Amid cultural and political polarization in our churches and communities, many say there’s no use engaging with – or even listening to – people across the divides. All we can do, we’re told, is pick a side, ignore its flaws, and follow the crowd. For believers, is that all there is?

Joining us as part of our Navigating 2024 Faithfully series, Shirley Mullen will argue that something more is possible. In her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future, Shirley offers a Christian theological framework for the “middle space,” in which we listen to one another attentively rather than dismissively, and actively pursue redemptive steps together.

We held an Online Conversation with Shirley Mullen on July 26 to imagine a more hopeful, grace-filled future for our communities.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, and to our co-hosts, the National Association of Evangelicals, and Baker Academic, for their support of this event!

Discussion Questions

• What aspect of Shirley’s remarks or the conversation was most compelling to you and why?
• How does Shirley define or describe “the courageous middle” or “middle space”? Why does she describe it as a potentially redemptive space? What does it look like to offer middle space as either an individual or as an institution?
• What are the dangers of the middle?  Why is both courage and discernment needed in perceiving and inhabiting it? How have you experienced the risks of holding or hosting middle space?
• Why is it so difficult to offer middle space? How, if at all, have you experienced those difficulties?
• What qualities of character or formation enable one to “claim the courageous middle”?

Online Conversation | Shirley Mullen | July 26, 2024

Cherie Harder: Welcome to all of you joining us for today’s Online Conversation with Shirley Mullen on “Claiming the Courageous Middle.” We’re excited that so many of you have joined us today. We have well over a thousand people who have registered and want to send a special thank you to both our first-time guests and our international guests. We understand that there’s nearly 100 of you who have registered for the very first time, as well as guests from over 14 different countries who are joining us, ranging from Afghanistan to Uganda. So welcome from across the miles and time zones. And if you haven’t already done so, let us know where you’re joining us from in the chat box. It’s always fun for us to see so many friends pop up from all over the globe.

And if you are one of those first-time guests or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith, and offer programs like this conversation to do so, and to come to better know the Author of the answers. And we hope today’s conversation will be a small taste of that for you today.

One of the great and perennial challenges of the Christian life is discerning what it means to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God in our particular time. But while that challenge is timeless, it takes on increased urgency and complexity in highly polarized times like our own. Over the last decade, numerous studies have shown the ways in which our sense of identity has grown more political, even as our politics has grown more polarized and apocalyptic. Various studies have found that nearly 20 percent of all Americans have lost friends or lost or strained family relationships over political differences and polarization. And a similar percentage of partisans on either side of the aisle admit to thinking on occasion that the country would be much better off if large portions of the opposite side died. Even within the Church, we often see examples where a fondness for fighting is valorized as courage and kindness or restraint is seen as weakness.

Our guest today argues for and articulates a very different way of understanding faithful Christian engagement and offers a theological framework for what she calls “middle space” that encourages a search for understanding and reconciliation, and invites creativity into the pursuit of justice into places of division.

Shirley Mullen served for 15 years as the president of Houghton College before retiring just a few years ago, and has spent more than 40 years in Christian liberal arts higher education as a scholar and professor, with doctorates in both history and philosophy, as well as a residence-life director, provost, and, of course, president. As president emeritus for Houghton, she continues to write and consult in higher education, and serves on the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Fuller Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals, Jericho Health Community Center, and the First Amendment Partnership. She is widely considered as one of the wisest voices in Christian higher ed, and she is the author of a new work, Claiming the Courageous Middle, which we’ve invited her here today to discuss.

Shirley, welcome.

Shirley Mullen: Thank you. Cherie. It’s such a privilege to be here today.

Cherie Harder: Well, it is great to see you. I’ve been excited for this conversation. And it’s always a good thing just to sort of start out with definitions. So I am presuming that when you are talking about claiming the middle, you’re not just talking about, say, splitting the difference or political triangulation because you’ve also called the middle space a redemptive space. So what is this middle space that you’re talking about and what do you see as its redemptive possibilities?

Shirley Mullen: Thank you, Cherie. First of all, it is not an averaging. It’s not this bland compromise taking everything and cutting it in half. I think the best way to think about it is to describe it. It is not a geographical space in the abstract that we all come to. It’s very particular to each one of us. And so this is how I would describe it. If you are someone who finds yourself in your own particular place with people on both sides of you who trust you more than they trust the people on the other side. Or if you feel like “I don’t quite fit with either of the poles in my life,” then you have a choice. You can either be frustrated and decide, “oh my goodness, what am I going to do?” Or you can see this not-quite-fitting as a gift, as an opportunity. And so the core idea of this idea of claiming the courageous middle is that when we feel like we don’t fit on the poles or those on either side of us trust us more on the other, we have a choice to either be frustrated and silent, or we have a choice to see that as a gift.

