Polarization

Review: Claiming the Courageous Middle

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Cover image of "Claiming the Courageous Middle" by Shirley A. Mullen

Claiming the Courageous Middle, Shirley A. Mullen. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540967046), 2024.

Summary: Claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time as a risky and redemptive adventure of pursuing a hopeful future.

Since 2016, and perhaps far longer, I’ve lived in the middle. I cannot identify with either of the extremes in our polarized society. I’m not a moderate. I describe myself as a “third way” person, whose life is shaped by Jesus and his kingdom. And neither the left nor the right encompass what I believe is the Bible’s vision for a flourishing society. I’ve often felt lonely in that place and wondered what I have to contribute.

Shirley A. Mullen gives me hope that I am not alone. She even uses the “third way” language I’ve often used to describe the role of Christians in society. She describes a home not unlike my own that fostered both devotion and a love of learning. But she was encouraged early to step boldly and not defensively into both. Her grandfather told her that if something showed Christianity not to be true, he wanted her to know. She traces her journey through academia to the college presidency at Houghton College. There, she found herself often in the middle of groups that wanted her and the college to take their side. And she discovered the power of staying in the middle, and the courage, and risks that involved.

The Power of the Middle

Mullen contends that the middle is a place of courage and not a place for the wishy-washy. Firstly, it is courageous to remind people of their finiteness and fallenness, to adopt the posture of a humble learner. Secondly, the middle calls for a willingness to explore complexity and ambiguity to find better solutions rather than settle for the simplifications that substitute for solutions. Finally, the middle seeks the common good rather than defining the world as “us/them” and “winners/losers.”

But is the middle way biblical? After all, there are truths to believe or deny, commands to obey or disobey. And Mullen acknowledges this but also points to an underlying narrative of God working redemptively amid a fallen world where each person continues to have infinite worth before God. To illustrate her point, she highlights examples of Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Esther, Paul, and Jesus himself as those who worked in middle spaces.

However, the middle space is a risky space. It means the possibility of being attacked on both spaces. As a historian, she offers nine examples in history where this was so. And as a college leader, she speaks of the dangers of loss of trust, the loss of cohesion in one’s base, and creating unfulfilled expectations. But the other side of risk is benefits, and she sees a number of these. Among these are gaining a larger perspective on the issues, finding new options that serve both sides, and building new community on common ground.

Having cast the vision for the middle space, she gets down to the practicalities of claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time. Beginning with remembering our stories and framing one’s convictions, she encourages finding a community of kinship, apprenticing, and finding places to work redemptively in the church and the world. Toward that end, she offers a number of examples of individuals and organizations, both Christian and secular, working in the middle space.

Concluding Thoughts

I found this both a bracing and encouraging call to step into the work of the middle way. Mullen cites the many places in higher education, in civic affairs, and other places where good work may be done. Yet it seems like a “mustard seed conspiracy,” to use a phrase from Tom Sine, one that works in small and perhaps hidden ways.

But what about the powerful national interests battling each other? I sometimes wonder if the only way to change that is a subversive one of taking the air out of their efforts by grassroots efforts that engage citizens in a better way. Hopefully, they will demand better behavior from those who serve them in political office. Claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time seems like a long game. While Mullen offers a few examples of people who were in it for the long haul, like William Wilberforce, we need more examples and instruction on persisting over the long haul. That just might be a good idea for her next book!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: You Are Us

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You Are Us, Gareth Gwyn. Austin: River Grove Books, 2023.

Summary: An account using case studies showing how self-understanding and inner work allows individuals to become leaders in healing polarized relationships.

It seems we are in a time of unprecedented polarization around politics, racial and sexual identity, religion, and socioeconomic status. Often, we feel these divisions are so deeply embedded, the wounds and grievances so great, that bridging those divides seem impossible. Gareth Gwyn, the founder of Let’s See Labs, an organization that develops media on various platforms and offers workshops “that facilitate sociocultural transformation” through work with individuals who become leaders in transformative cross-cultural relationships.

Gwyn traces our polarized relationships to the experience of inner trauma that often draw us into social identities of reaction in which we blame the pain on “them.” We act out of our trauma, even while being disconnected from it. Transformation results when a person, often in the presence of unconditional acceptance, is able to recognize the inner wounds and traumas that have led to looking at the world through a lens of hate and “us versus them.” The book uses several case studies (accessible as online videos through QR codes in the book) to show this transformative process. For me, the story of Scott, a former KKK member deeply alienated from his own family, who had a transformative encounter with a black man at a rehabilitation center, was the high point of this book, leading to a process through which Scott experienced inner healing and became a reconciliation leader.

