"A Bridge Far Enough?"
What does it mean to be a bridge builder in contemporary culture, the kind of person that pulls people together who ordinarily ignore or avoid or provoke each other? In the wake of the disasterous response to Katrina and the fault lines it reveals about our society, the question is especially timely. Brian McClaren has some ideas, in this SoJourners article.
"You’ve heard the old saying: The hard thing about being a bridge is that you get walked on from both ends. As someone who spends roughly half of my time in the conservative world and half in the liberal (theologically and politically speaking), I suppose I qualify as a kind of bridge person. Unfortunately, my experience confirms the old saying, and I have a few boot marks on my backside to prove it."He describes four bridges we have to deal with in our "hyper-polarized world":
The Religious Right and the Secular Left; The Religious Right and the Religious Left; The Secular Right and the Religious Left; and The Secular Right and the Secular Left.After describing the polarities, he continues:
"IF THERE IS a rising purple peoplehood out there - people who don’t want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both, and for whom faith speaks to both abortion and war, both sexuality and ecology, both family values and fair, respectful treatment for gay people - then we will need to learn new ways of communication. Again, readily confessing that I’m no expert or example, here are a few hunches I have about those new ways of communication - based on the maxim of one of my mentors, who says, 'We must teach what Jesus taught in the manner that Jesus taught it.'"He offers seven "hunches" about ways to build effective bridges based on what he calls "Jesus' rhetorical strategies":
1. We must stop answering questions that are framed badly. 2. We must start raising new questions and issues that need to be raised. 3. We must answer questions with questions. 4. We must go cleverly deeper. 5. We must agree with people whenever we can. 6. We must speak through action, not just words. 7. We must tell stories.These, he said,
"made Jesus something far more valuable than a bridge between 'left and right.' They showed him to be a bridge by which both left and right could come to God, and to God’s truth."A provocative read, to be sure.
posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 9/11/2005 10:37:00 PM
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