And really, then, the book unfolds around, if we want to choose to see this as a gift, an opportunity to allow the Holy Spirit to use us, to create the kind of space that I talk about as middle space, then that’s a choice that we make. And it’s out of that then choice and making space where the Holy Spirit can work, that those redemptive possibilities come. So I think I’ll stop there and we can explore that with your follow-up questions.

Cherie Harder: Yeah, definitely want to explore that. But before we do, one thing I want to ask you about, it’s always interesting to find out sort of the story behind the story, you know, because every author has a particular reason why they have written a book. And in your book you do describe at the beginning some of your own story, and you relate the fact that as a historian whose calling is in that area, that it has affected the way you perceive the middle space, whether it’s through the particularities of just historical inquiry or the like. And so I’d love to hear more about what led you to write this book, and in particular, how seeing the world through the lens of a historian affects your vision for this middle space.

Shirley Mullen: Thank you, Cherie. Again, I’ll give a short answer to what led to my writing it. It came very specifically out of my work as a college president, where you have to write these letters to your constituency every few weeks. And I realized in thinking about the constituency that we had alumni and donors on both sides, all across the spectrum. And as I thought about the particular nature of the institution where I was, an institution coming out of the Wesleyan theological tradition, I realized one day sitting at my desk that that tradition really did not allow us as alumni to go to either pole. There were things in that tradition that called us over here and some over here, and I won’t take time to go into those for that particular group. But that phrase, “the courageous middle,” came to me that day. And in the book I talk about that and how I realized that I had been prepared for this thinking my whole life. And I go back and talk a bit about my roots.

But then I want to focus on your question about history. I became a history major at Houghton as an undergrad and then went on in that area, and I have found history as something that really helped me to think in this way. First of all, I’m not talking about the accumulation of facts, which is what some people think about history if they don’t like it. I’m talking about history as a way of thinking. History reckons with the complexity, the ambiguity, and the messiness of the real world. And again, the way I would describe this quickly is, on the one hand, it is grounded in evidence. And so you can always have a debate, an argument, if you can bring new evidence. It’s not you can make it anything you want. So it’s grounded in evidence on the one hand.

But the very nature of historical study means that you have multiple sources, you have multiple witnesses, you have multiple perspectives. So that very pursuit of clarity necessitates that you involve multiple voices. And then you have to get into how do I weigh these various things? History works as a community. We’re always pushing back on each other.

And then the other thing that’s so important in preparing one for this work of middle space is history really focuses on the concrete. It focuses on the particular. It doesn’t just average out all of the outliers. And again, this is so important to what I’m describing as the work of middle space. It’s not pursuing truth in the abstract, which is how we often think about pursuit of truth. Our own Christian theological tradition should tell us that our pursuit of truth is always grounded in particularity. When you think about the Old Testament, God speaks to individual people. Even the fact that we have 66 books in the Bible. There are many voices through whom God has communicated. And then, of course, ultimately that incarnation of God in the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Jesus embodied that truth and mediates it in each particular space.

So history makes room for that pursuit of truth, but also room for complexity, perspective, messiness, particularity. That is so critical. So again, Cherie, I’m not saying everyone has to be a history major to do this work. In fact, I actually in the book would say, look at your own journey. Look at your own history. Where has God put you in spaces where, again, you have people on the right and left of you that you don’t quite fit with, but that you have credibility with? And then, again, that’s where that working middle space flows from. So I think I’ll stop there.

Cherie Harder: Yeah. You know, you just mentioned Jesus as an example. And I can imagine that there are many people watching where they’re thinking, well, you know, just thinking about the way Jesus operated, one doesn’t necessarily think about Jesus as operating in the middle, in that, you know, there are several times when Jesus was clearly pushed to different binaries. You know, “Who sinned? This blind man or his parents?” You know, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” And each time it seemed like he didn’t so much seek a middle space, he answered on a completely different plane. He sort of transcended the binaries. How do you see that relating to what you’re describing as the redemptive middle space?

Shirley Mullen: It’s absolutely linked, Cherie. So, again, I come back to that notion—and I can’t help talking a bit with my hands here—because it’s not the middle space. It’s not, again, the averaging or bland moving to that middle. It’s more like moving up. It’s imagining something different. And to go back to your example of our Lord, yes, it’s amazing how often Jesus was asked, “is it this or this?” And Jesus never allows himself to be backed into a corner, which, again, I think is so much a model for us. Because when someone wants us to answer—and particularly if we’re a pastor or maybe an academic and people are coming to us and wanting something authoritative—there’s always that temptation to want to be understood. Part of the risk of working middle space is the risk that Jesus had. Jesus was willing to risk being misunderstood to cultivate a richer and more imaginative conversation. And that’s really what we’re called to do. And, again, I think that’s a great example, when we try to apply this principle, to resist being backed into either false dichotomies or sometimes they’re not so much false as just that they’re limited.