The book moves from our inner healing to a posture of responsiveness that claims the freedom over our emotions and the choices of action in response to them. Recognizing our own worth, we recognize that of others. We face how we have contributed to polarities, even to our own victim status, while fully grasping both the role of the other and developing awareness of that person’s own wounds. We gain freedom both to embrace and move beyond our identities.

My only struggle with the book is that the author assumes a familiarity with the vocabulary of “inner work” which may feel like in-group jargon or “psychobabble” to some. Some explanation or translation of this terminology might help more effectively make the important case this book makes to a wider audience.

Gwyn’s book seems to illustrate an important idea articulated by Fr. Richard Rohr that, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” The cover art represents this transformation. It reads, “You Are Either With Us or Against Us.” As people do inner work dealing with their pain, Gwyn believes that we see how the other is actually “us” leading to the beginnings of bridging divides.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through Speakeasy

Review: Both-And: Living the Christ-Centered Life in an Either-Or World

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Both-And: Living the Christ-Centered Life in an Either-Or World
Both-And: Living the Christ-Centered Life in an Either-Or World by Rich Nathan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I live in Columbus, the city in which Vineyard Columbus ministers but am not a part of this congregation, the largest congregation in the Vineyard movement and in central Ohio. The work of Vineyard Columbus is regularly featured on our local news outlets, and it is not in images of angry protesters with a hateful message but rather images of people serving throughout our community in the name of Christ. The congregation sponsors a community center providing free medical and legal assistance and other services to local residents and has planted at least 24 churches in central Ohio and around the world.

This book, authored by their senior pastor, Rich Nathan, with the assistance of Insoo Kim, pastor of ministry strategies, helps explain the vision of this church, which so many have found so attractive. In brief, Nathan calls this a “both-and” church in an either-or world tired of the kind of polarization we see in our politics and civic life. Nathan believes that the Christian message holds in a creative tension the polarities that often divide us.

The book is organized around a series of both-and polarities that Vineyard Columbus seeks to hold together and commends to other churches. Nathan describes an identity that is both evangelical and charismatic. He speaks of a community that enjoys unity and a racial diversity that matches the diversity of our city. He articulates the church’s concern and activity around both showing mercy and pursuing justice. The church pursues its mission through both proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. He challenges his congregation to holiness in both its personal and social ethics. He expresses the church’s kingdom vision in terms of both the miraculous works which might already be sought and the final transformation of our lives and world yet to be hoped for. He concludes with calling the church to both relevant practice (orthopraxy) and orthodox doctrine.

Each chapter includes personal stories and illustrations from Vineyard Columbus ministry and the author’s personal life. At the same time, Nathan writes with a lawyerly (he was an attorney and law professor before becoming Vineyard Columbus’s pastor) carefulness on key doctrinal issues of our day. For example, to the contention that opening leadership in the church to women leads to opening leadership to those engaged in same-sex relationships, he observes a key distinction rarely noted in these discussions between roles, which are culturally determined, as in the case of women, and behaviors which carry moral implications that are trans-cultural.

This example also underscores how this will not be a book that those wedded to an either-or view of reality will embrace. Nathan speaks both of the loving acceptance their church shows all who seek services in their community center and all who come to the church and of the church’s uncompromising call to things like sexual integrity and its decision to only appoint leaders and pastors who exemplify that integrity. Similarly, in another place, Nathan both speaks critically of our nation’s militarism and warmly of those who serve in the military.

My sense is that we like to define the world in either-or terms because it makes life seemingly simpler. However, what we miss is that in doing so, it also makes life smaller and leaves no way to include those who think differently. One of the most delightful aspects of this book were the repeated instances where Nathan shows how this “both-and” thinking brings us into a far richer reality than the “either-or”. Here’s one example, from his section on both evangelical and charismatic:

“If we emphasize the Word without the Spirit, we dry up. If we emphasize the Spirit without the Word, we blow up. If we hold the Word and the Spirit together, we grow up….

“The most exciting aspect of the Both-And marriage of evangelical and charismatic Christianity is the bringing together of evangelicals’ historic focus–the salvation of the lost–with the charismatic power to get the job done.”

Are you one of those like me who tires of being presented with the polarities of “either this, or this” in the church or in the culture and wonder, is there a third option? If so, you will find this book helpful in casting a vision of a different paradigm and as well as an explanation of the powerful ministry Vineyard Columbus has had in its host city.

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