New Wine, New Wineskins

As condensed statements of belief, bumper stickers serve as regular reminders that some people share our ideas and other people don’t. Baxter offers a brief discussion of bumper stickers as a metaphor for contemporary reflexes we often bring to understanding and engaging belief-conflicts: our range of responses to bumper stickers illustrates how sound-bite attitudes and expectations shape our perceptions of others and hinder our practices in public dialogue. This “sound-bite stupor” can be seen in the ways that familiar metaphors like “culture war” coach attitudes and practices counterproductive for collective life. Drawing upon the insights of social and linguistic theorist Kenneth Burke, psychologist Michael Nicoles, and religious historian John Woodbridge, Baxter suggests ways to awaken from the sound-bite stupor by attending to patterns of reactivity, cultivating more complex and patient listening habits, and practicing more accessible and civic-building discourse.

Reflecting on the complexity of her own religious experience and the complex nature of Jesus, who “turns everything upside down—all our normal expectations,” and who is so unlike us in so many ways, Marilyn Sewell contends that we are all too comfortable with limited responses to the Jesus we profess to follow. We fund soup kitchens, but rarely ask uncomfortable questions about structures that sustain poverty. As a “Christian” nation, we are all too comfortable with war. While religious in many ways, we fail too often to recognize the uncomfortable truth that Jesus often associated with the unreligious: with prostitutes and the tax-collector traitors of the nation. As the essay reiterates, what is ultimately lost is the point that Jesus’ radical message focused on others, not on ourselves.

Through reflections on her own experiences as a social advocate and radio-talk-show host, Rice explores what personal integrity in “getting along” might look like. Taking us beyond merely getting through life and putting up with one another, the essay explores the real-life contours of accepting one another’s differences, agreeing to disagree, and respecting each other’s right to be wrong. Rice argues for both the livability and urgency of the Christian calling to not be hostile toward opponents, but to be counter-cultural, through humility, sacrifice, and understanding.

Dundas offers a personal narrative of how writing a feature on evangelicals took him, as a writer for an alternative newspaper, out of his own comfort zone and into an important insight. The narrative becomes emblematic of the social challenges we face in America: we exist in a diverse society full of segmented pods of special interest, with a perpetual invitation to cocoon ourselves with others who share our values, interests, and tastes. This, Dundas remarks, is okay—as long as we remember there are other worlds out there, just as valid and rich as our own. Every one of us should make periodic efforts to learn a little bit about people who are not like us. Dundas winsomely reveals how researching the story helped him recognize the limits of his own preconceptions through an experience of diversity.

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How can the Christian community engage in authentic dialogue with other traditions in search of the mutuality so necessary for civil society and yet remain true to the particular truth claims of the Christian faith? This paper attempts an answer to this question by setting forth a Trinitarian model of authentic dialogue, one that pursues mutuality while preserving the particularity of the Christian truth claims. It is even argued that the Christian community is called and enabled to pursue such mutuality because of the particularity of the Trinitarian faith. The essay concludes with insights regarding the nature of dialogue. Dialogue assists those from diverse traditions persuade one another to go more deeply into their respective traditions in view of what they can learn from one another in search of sources that will advance further a compassionate form of shared existence.