And so Jesus comes back with often a question that enlarges the discussion or just something even cryptic. And, see, this is hard for us to do sometimes because we so much want to be understood, we so much want to be right. And, again, those are good things in themselves. But part of the courage that is required if we are going to be used by the Holy Spirit in middle space is, in many cases, surrendering that right to be understood, or the right to be thought right, and to be willing to trust that if we speak maybe a question or something that’s a little cryptic that drives the discussion to a new level, that, again, the Holy Spirit takes care of our reputation or whatever that is. And this is not easy. It’s part of that cost of the work of the middle states.

Cherie Harder: I want to ask you more about that because there’s just very intuitively a lot of dangers. I mean, there may be an impression that the middle is someplace— you know, it’s a cop out. It’s cowardice. But it seems like, particularly in polarized times, being somewhere not at one of the poles can be one of the most dangerous places to be. We’ve talked before about how, in culture wars, like land wars, bridges are usually the first things targeted. And it can be targeted from both sides. And so, at the same time, there’s none of the radical glamor, I think, of being like a zealot or a radical for one of the poles. So I’d love to hear you say a little bit more both about just the dangers of occupying that space, but as well as perhaps another danger, which is, there are times when— there are things that are right or wrong. Sometimes one cannot always escape a binary in a morally defensible way, that stands need to be taken. So I would love to hear your thoughts on both of those dangers.

Shirley Mullen: Oh, Cherie. These are such great questions. And they’re such rich ones that I’ll speak to quickly. So, first of all, the middle can be all of those things that are terrible. It can be a place of paralysis, timidity, moral or intellectual laziness, passivity. It can be a place where people are just like, “Oh, truth is all relative. We just have to look at the context.” Or it can be a retreat into subjectivism. You know, “I have my truth. You have your truth.” I mean, it can be all of those things. And, in fact, I recently encountered another danger, particularly for this phrase, “the courageous middle,” where someone in dialogue with me was using it as a kind of slogan. And someone wanted to say, “Well, I’m just pursuing the courageous middle.” And they thought I would immediately agree with that. And I’m like, wait a minute. See, the courageous middle is not a badge by itself in the abstract. It’s always tied to particularity.

And so I want to come back to this, when you talk about the idea that there are places we have to take a stand. Absolutely, absolutely. But I want to quote from one of the books I read this summer, and I know this is someone that you have also talked with on here. There’s a great line from Jamie K. Smith’s How to Inhabit Time. He says, “The question isn’t simply what’s true. The question is what needs to be said and done now.” And when I read that, I love that line because, see, that is part of what we’re saying right now. The discernment, the wisdom that is required when we think about the particular spaces in which God has called us is, okay, I may believe these things, absolutely. But if I’m talking to someone, I need to listen and hear, okay, what is their objection to this thing? I can’t just make the truth a weapon in the abstract. I have to think, how do I speak this truth? How do I stand by this absolute in a way that can be understood by this other person? And often that involves listening first, you know, finding out what their objection is, why something that may strike me as obvious doesn’t strike them as obvious.

And again, Cherie, I think that’s so critical in this polarized time, because unless we’re willing to say what people on the poles say, which I’m not, that everyone over here is in the right and everyone over here is dead wrong, if we really believe that all the good and intelligent people are on one side, then we’re probably not going to be interested in the work of the courageous middle. But on many issues, on many issues, in my experience, there are good, intelligent people, and deeply Christian people who hold the different positions. And so part of the work of hosting middle states is inviting questions that encourage the people on each side to say, what is it that pulls me over here? And what do I want to resist over here? And so that hosting middle space, again, is not going to result in these people coming in and all, you know, holding hands and suddenly feeling good at each other, but it might actually produce a larger understanding of the truth. Or, if we’re talking practically, it might produce a practical cooperation, a project in the community that would not otherwise be there.

You asked about what it takes to be in this space, and I’ve already alluded to this. But if you’re not already truly a humble person, if you are going to do the work of middle space, you are going to have to have the work of the Holy Spirit in you to make you humble. And by the way, by humble, I don’t mean doormat. I mean, in the way that actually C.S. Lewis at one point says. He says, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s not thinking of yourself at all.” And so that notion of surrendering the right to be thought right or to be understood, that kind of humility is essential. And it requires faith. It requires that other theological virtue of love, really seeing someone who you’re just like, oh my goodness, I don’t agree with him at all. How do I see them in a way that can invite them into this space? I also think it takes curiosity. And then we’ve already talked about imagination.

