I just finished an intensive course in public theology at Meadville/Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago. Other than the blistering heat, the ideas and energy expressed by my colleagues, gave me hope about the future of our faith as progressive liberals. One of the primary ideas came from our professor Dr. Micheal Hogue. Drawing on the work of William Connolly, Dr. Hogue expressed the need to embrace the radical pluralism of the new generation of thinkers: multiple platforms of understanding, respectfully co-existing around projects that help the most vulnerable.
The most challenging task for me is to bring those of radically different, even antagonistic faith traditions together around such projects. Its one thing for Unitarian Universalists and Catholics to work together toward the promise of justice, quite another to ask a fundamentalist who doesn't even think the world is worth saving.
At the end of the day, I realized, what matters is that we at least try. Grace works its way into our lives when we prepare the way for the possibility of very different people to work together. If we throw up our hands and say it can't be done, the only certainty is that it won't.
I walked away understanding that justice can be done, even between those who see the world differently; not because we are all the same, but because God calls us to help in more than one way.
Now if I can just get that idea down in less than twenty pages while enjoying our retreat to Maine.
With Grace and Grit, John
