1 of 2
My graduate studies in public discourse last spring brought the point home once again: Speaking about religious faith in contemporary North America is an activity fraught with challenge, misunderstanding, and polarization. Listening to others speak about faith in a meaningful way is no less difficult.
|
|
The 30 of us spent four hours together each Thursday evening for ten weeks reading texts on major public-discourse issues, including war, the working poor, gender, inequality in public education, and the environment, among others. By no means was there unanimity on any of these subjects, but we took them up without strain, in vigorous but respectful and effective dialogue. Then came religion.
In our class discussion on religious faith, responding to Annie Dillard's For the Time Being and Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, polarization and anxiety kicked in like a full-force gale. I found myself wishing that American Public Media host and author Krista Tippett were in the room with us, moderating the conversation, asking probing yet measured questions, drawing out the stories behind our own belief systems, and reflecting back her own insights from a theologically trained perspective. Alas, that didn't happen, but we have the next best thing: Tippet's book Speaking of Faith.
Writing at a website devoted to the weekly radio program that carries the same name (www.speakingoffaith.org), Tippett says, "The first-person approach behind 'Speaking of Faith' sidesteps the predictable minefields and opens the subject wide, making it inviting, both in ambiance and substance. It insists that people speak straight from the experience behind their own personal beliefs. How did they come to hold the truths they hold? How are religious insights given depth and nuance by the complexities of life?"
With the publication of Speaking of Faith, Tippett brings the same first-person approach, gracious spirit, and quest for depth and nuance to print. She acknowledges that some say religious passions are the "cause of our culture's worst divisions, and a threat to democracy and civilization here and abroad" but counters that "what most Americans want, whether they are religious or not, is for the religious voice in our public life to be more constructive—to reflect the capacity religion has to nourish lives and communities."
Speaking of Faith the book, like the program that inspired it, offers a forum for that constructive discourse and nourishment. Tippett gives a hearing to a diverse range of voices, many of whom appear not to be on the Rolodex of religion journalists, editors and producers when instant sound bites are needed in their coverage of issues. We encounter insights from church historian Martin Marty and best-selling British author Karen Armstrong; from physicist and Anglican clergyman John Polkinghorne and UCLA professor of law and Islamic thinker Khaled Abou El Fadl; from author, activist, and professor Virginia Ramey Mollenkott and Fuller Seminary President Richard Mouw; from Nobel Laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and theologian Miroslav Volf. Tippett doesn't ignore the hot-button issues of the day, but her book does not dwell there. Its emphasis is on conversation, not polemics.
"As a journalist, I'm committed to drawing out the contours and depths of what I call the 'vast middle'—left, right, and center between the poles of competing answers that have hardened our cultural discourse," Tippett writes. "In the vast middle, faith is as much about questioning as it is about certainties. It is possible to be a believer and a listener at the same time, to be both fervent and searching, to nurture a vital identity and to wonder at the identities of others."
RSS Feed