So this is hard work, and part of my hope, Cherie, in writing the book is that it will help individuals and individual groups doing this work to connect with each other. Because the work of middle space is lonely work. It’s not glamorous work, and we have to encourage and empower one another. But see, in the end, I believe it partakes of that model that Jesus gave us of salt and leaven. So it’s not the flag-waving that necessarily gets the long-term result. It’s often the salt that’s seasoned. It’s the leaven that makes the difference in whether you have good bread or bad bread.

So anyway, those are just some summary comments. Yes, there are times when we have to take and announce a position. And there are times when the middle can be cowardice. But all of this, we have to then take into account in allowing the Holy Spirit to enable us to work with those virtues of courage and love and humility in the spaces in which we don’t quite fit either pole.

Cherie Harder: You’ve been talking about particularities, so I’d love to hear just very practically kind of what this could look like. You know, in your book, you’ve talked about the potential that you see for Christian higher-ed to play a role in the courageous middle. But you’ve also said that you see, at least in an interview, you said you see this work coming mostly from individuals rather than institutions. And so I’d be curious what you’ve seen this look like both on an individual level, but also on an institutional level.

Shirley Mullen: Yes. Thank you, Cherie. Well, there are institutions that are trying to do this work, no question. And there are groups that are hosting mediation work in the Church and in our culture. So there are institutions that are doing this work. And there are real challenges that you have in doing that middle work because it’s harder to fundraise when you’re not fundraising out of fear or polarized context. So there are institutions.

The reason I am focused on individuals in this book is I am not trying to create another institution of the courageous middle. What I’m really trying to do is encourage individuals to see the range of giftedness that God has entrusted to them, and to connect either with other individuals or to connect with groups in their communities or churches that are doing that other work. And the reason I’ve targeted that work of Christian colleges, although I want to be very careful— I think a much bigger circle is the notion of thoughtful Christians, because I am not at all implying that if you have not gone to a Christian college, you can’t do this work, and not even slightly imply that you have to have a college education. The reason I started with CCCU schools is I do believe that the range of ways in which inherently students who come out of those traditions who very often have come out of groups in their church or families that might in our society be more associated with the right, and yet when they get an education, they usually are figuring out, okay, what do I do with science? How do I mediate my Christian faith into the professions? Everything about that education is designed to push these individuals to take all of that giftedness and then to work in their home communities and then in their professions in a way that brings together groups that do not otherwise see themselves as coming together.

And again, in the book, I start out with that story of the alumna who comes to me and says, “Professor Mullen, I don’t fit anywhere.” And I said, “Well, that’s your gift.” And so I believe that the CCCU, as a particular maybe core of that courageous middle work, they are already doing that work. And so I’m challenging those individuals to find themselves in their communities with others who are doing that work.

But, again, anyone who finds people with people on both sides—and I’m sorry, I don’t want to be repetitive, but I think this is the test of a candidate to do this work—are there people on both sides of you who trust you more than they trust those others over there? And then you can do that work. So in my case, I’m doing that work in the context of a board. I mean, I don’t want to get into particulars here, but board work, church contacts, even family. Because every dinner table right now is often a place of that kind of conflict. So anyway, I’ll stop there and see where you want to take that, Cherie. That’s my response there.

Cherie Harder: No, that’s great. Along those lines, one of the things I really want to ask you about are the challenges of holding that space. And there are many, but just to kind of basically throw out two that I see as at least somewhat related. And one is, you know, I know sociology is— you know, you have a doctorate in both philosophy and history, but there’s a sociological law that I’m sure you’ve heard of, just the law of group polarization, which is essentially, in any gathering of like-minded people over time, the consensus of the group skews towards the most extreme version of that agreement, and you see that play out in all sorts of organizations, institutions, communities, and the like. So there’s already kind of a vortex for the poles. But then on top of that, you often see an interesting phenomenon which is, not only is there kind of like a vortex for the polls, but there’s also, in some ways, the extremes inspire a certain hero worship or intensity of involvement and identification that you don’t see elsewhere. I mean, there’s a reason why there’s Shae t-shirts and red ball caps and you don’t really find like the Ike or the Truman hoodie. You know, there’s no merch in the middle, in essence. So I’m kind of curious, given those factors, how do you hold, much less host, in the middle consistently over time when there’s strong forces pulling one apart and often a price to be paid when you are the in-group moderate in a sense?

