Interview: Navigating Uncommon Ground Without Capitulating to Culture

What does it look like for Christians to live faithfully alongside others whose convictions may differ entirely from their own? That is a question on the mind of Christians grappling with the fact that they live in a deeply divided and pluralistic society. Some Christians find themselves ill-equipped to respect differences while also holding on to their core beliefs.

In Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference, pastor Timothy Keller and law and religion expert John Inazu gain insights from Lecrae, Tish Harrison Warren, Kristen Deede Johnson, Trillia Newbell, Tom Lin, and several other Christians about how they pursue peace in a sometimes antagonistic world.

Faithfully Magazine spoke separately with Inazu and contributor Kristen Deede Johnson, a professor of theology and Christian formation, by email about Uncommon Ground. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Q&A with Inazu

Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law & Religion and professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference.

In your essay, you use the idea of “confident pluralism” that insists that we can (and need to) live together in our “many-ness” despite differences. How did this idea grow out of your Christian experience, especially in light of a tendency among some Protestant Christians in the U.S. to either either fight every culture war or compromise?

Confident pluralism is built on three civic aspirations: humility, patience, and tolerance. I wrote my earlier book, Confident Pluralism, for a general audience: its arguments and premises rely on American history and constitutional law. It can and should appeal to people of all faiths and no faith. But I have always believed that these three aspirations are fully compatible with Christian faith and witness. As my friend, Andy Crouch, pointed out to me, and as Tim [Keller] and I explain in Uncommon Ground, these three civic aspirations flow out of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love. American Christianity does not always embody these virtues well… But at its core, the gospel demands that we live humbly—because our faith shows us the limits of our own reason and ability; patiently—because we place our hope in an end already known; and tolerantly—because love calls us to distinguish people from ideas.

I think that White American Christians have much to learn from non-White Christians and non-American Christians. The global and multiethnic witness of Jesus Christ has too often been neglected by certain baseline assumptions about the “proper” culture, worship, and liturgy of the church.

You also reflect on your own experience of “two-footed immersion” as a half-Japanese man in the U.S. Christians of color are often well-versed in being part of two different contexts and being able to “translate” between the two (e.g. code-switching), in comparison with their White counterparts. Would you say that Christians of color have a contextual and circumstantial advantage because of this familiarity with “two-footed immersion,” and is this something that could be helpful to teach the Evangelical church broadly speaking about what it means to live life in “confident pluralism” as a Christian?

I think that White American Christians have much to learn from non-White Christians and non-American Christians. The global and multiethnic witness of Jesus Christ has too often been neglected by certain baseline assumptions about the “proper” culture, worship, and liturgy of the church. We even do that to our conceptions of God Himself: I mention in my chapter Lecrae’s critique of “White Jesus.” As the assumed cultural and religious consensus in this country confronts greater challenges, White Christians will increasingly need to look for common ground in the midst of difference. And they have some extraordinary examples from others who have preceded them.  As Tom Lin observes in his chapter, Christians of color have long embodied confident pluralism by finding common ground to seek justice—like racial and educational equity—with non-Christian organizations like Black Lives Matter.

How do we live in light of the pursuit of “confident pluralism” and yet have safeguards? For example, White nationalist extremism and terrorism is a growing reality in the U.S., even among those who call themselves “Christians.” How should we pursue humility, tolerance, and common ground, but at the same time have guardrails for clearly problematic and dangerous ideologies?

Confident pluralism, like any theory of pluralism, has its limits. It is hard to find common ground with someone who quite literally denies your humanity or your equality of citizenship. The resurgence of white nationalism in particular puts significant strain on the possibilities for confident pluralism. It is imperative that Christians denounce this form of evil in clear and unmitigated ways.

Who did you and Pastor Keller have in mind as the audience for the book? Is this a book to change people’s minds, or to equip those who desire common ground?

We see the primary audience as younger Christians who are familiar with the reality of difference around us and are seeking ways to engage faithfully and lovingly at the same time. We would also love to see our own peers and colleagues embrace these ideas and to live with greater hope and less anxiety. And we would welcome non-Christian engagement with the book, as a way to get past generalizations and assumptions of what it means to be a Christian living in a pluralistic world.

Q&A with Johnson

Johnson, who co-authored The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance, is professor of Theology and Christian Formation at Western Theological Seminary. She teaches on and researches theology, discipleship and formation, justice, culture, and political theory.

Why do you think this conversation is essential particularly now among Evangelical Christians and what encouraged you to contribute from your perspective as a theologian and professor?

As I mention in my chapter, when I first became aware of the depth of political and cultural conflict within the U.S., it was more isolated within particular institutions and pockets of American life. In the years since then, that conflict has become more widespread and pervasive. As a theologian who cares deeply about Christian formation, I believe it’s imperative that we grapple with how Christians today are being shaped and formed by this conflict-laden landscape. We have to wrestle with what faithfulness looks like within such a context. We want to make sure our postures are in keeping with what Scripture calls us to, as God’s people, even in the midst of a culture that is increasingly marked by anger, distrust, fear, and antagonism.

Our God is one who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (this description of God appears throughout the Old Testament in places like Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Psalm 86:5, and more). We, as God’s people, are called to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19). What do verses like these mean in a time such as ours?

And, just as importantly, how do we hold those convictions and callings together with our calling to be prophetic in the face of the genuine injustices of this world, recognizing that our God is also a God of justice and righteousness (eg, Psalm 33:5) who calls us to seek justice and righteousness in this world (eg, Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:33)?

