference committee negotiations, which have barely begun, are to be genuine, Speaker Pelosi should not stipulate up-front what must come out of those negotiations.

As also reported in the media, Speaker Pelosi did appear to cut the committee some slack by expressing openness to some type of “physical barrier.” Is the disagreement then semantic; hinging on a possible distinction between a “wall” and some other type of “physical barrier?” If so, the conference committee should be given the opportunity to sort out that apparent distinction.

A good friend of mine from Massachusetts shared with me the following reflections on what she called the “summer of shame” within the Catholic Church where she worships relative to widespread sexual abuse problems: “while our bishops continue to fail to act and do the right things, the laity is shifting around like crazy,” possibly leading to a “smaller and more faithful church.”

A failure to “do the right thing” on the part of those in power is not limited to the Catholic Church. Without seeking to generalize from my experience, I will report on some painful experiences I have had with those “in power” within Protestantism.

All too often. I have found that a number of Protestant leaders are strongly motivated by a desire to maintain their power and they maintain their power by ensuring that they are in control. This motivation leads to a command-and-control view of leadership where the important decisions are made by those “at the top,” without adequate consultation with those who report to them who will be significantly affected by their decisions.

A friend posed this question to me at a recent meeting. I gave a very inadequate response. I am typically not very good at thinking quickly on-my-feet in responding to unexpected questions. I need a lot of time to think about appropriate responses. So, I hope this written response will prove to be better.

The context for this question was a presentation I made at this meeting in which I proposed that since Christians do not have a “God’s-eye view of the “truth” on human sexuality issues, those holding to a “traditional” view of marriage (reserved for a man and woman) as well as those holding to a “non-traditional” view of marriage (God will bless a monogamous, life-long marriage commitment of same-sex partners) need to be open to the possibility that they are “wrong” at the same time that they present their respective positions with clarity and deep conviction.