Shirley Mullen: Well, Cherie, you have articulated right there a lot of the challenges. If you are a CEO, if you are a trusted leader in a church—. And that’s why I say this is hard work. You have to think very carefully. Who am I talking with? Who are my covenants of trust with? So I do not say anything about this work in a way that is [inaudible]. It is complicated. It is costly.

So I’ll say several things quickly. First of all, if you are a leader in an organization, you have to constantly communicate because this is a much harder position to hold for an organization because it’s harder to fundraise for it. We’ve already named that. It’s also harder for people to say, well, how can you also trust those people over there if we are going to trust you? So communication is absolutely critical constantly. And also continually holding out examples. It’s a very concrete kind of work, not abstract. So illustrate, constantly illustrating what you’re doing. And that will be, again, very particular to your organization.

I would also say, though, that there’s no getting around the fact that it is costly, and I think it’s helpful to name that up front. I mean, you’re not going to be a hero in the large sense if you are doing this work. And that’s why I came back earlier to say, though, this work absolutely, like much of the work that we do in the Kingdom, is not just about right now. It’s an act of faith that the Holy Spirit is going to be at work, not just in this moment, but for the future. And again, I don’t say that in some simplistic way, but sometimes a word that you say to someone today may have an impact long into the future.

I’ll give a very precise example. Now, we need the sharpness and the clarity that some poles bring. And I want to be careful how I say that. I mean, the reason debate thrives is because debate highlights the strength of the different position. Our legal system highlights the strengths of the various positions. But then often when we’re trying to translate that into a judgment for an individual, it’s why the judge is in a different role than the lawyers, the judge must take the arguments and apply them to a particular case. In the case of our courts, then that has to be translated into the concreteness of lived work. And that’s going to be a lot messier. And so it does take courage. It takes that act of faith. And, again, it takes that humility, and it is costly. I don’t know how else to get around it, which, again, is why there needs to be encouragement of each other in that space.

And I do give some illustrations of that in the book, which I won’t take time to do right here. But it’s long work. It’s work for the long haul. And so I’ll just give a quick example. You haven’t asked me today about what’s probably on everyone’s mind as we head into November. We know that between now and the election, this is going to be a very contested world that we’re in. I would say some of us ought to be working in our communities to think about, okay, whoever wins, how are we as people of faith, how are we as followers of Jesus Christ, going to help our communities live and work together no matter who wins in November? And see, that would be an example. It’s not minimizing. It’s not minimizing your volunteering with one or the other party, whichever you think is the one you should volunteer for. But it’s to say there’s work beyond that November election for how we are going to live and work together with grace and civility and in a way that allows our communities to thrive, both for people of faith and people who are looking to us as examples of what it means to cultivate human flourishing.

Cherie Harder: Well, Shirley there’s so much more I’d love to ask you, but we’re going to turn to questions from our viewers. And if you’re one of those folks joining us for the first time, you can not only ask a question in the Q&A box, but you can also like a question. And that helps give us some idea of what some of the more popular questions are. So our first question comes from Betsy Kodat. And Betsy asks, “Students are incredibly challenged in our current atmosphere. Have you found they have a tendency to take the courageous middle or the extremes? How can we use the idea of middle space when we relate to the young people in our midst?”

Shirley Mullen: I’ll answer yes. And I won’t take time to give examples, but yes, there is a tendency for students to do what they see modeled by the adults in their life. Again, it’s always easier to go to the extremes. And even in contexts where colleges have how do we do contested discussion—. I remember one conversation where a student said, “We had this whole workshop, but then at dinner, everybody went back to their tables.” You know, where they were talking comfortably. So I think everyone wants to go to the extremes. But again, the college environment, I think, is a particularly fruitful framework, in the classroom or in an athletic team, for coaches or professors or leaders of any sort to model what it can look like. So by the questions you ask, by the way you structure classroom dialogue, you can either allow things to just be a free-for-all and go to the extremes, or you can host the conversation in a way which makes sure that all voices are heard and not just in some kind of, “okay, we’re just going to be bland and listen to everyone.” But then you can begin to invite the providing of the evidence or you can model what it means to “let’s look at what’s helpful about that. Where might that need more help on the other side?”

So I would say college students are just like all the rest of the country. They’re going to go to the extremes unless they have modeled for them something different. But I would just say any professors or coaches or teachers at any level or adult educators in church, you are really in a great position right now to be candidates for modeling this work.

Cherie Harder: So two related questions that I’m going to actually combine because they’re somewhat similar. One from an anonymous attendee and the first one from Gary Ritterstein. Gary asked, “What could the infrastructure look like for attracting, equipping, and scaling the impact of the courageous middle?” And somewhat relatedly, our anonymous attendee asks, “Given that our nation’s polarization problem is both lived in our individual lives but also fueled by systemic factors, what systemic changes would you propose to cultivate the prospering of a courageous middle in our country?”

