It’s one thing to negotiate differences when you share a common moral framework. But how do you move forward with people who hold a completely different vision of the good life? John Inazu joins Today’s Conversation to discuss building bridges in a democracy, the role of the people of God in a pluralistic society, and the importance of empathy and forgiveness.
In this episode, NAE President Walter Kim and John Inazu, a constitutional lawyer and professor of law and religion at Washington University, offer insights into building meaningful connections with others in pursuit of the common good, including:
How to model engagement rooted in hope;
The translation work needed to find common ground;
How the theological understanding of forgiveness shapes our interactions; and
Why it requires faith to both engage and to disengage.
Read a Portion of the Transcript
Walter: [We discussed earlier] what do we do when we have the application of a commonly shared set of values or constitution we’re all working off of in the legal space, and that’s one set of things were you negotiate the differences. When you don’t have a constitution to guide us or when you don’t have a common moral narrative or national narrative, then it’s both having to deal with how do you apply principles, but actually how do you produce the moral vision to guide the principles itself? So what’s the distinct place of Christianity in this?
John: … When you find yourself in any majority position, whether it’s a majority culture position or political or otherwise, you can sometimes forget about the hard work of translation because other people will have to adjust to your baseline understandings. When you’re not in control, you can’t afford that luxury. You always have to be working to make sure that you’re understood or engaged by the people who are in control. And I think that’s generalizable for Christians and broader society today.
The early church was great at this, right? A lot of it was through their lived witness and their practices as much as what they were saying. But they had to be distinctive — sometimes in a way that was very destabilizing to the people around them, but other times in ways that was very attractive and, you know, even in the strangeness attracted to the people around them. But I think for the early church, never forgetting —because they couldn’t — that they were this distinct political and cultural minority was a really useful and creative practice for them.
I think it’s a lot harder in the contemporary United States because Christianity has such a historical stronghold and footprint on so much of our culture and our laws and our social fabric that it would be weird to say Christians are a minority, in a political sense. But there is a sense in which we’re no longer able to assume a baseline where every under everyone around us understands, you know, the basics of the gospel or something like that. And that can be very destabilizing or anxiety producing, but it could also be imagination generative in a different way, right? We could say, well, what an opportunity when people don’t understand all we’re talking about. What an opportunity to re-establish why what we believe matters and is different.
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John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. He is also the executive director of The Carver Project, a ministry empowering Christian faculty and students to serve and connect university, church and society. He is the author of “Learning to Disagree,” “Liberty’s Refuge,” “Confident Pluralism,” and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of “Uncommon Ground.” Inazu holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Walter Kim became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals in January 2020. He previously served as a pastor at Boston’s historic Park Street Church and at churches in Vancouver, Canada and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He preaches, writes and engages in collaborative leadership to connect the Bible to the intellectual and cultural issues of the day. He regularly teaches in conferences and classrooms; addresses faith concerns with elected officials and public institutions; and provides theological and cultural commentary to leading news outlets. He serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief and consults with a wide range of organizations. Kim received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, his M.Div. from Regent College in Vancouver, and his B.A. from Northwestern University.
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