A woman was interviewing for a philosophy professorship at a Catholic university. Though she respected the intellectual tradition of the university, she was not herself Catholic. She hoped to find there similar respect for her own thinking, whatever its metaphysical conclusions.
The interview began well. Potential future colleagues discussed her research and gave her an opportunity to display her considerable knowledge of epistemology and continental thought.
Then a new voice chimed in. A crotchety but not-yet-old Catholic man began to dig into her moral and political views. He settled on the topic of abortion. How could she condone the murder of innocent unborn children? What other wickedness would she countenance?
She tried to respond that, while she was not a Catholic herself, she admired the moral tradition of Catholic theologians and philosophers. Nevertheless, respectfully, she disagreed with it. That was not good enough for the crotchety Catholic philosopher.
While the interview was otherwise successful, its final phase sapped the woman of energy. It left her desiring to be employed as far from this university as possible.
In her place, the university hired a different pro-choice secular philosopher: My dissertation advisor, who fortunately was not subjected to the same treatment.
As a Christian philosopher, I struggle to comprehend why a secular analytic philosopher’s failure to be pro-life would be surprising. And anyway, why would we focus on our points of disagreement, rather than our points of agreement - the rigor of philosophical thought, the merits of the candidate’s research, and the mission of the philosophy department?
Yet often, we approach people who hold different views than us in exactly the way this professor approached the interviewee. In those moments, we are tempted to think that our ideological differences are so fundamental that there is no common ground ( • Common Ground ) between us.
But there is common ground, and we’re standing on some of it.
There Is No Common Ground
“There is no common ground between believer and unbeliever.”
That was a dictum of the seminary I attended. Its presuppositionalist (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presupp...) philosophy held that Christians and non-Christians do not differ merely in our conclusions. We differ at every level of thinking down to the most fundamental presuppositions of thought - even on the principles of logic and mathematics themselves.
“No common ground” was intended as a pious affirmation of our commitment to have a distinctively Christian worldview. Yet in our zeal to be as Christian as possible, we ignored the deeply divisive and partisan effects of the statement.
Imagine if a progressive activist said, “There is no common ground between progressives and conservatives!” Would that person strike you as open-minded and willing to hear opposing perspectives? Would you be likely to feel comfortable having a conversation with them about matters moral or political?
Personally, I would fear being written off for my beliefs, or being thought evil or irredeemable.
But that’s what we Christians do if and when we say: “There is no common ground between believers and unbelievers.” And even if we don’t say those words, we often act like it.
I wrote about this a few months ago in “Berating the Godfearers. (open.substack.com/pub/joelcar...) ” My friend “Brent,” who is interested in Christianity, was dismissed and shouted at for not being a six-day creationist by a number of evangelical Christians on a Zoom meeting. What had happened? The evangelical guys found one point of disagreement and went hard at it. But that’s not the path to a productive conversation.
As I put it then, the evangelical guys pursued conversion rather than conversation. And ultimately, it was a poor means of persuasion, forget conversion.
Common Ground at F3: Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith
A couple weeks ago, I hosted a philosophy night with my friends from F3 (f3nation.com/) , “Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith.” I was especially excited to talk about common ground with them because F3 itself has been for me a major object lesson.
At the end of every workout, someone says, “F3 is not a religious organization. All we ask is that you believe in something higher than yourself. It could be Jesus, Buddha, Allah, or the man next to you.”
But then, if the person is a Christian, he continues, “But I am a Christ-follower, so I’m going to close us out in a Christian prayer. Join me or respect the time. Dear God…”
There’s something very remarkable about this. Americans think that any public display or mention of religion is an attempt to impose faith on others. And many religious Americans publicly e...
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