Shirley Mullen: Well, these, again, these would be questions that would be so great to have a Zoom meeting to discuss in themselves. This is something that I have thought a lot about, even as I think about where to go next with this book. I do think that there are a lot of groups out there already who are trying to do this work. So, again, I don’t think creating another organizational structure with a CEO, etc. is the answer. And part of that is because every time you have that kind of structure, you try to get money for that, and then you’re really competing with other groups that are also trying to do this work. And, again, I name in the book several groups that I would see as doing this work. So, I think, again, networking— I do hope that this book itself, by the conversations that it encourages, can be an agent of that brokering. And by that brokering, I mean connecting leaders and saying, “Okay, how can we work together more effectively?” And it’s probably not going to be in the abstract for all times and places. It’s going to be partnering on particular projects.

And by the way, I should say right here, Cherie, any time you are an organization and you try to partner with another organization, you have to reckon with your donors because donors are like, “Well, why would you partner with those people?” And so, again, you have to really communicate, communicate, communicate. You have to explain what you’re doing. But this is where I think partnership around particularity— so it might be in a community. I don’t think this is going to happen all across the country or all across the world all at once. It’s going to be in a community. It’s going to be, where does this— It’ll be a church talking about where does this community need us to play this role? Or who can we partner with in our community to get something done that would not otherwise happen?

And, again, this is where I would go back to those examples in Scripture of how Joseph in the Old Testament worked with different groups. And I’m sure took criticism from all sides. It’s the thinking imaginatively. Where are you? Who can we partner with in this space? So it’s the networking of particular spaces. So again I’ll wrap this up by saying I don’t think it’s going to be a macro system. It’s going to be partnership, creative partnership, in the context of particular communities.

And so then back to if you’re an individual, figure out where you can align yourself or join or work within your corporation or your church or whatever. Again, every individual can be salt and light to raise questions. And that’s why I think, again, we talk a lot about Jesus being an answer person. But you already said, Cherie, Jesus was also a great asker of questions. And so we think of Jesus as the model question asker. That’s part of our calling in this moment. So not a macro network, but it’s more like a tapestry or some kind of grid in which we connect with others and then figure out what that means where we are. That’s the best I can do in a short time.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. So our next question comes from Casey Shirley. And Casey asks, “Given the ability of media to inculcate norms, encourage behaviors, and help address issues around polarization, can you think of any examples or models of those embodying the courageous middle in popular culture? I ask in light of struggling to find winsome Christian characters modeling such qualities in media in recent history.”

Shirley Mullen: Well, I just had this discussion with someone the other day. Could we create a model sheet for how to do social media posts that embody living this out? We know that to the extent that the algorithms favor that kind of intensity or whatever, they’re probably not going to rise to the top immediately. But I do think, I do think we can make provocative posts—and, again, I mean provocative in the sense that don’t immediately drive to the poles that, again, do that work that you’ve already mentioned, Cherie, that Jesus did. Pose a question that says, well, what about—? Or what if—? And so I do think we can intentionally think about media posts that invite a different approach. And that I think that’s one thing we can do.

And then, again, I just think each of us in whatever arena we’re in, not in some bland way, because, again, I am not a bland person, and anyone who knows me on this call knows that. And I don’t like playing this. I don’t like living this. So it’s not talking about just making everybody feel good. But it’s, in a sense, again, hosting in a way that makes people feel respected, included, but allows them to walk away saying, “Oh, I never thought about that,” or, “Oh, I need to talk more with that person.” So it’s daring to make people slightly uncomfortable while also respecting them, but in a way that’s going to drive each person in the conversation to not be afraid to speak up.

We haven’t really focused yet on how fear drives, both inside the Church and outside the Church. And see, again, as Christians— I mean, there’s so many references in the Old and New Testament where God’s work is all about “fear not, fear not.” Now, we’re told to fear him. And that’s a whole other discussion. But when our identity is in God and we have that right sense of who he is, then that gives us the courage not to be afraid of all of these lesser things that are terrifying people inside and outside the Church. So, again, I’ll just leave it there in the interest of another question.

Cherie Harder: Well, there’s a lot of those piling up. So our next question comes from Carter Crockett. And Carter asks, “I hear you saying that you need to gain trust, respect, or credibility in order to become the type of person who can host middle space. What do you find is the best way to earn these things?”