We have to wrestle together with these kinds of questions as we seek to live faithfully here and now, and this book provided a significant opportunity to do that wrestling – both as we gathered together in person and as we shaped, wrote, and shared our chapters that came together to make up the final book.

Your book, Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference, was published about a decade ago. How have your thoughts on the topic developed or matured since then?

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but when I wrote Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism, I was focused almost entirely on how Christianity interacted with other beliefs, traditions, and ways of life within contemporary society. I did not attend at all to the very real conflicts that happen within Christianity itself. It’s not only that our society is made up a lot of different religions and traditions and beliefs that impact how we think about political life together in a pluralistic setting. It’s also that within each religious tradition, there are a lot of different interpretations about beliefs, doctrines, and ways of life.

In other words, in that book, I was in large part wrestling with what it might look like for Christians to be able to interact with humility, generosity, and charity with people from other traditions and ways of life while retaining (rather than jettisoning or watering down) their Christian convictions. In the years since, as conflict within American Christianity has become even more intense and more racialized, I’ve become more keenly aware of our need to interact with humility, generosity, and charity with each other within the family of Christ. And I’ve begun to ask more questions about what it really takes, on the ground, to form Christians who can live with this kind of humility, generosity, and charity.

If every Christian is a “theologian” (not necessarily vocationally), do you think it’s important to help them rethink their approach to theology, politics, and culture as interconnected rather than hermetically sealed from one another? What is the danger of making “theology” a purely intellectual endeavor, especially as it relates to the question of being faithful in a pluralistic context?

These are excellent questions that get right to heart of how I think about discipleship and formation. When I became a Christian in my teenage years, my real passion was for discipleship and how we live out our faith as we seek to follow Jesus Christ in this world. That passion for discipleship led me to probe culture, politics, and theology – and ultimately to see that these areas matter for every single Christian.

To think we can avoid culture prevents us from doing the important and necessary work of wrestling with how the culture in which we are living is shaping us, and the church more widely, and discerning what faithfulness looks like in that particular setting.

As we respond to the call to follow Jesus, we are always called to live out our faith in a particular time and place. Jesus himself wore the clothes of his time period, used language and images that were shaped by his culture, and told stories that made sense within the cultural context of his day, even as he called his disciples to embrace theological truths that had tremendous cultural and political implications.

This all gets complicated by misapplications of the idea that we are supposed to “be in the world but not of the world.” When we understand that to mean that we can live within a culture but not be shaped by that culture, we are led down the wrong path. As with Jesus, we cannot avoid living in a particular culture. More than that, culture is intended to be a gift from God. Culture, sociologically speaking, serves an important function to bind a people together within systems of meaning and moral order. To think we can avoid culture prevents us from doing the important and necessary work of wrestling with how the culture in which we are living is shaping us, and the church more widely, and discerning what faithfulness looks like in that particular setting.

Ideally, this is the kind of wresting that theology helps us all to do. It’s not, as you note, supposed to be a purely intellectual endeavor but a genuine wrestling with the truths and traditions of our faith so they can be inhabited and embodied faithfully, by the grace of God, in a particular time and place.  Right now, for those of us in the West, our time and place is marked by pluralism, so we need to wrestle with what faithfulness looks like within that context. That ought to be an essential part of our conversations about discipleship.

In your Uncommon Ground essay, you write that “we are not called to be heroes who save the day or save the culture” but rather to “live as beloved children of God set apart by the grace of God in Christ and the Spirit to seek the things of God.” How can the idea of a “family calling” help Christians keep each other accountable to prevent a “culture war” posture?

Many of us in the American context have absorbed the ideal of the hero who saves the day, often defeating the evil villain just in the nick of time. That idea can easily get cast in Christian terms. I have real concerns about that approach to our calling as Christians, whether it comes to how we seek justice (I’ve written about this in The Justice Calling) or how we engage culture. It can lead us to think that, like the superhero, we are essential for saving the day – or saving our culture.

In reality, as Christians, we already have a savior in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, having ultimately defeated all evil already through his death, resurrection, and ascension, is still active in this world as King and Lord. He continues to redeem and reconcile all things. We, as God’s family, are called to participate in this work – but we do this together, as a family, and we do it in reliance on God’s primary work of salvation and reconciliation. This changes the whole posture of our engagement.

We remember that Christ is Lord over every political power and every cultural injustice, even when that is hard to see. We remember that we are not alone in this work. We remember that the ultimate battle belongs to the Lord, so we can engage with more faith than fear, more hope than resentment, and more love than anger.

You also discuss Augustine as a theological guide who wrestled with the questions of faithfulness and pluralism. As you see the unfortunate history of U.S. Evangelical Christians using worldly tactics of power to “win the culture,” do you think this comes from an ignorance or a rejection of an Augustinian understanding of faithful witness? In other words, do you think it’s simply a matter of having people be more familiar with Augustine and others who thought about these matters, or are these things deeply ingrained?

It’s been encouraging to see more and more contemporary Christians return to Augustine as a guide within these complex times. Augustine has so much literature to his name, and there have been different interpretations of his thought over time, so that has contributed to confusion over Augustine’s legacy. But I think the deeper reality here is that most of us in U.S. culture tend to live pretty ahistorically. We don’t always think to look back to what we can learn from those who have gone before us as we navigate the realities of today. Within my own experience of Christianity, this was especially true. To me, it was a real gift of theological education to uncover brothers and sisters in the faith who have gone before me and have so much to teach me as part of our great cloud of witnesses. I hope that we, in the U.S. church, can become more and more familiar with figures from our past like Augustine who can encourage and guide us today.