Leaving the liberal-conservative rut

As a quiet first-year college student, I took a long, nervous walk down the dorm hallway, across a dimly lit ideological divide and into the room of the second-year student who had lumped me in with the non-intellectual, conservative evangelicals (not the camp I get pegged in these days). It was part of a mini-drama that had played out on the “Wittenburg Door,” a bulletin board at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (now Canadian Mennonite University), where ideas and occasional barbs were exchanged.

A note posted by this student had offended me and I intended to set him straight. Instead, I learned a lesson that completely changed my view of “liberals” like him. What I learned in the course of the conversation was that he was not a spiritually inert person out to undermine the church, as I had assumed all liberals were. He was a person seeking God.

He was indeed reacting negatively to some expressions of faith, but not because he was an unhealthy person or an enemy of faith, just because they did not line up with his experience. He was seeking God in his own authentic, legitimate way.

Janet Schmidt says that Christians too often jump to thoughts like “how stupid can that person be?” when dealing with opposing views. Schmidt, who has worked in the conflict-resolution field for 25 years, including in many Mennonite settings, says we tend to see people with differing views as “less Christian,” or we “question their salvation entirely.”

That had certainly been my attitude as I headed down the hall to Mr. Liberal’s dorm room.

How can we Mennonites prevent such attitudes from turning the diversity among us into polarization? How can we deal constructively with differing views?

“We are a diverse community,” says Hilda Hildebrand, moderator of Mennonite Church Canada. “It’s very important that we all hear one another.”

She recalls participating in a talking circle with aboriginal people at a conference in the 1990s. As participants around the circle each took their turn, what impressed Hildebrand was that they “spoke their truth” and “not once did anyone diminish the other person’s experience.” People felt safe.

She says that is something we can learn from. Hildebrand urges us to stay away from the liberal-conservative, left-right way of framing things. That dualistic way of thinking is itself part of the problem, she says, leading to simplistic “I am right and you are wrong” thinking.

“Alternatively,” Hildebrand says, “when we frame a concern in such a way that engages respectful dialogue from a range of perspectives, our field of vision can more easily expand to see another’s point of view. This broadening perspective frees us to modify or clarify our understanding, and strengthens our collective lens in the process.”

“No one is all right or all wrong,” she adds. Humility is critical. And the most critical thing, she says, is that “we profess that the life and teachings of Jesus are central.”

Abe Janzen also points to truths that transcend the liberal-conservative mindset. He is director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Alberta. He responded to my questions about Mennonite polarization via e-mail from Central America, where he was part of an MCC tour. “If there is one thing that would help that polarization,” he says, it would be for all parties to connect with the biblical least of these around the world.

“It is nearly impossible to worry about being liberal or conservative when you hear stories . . . of relentless suffering,” he says. Referring to the passage in which Jesus said that what first-century believers do for the least of these, they do for him, Janzen says, “Matthew 25 says the same thing to all of us.”

Can we Mennonites, with our widely ranging views and backgrounds, avoid being sucked into the left-right dualism that would pit us against each other? Can we listen humbly and respectfully to those whose views we find most difficult?

I could claim no such noble motivations when I went to confront my fellow college student years ago, but I gained a new understanding just the same. That’s not to say it was easy. Authentic exchange across differing views is awkward and intense.

It is easier to simply paint others as wrong. That’s the easiest way to reinforce our own sense of being right. I had concluded my fellow student was essentially an adversary of the faith. I was wrong. That was a difficult and freeing realization.

Listening to him showed me, as Hildebrand says, that the truth that any one of us has “is only partial.”

Today I do not think of my one-time adversary as liberal or conservative, but as a brother in the faith.