Shirley Mullen: Well, the first part of the question, yes, if nobody trusts you, you’re not going to be able to do this work. And it’s much easier to lose trust than it is to gain it. I mean, I’ll say that because we’ve already named the fact that the very moment you enter into this work, then you are going to be inevitably straining the trust of everyone. And I’ll just say that the minute people hear this notion of the courageous middle, they’ll always say, “Well, Shirley then you get hit by both sides,” as if, you know, no one’s ever thought of that. Well, I’m going to say, “Of course, of course. That’s what this work means.”

So how do you cultivate that trust? Well, again, it will be particular to your context. But, first of all, you have to know who you are inside. I think there’s a lot of inner work that you have to do. And, again, I talked about this in the book. You have to know who you are. You have to understand what is at your core. You cannot be someone who’s driven by every wind of doctrine, as the Scriptures say. You can’t be someone who has to have everyone’s approval. You have to have your core identity in God, and that enables you then to go out and find that way of working with different people in your settings. And, again, that’s the work you do if you’re in a church. It’s the work you do if you’re in government. It’s work you do everywhere where you have to be a person of integrity, which means you have to figure out, “Okay. If I say something to you this moment and then something to your neighbor tomorrow, when the two of them talk to each other, they can’t be left thinking, wow, that person’s that way with me and that way with you.” You know, it has to emerge out of real clarity at the core. And when that is there, then it enables you to mediate that in the settings you are.

But again, I’ll draw this to a close, but it’s absolutely time consuming. You have to build relationships. And, again—I’m going to say this so many times people will be sick of it—but this is not something you do in the abstract. You don’t just throw out, you know, some sort of weapon or you don’t treat truth as a weapon. This work as a courageous middle is incarnational work. It’s embodied work. It’s the work in the particular places that they are. And if people don’t trust you, and you haven’t invested in them enough that they trust you, you’ll not be able to do the work and that takes time. It takes lots of coffee hours. I mean, it takes going to someone that you know doesn’t like you and saying, “Are you willing to have coffee?” Or someone who you know thinks 180 degrees off and say, “You know, I really would like to have coffee with you.” And they might be surprised. We haven’t used that word surprised yet. But the work of middle states, it’s always going to surprise people and take them off guard because they’re going to say, “I thought you were that kind of person. You’re more complicated than I thought.” So anyway, that’s the best I can do in that short run in response to Carter.

Cherie Harder: All right. Our next question is from Ron Mahurin. Ron asked, “You have emphasized the critical importance of cultivating a discipline of listening in order to live in the courageous middle. What could the Church and Christian higher education do to further cultivate this discipline of listening?”

Shirley Mullen: Well, yes, listening is critical at every level, because if you speak and you don’t know where the listener is coming from, or you don’t stop to listen once you’ve said something, you may be talking here, and they’re down here. And frankly, Cherie, I do think this is a lot of what we’re dealing with. It’s not all, but it certainly is a lot of what we’re dealing with in the Church, where you have people who say, “Well, of course I love Jesus. And of course I want to love people,” and they’re still this way.

And so I do think that there are actually many fairly structured formats. I mean, the Quaker community has formats for cultivating listening. Again, there are a number of organizations which I won’t name on this program because [inaudible] other organizations, but there are organizations who have very structured formats for cultivating that.

I think within CCCU, again, it’s going to happen probably within our individual colleges and our communities. So it would be hosting— and I would tend to stay away from debates. We often love to host debates. Debates by themselves—and, again, I’ve already said I’m not against debate; I see the value—but usually debates simply harden positions. So part of what we could do is doing exactly what you’re doing in this work. Host to our conversations in our communities where we model for our students, “Okay. We have good people who are presenting.” And don’t just leave it at the presentation. Allow the time for “what is it we share rather than where we’re different?” So, for example, we almost always begin with where we’re different. What if we focused on what we have in common? What is it we’re working for together and then figure out, given that commonality, why are we driven to difference? So I’ll just stop there. That would be one example.

The kind of way that we frame our public events, the kind of way— even the way we do faculty meetings. I mean, I won’t go off on that because not everyone on the call is an academic. But, I mean, you could reframe, as I saw it done by a faculty moderator who came out of the Quaker tradition, transformed faculty meetings in one of the places I worked by a whole different model that was not strictly Robert’s Rules. And I know that can sound heretical on a call like this, but it transformed our meetings to really produce a lot larger vision of the truth.

So I would just say, by the kind of way we structure dialogue and debate—well, sorry, dialogue—and structure public meetings that go beyond just leading the different positions there and then saying, “Okay, how are we going to move beyond that?” So I’ll stop there.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. We’re going to try to fit in one more question from an anonymous attendee who asked, they say, “It sounds as if the person in the courageous middle is there because the Holy Spirit wants them to be there, that that is their gift and calling. Should I be asking myself, ‘Am I drawn to the middle?’ Or do you think that the middle is someplace everyone is called to?”

