Beyond Traditionalism and Progressivism, or Against Hardening of the Categories
By Jean Bethke Elshtain
The categories of progressive versus traditional no longer serve a purpose other than to label thinkers and thought, engage in ideological combat, and deflect attention from the truly important and vexing issues of the day. Any nuanced thinker must take account of the past and what it has deeded to the present. So the question is: How and in what ways do we interpret, reflect upon, and bring forward received doctrine, wisdom, and lived example if we are to avoid the twin pitfalls of rigid traditionalism or arrogant "presentism"? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Václav Havel have grappled intelligently with such matters and help us, in subtle ways, to be faithful and brave. The essay concludes with meditations on the theme of freedom, our current distorted understanding of this powerful term, and why a "sentimental humanism" does not serve decent and complex human purposes.
Utopia Viewed from the Underside of History: A Response to Jean Bethke Elshtain
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
I agree with Dr. Elshtain in her essay that an uncritical progressivism or a rigid traditionalism are equally unhelpful in fruitfully engaging a complex tradition. The doctrine of sin is offered by Elshtain as a prescriptive to prevent progressive or traditional oversimplifications. The view from the underside of history, seen in this response through the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, offers a different view. From Gutiérrez's work, we learn that a cultural critique of romantic liberalism or traditionalism that does not get at the ways in which sin and evil function in society is finally going to remove human nature from history.
How Will We Manage
Diversity? A Response to Jean Bethke Elshtain
By Donald W. Shriver Jr.
In basic agreement with Elshtain's suspicion of a rationalist basis for defining human nature and ethics, this response underscores the importance of story, history, and collective experience for our achieving of such definitions. At stake in the debate are two vital anthropological questions: (1) Who are we that we should value each other and ascribe rights to each other? The "thin" rationalist answer to this question is that we just believe in the value of humanity, simpliciter. The Christian answer, that God created and loves us, seems much more solid, especially in face of the propensities of twentieth-century humans for killing each other. (2) In an increasingly global human society, how do we Christians negotiate with our neighbors concerning our different answers to the first question? We do it by speaking about our histories to each other; and, on the grounds of our own faith, we never desert the global conversation.
The Religious Significance of Christian Engagement in the Culture Wars
By Kathryn Tanner
The churches need to recover a sense for how their engagement in the culture wars involves them in fundamental religious disagreements. They also need to understand what is at stake in that engagement in a concrete enough way to allow for adjudication of the arguments pro and con on specifically religious grounds. The more discussion turns in these two directions, the more I believe the merits of a progressive position are likely to become apparent in the church universal.
Speech That Matters: A Response to Kathryn Tanner
By Willie James Jennings
The problem for Christian communities is that the culture wars move at a pace too quick to deliver adequately Christian speech. Christians are yet to realize the problem modernity creates for Christian speech. The challenge for Christians is finding ways of speaking that matter. We need greater clarity in acknowledging and resisting ways of speaking that confuse Christian identity. We also need greater insight in knowing and forming ways of speaking that promote Christian life. This is the crucial matter in the culture wars.
Looking through the Eyes of Parents: A Response to Kathryn Tanner
By Richard J. Mouw
For many Christians today, the culture wars are not just about race, gender, and class. They are also very much about how to raise our children in a cultural context that has been significantly shaped by the anti-God themes of postmodernity. If we Christians on both sides of the culture wars are to engage in a productive conversation, we will not only need to take an honest look at the excesses of the "Christian Right"; we must also talk together about how the church should respond to the relativism, promiscuity, and infidelity that threaten the moral fabric of the human community.
Who's In, Who's Out?
By Joseph D. Small
Disputes among competing factions are commonplace features of contemporary church life in North America. They highlight the tension between unity and diversity that is a perennial aspect of ecclesial existence. Help in negotiating the tension and even alleviating disputes may come from an odd source: first-century Pharisees and their disputes with Jesus. Three short narratives in Mark's Gospel provide insights into possibilities for committed conversation in the church that can focus the church's attention on God rather than itself.
"Americans"
By Marilynne Robinson
Americans of all persuasions have long assumed that it is meaningful to speak in terms of cultural decline. In general, those on the right measure decline against what they take to have been the national past, and those on the left measure it against what they consider to be the civilization of the west. To attribute malfeasance or malaise to cultural decline is to magnify isolated or imagined grievance into grounds for alienation and pessimism, to make conflict chronic and intractable, to make mutual disparagement an expression of lofty standards and historical insight. Our "culture wars" reflect our tendency to consider antagonism toward ourselves a handsome moral posture.