At the Center, not in the Middle

Dr. Wesley Avram May 5, 2021

After a recent Project: Dialogue after church, both in-person and live-streamed for online worshippers, I got a heartfelt email from an online participant. She identified herself as a non-member, but a "watcher with interest." I love that.

We had been talking with our friend Allen Hilton, a regular participant at Pinnacle Presbyterian and founding director of the House United Movement. Allen works with churches and other groups on viewpoint diversity, conversation across differences, and creative engagement. He and I were talking about churches trying to be in the "center" during a time when more and more are at the extremes. I noted that when sides are protecting themselves behind walls (of many kinds) and throwing rocks over those walls toward each other, it's folks standing in between that usually get hit! Allen talked of churches and groups that try, nevertheless.

Our "watcher with interest" had a question for me. She wondered if we had any actual examples of "centrist" Christians who sought such a position from theological belief instead of political expediency. She asked if there are any Christian creeds affirming such an approach, or if "Centrist Christian" might be an oxymoron.

Good questions. I heard in them chastening echoes of Revelation 3:16 ("Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.") and Luke 14: 26 (“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."). Aren't Christians committed to the truth before they are to consensus? Mustn't reconciliation be built, first, on redemption—which is won by Christ, not by dialogue? Doesn't justice first require righteousness, and only then equity and common ground? Aren't believers more committed to the conversion of the world than they are to everyone "getting along"? She didn't ask those specific questions, but what she did ask brought those to my mind. And they're good questions—worth holding alongside a commitment to viewpoint diversity.

So a response in defense of dialogue? A vision of creative dialogue shouldn't be just about compromise. Nor should it sacrifice a core commitment to truth. At its best, it's about emulating Jesus—in the ways Jesus often asked questions before healing the sick or forgiving sins; in ways, Jesus criticized self-righteous believers more than he did folks who didn't (yet) know him; in ways, Jesus reminded his followers to notice the log in their own eye before getting obsessed with a speck in someone else's (Matthew 7:5); in ways, Jesus followed Isaiah's call, "Come now, let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18). I guess it's about a Christian virtue of humility, of love, and of not always being so sure we're right—even while we're passionately devoted to the Teacher of righteousness. The New Testament is full of people who learn, change, forgive, and seek forgiveness—just as it's full of folk who stand with confidence for what is True. And what is sure is that we get things wrong as often, or more often, than we get things right. And that this is all resolved, in the end, not by winning, but by love.

So the "center" we're talking about? It's not a middle place in-between. It's a place itself, off the line between cliche positions and encouraging new ways of being together—with passion, commitment, questioning, telling, listening, and hoping. For us . . . inspired by Christ.

Thanks for the question!