Shirley Mullen: I think I could answer that more quickly than any of these other questions. I do believe that some people, by their story, are called to that work more as a lifelong work, but even there, it’s going to be particular in each stage. My response to this person would be that I suspect most of us who really want to follow Jesus Christ are going to, in certain moments, be called to this. And again, I think, the question is back to where I started. Do you find yourself in [situations] where you see yourself pulled in one direction on a particular issue and you’re saying, “Wait a minute, I can see that, but I can see that—” and you can’t quite stick. Then I think that’s where you say, “Well, at least on this issue, in this moment, I can either choose to be silent or I can invite the Holy Spirit to say, do you want to use me to host this conversation here?”

So I think it can be a lifelong task. I think it can be occasional, but again, I’ll go back to this theme. It’s going to come out of our own stories. And, again, this is why I focus so much in the book on those difficult stories, the models of how God took everyone’s story and says, “If you honor who I am and you know yourself as my person in that place, then you’re going to have work to do that nobody else in this moment can do in quite the same way.”

Cherie Harder: That’s great. Thank you so much, Shirley. In just a moment, I’m going to give you the last word. But before that, a few things to share with all of you watching us. First, immediately after we conclude, we’ll be sending around an online feedback form. We’d love for you to fill this out. We read every single one of these. We do try to incorporate your ideas to make this program ever more valuable, and as a small token of appreciation for your time and your thoughts, we will send you a code for a free Trinity Forum Reading download of your choice. There are several that we recommend that actually explore in a more deep way many of the themes that we’ve talked about today, including Reinhold Niebuhr’s “The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness,” Wilberforce’s “Practical View of Real Christianity,” “Politics, Morality, and Civility” by Vaclav Havel, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor, and Augustine’s “Confessions.” So we hope that you’ll take advantage of that and send us your thoughts.

In addition, for all of you who registered for today’s Online Conversation, tomorrow around noon we will be sending out an email with a lightly edited version of today’s discussion, along with a whole list of additional readings and resources to help you go more deeply into this topic. We’re also going to be including just a few discussion questions, in case you’d like to share this conversation with others and start your own little conversation about what it might look like in your own community or in your own life, so be on the lookout for that.

In addition, we would like to extend an invitation to all of you watching to join the Trinity Forum Society, which is the community of people who help to further and advance Trinity Forum’s mission of cultivating, curating, and disseminating the best of Christian thought for the common good. In addition to being part of that community united around that mission, there’s also a number of benefits to being a member of the Trinity Forum Society, including a subscription to our quarterly Readings, a subscription to our daily “What We’re Reading” list of curated reading recommendations, and as a special incentive, with your new membership or your gift of $100 or more, we will send you a signed copy of Shirley’s book Claiming the Courageous Middle. So we hope that you will avail yourself of that opportunity and be part of the Trinity Forum Society going forward.

And if you would like to sponsor a future Online Conversation, we would love to hear from you. Simply let us know either on the feedback form or just through our email at mail@TFF.org.

In addition, I would like to again thank our sponsors and co-hosts who have helped make this program possible. Big, hearty thanks to our sponsor, the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities, as well as our co-hosts, the National Association of Evangelicals and Baker Academic.

Looking ahead, our next Online Conversation is going to be on August 23rd with Abram von Engen around his new book, Word Made Fresh. On August 30th, we’ll be welcoming Paul Miller to speak about Christian nationalism. And future Online Conversation guests including Francis Collins, Yuval Levin, and many more. So be on the lookout.

Finally, as promised, Shirley, the last word is yours.

Shirley Mullen: Thank you, Cherie. And thank you so much for the privilege of being on this call. I want to close with the idea that our pursuit of truth as Christians can never be in the abstract. It’s not about just wielding this abstract thing. I’ve already mentioned the importance of that now with the quote about what needs to be said now. But my final word is also the “how” we mediate truth. And I’d like to close with one line from a prayer from William Wright, who was a 19^th-century Anglican, church historian, actually. And his prayer is, “Gracious God, help me to speak the truth in love, so to present it that the truth may be loved, and that people may see in it thy goodness and thy duty.” So it’s how we try to speak the truth, and we want that speaking to be able to allow the truth to be loved, and that God may be seen as good and in his beauty.

And so thank you so much. May we echo William Wright’s prayer and model that way of speaking the truth in this contentious time.

Cherie Harder: Shirley, thank you so much. It’s been great to talk with you.

Shirley Mullen: Likewise. Thank you, Cherie.

Cherie Harder: Thank you to all of you for joining us. Have a great weekend.