I have summarized my hope for exchanges between conversation partners for all of my eCircles as follows: They will start by identifying areas of agreement; followed by identifying areas of disagreement with grace and conviction in a manner that illuminates the basis for the disagreements so clearly that a foundation is laid for ongoing conversation about those disagreements. That hope was realized to a great extent in Greg’s second posting, for which I am deeply appreciative.
Before Asking What Sort of Speech, Ask What Kind of Politics
In my first post, I attempted to deconstruct the “leading questions” about the nature of the decline of political discourse in the US and how to reverse it. I argued that these were, in fact, the wrong questions to be asking. I pointed out that political discourse is always a concrete thing. It takes place in particular sorts of institutions, whether those are coffee shops, theaters, newspapers, or the internet, institutions that, following Jurgen Habermas, I called the public sphere. I pointed out that institutions are never neutral. Rather, they are always already partisan along the lines of race, class, and gender.
Whatever the Question, How Should We Talk?
I very much appreciate Greg’s thoughtful and insightful initial posting. It helped me to clarify and expand my thinking about both our subtopic (A Proposed Christian Approach to Political Discourse) and my entire eCircle. I will organize my thoughts in my response into three categories: WHAT questions should be asked? WHO should be talking about these questions? and HOW should we talk about these questions?
What Questions Should be Asked?
Christian Love Demands Something More
My colleague, Dr. Harold Heie, has opened our session of this ten month conversation with a profound meditation on the role the virtue of love plays in shaping human discourse in general, and political discourse in particular. Dr. Heie affirms a norm of respectful, active listening in all places where human beings meet one another, and argues that political conversations, the conversations human beings have about how to order their common life, are no exception. In spite of our differences (which I’ll get to shortly) I find this basic definition of political discourse to be helpful, and to helpfully provincialize the picture of public life that I offered in my own opening reflection.
Respectful Conversation as a Deep Expression of Love
A strategy I have found to be helpful when I engage with someone who disagrees with me strongly about a given issue, in the political realm and everywhere else, is to first seek areas of agreement. Can we find some “common ground?” This starting point fits well with my understanding that politics, at its best, is the search for common ground that seeks the common good.
Challenge the Question Itself
Why has political discourse in America broken down and what can be done to revive it? The question presumes much. Indeed, to be transparent from the outset, it is my intention in the following pages to challenge the premise of the question itself. My argument is not so much that there hasn’t been a breakdown, but that this breakdown is not a declension, and that Christian thinking and acting should not seek to reverse it. The breakdown of “political discourse” is a crisis in liberal democracy, part and parcel with a larger crisis of neoliberal capitalism and global empire to which (I take it to be axiomatic) Christians should stand opposed.
Subtopic 2: A Proposed Christian Approach to Political Discourse (October 2017)
Leading Questions: What are the reasons for the current appalling state of political discourse that often leads to demonization of the other, name-calling, questioning…