THE LEFT, THE RIGHT, AND THE
THIRD WAY
Paul T. Stallsworth
Politically, the United States is a
divided nation. This division runs deep, and the two sides are
approximately equal in number. The 2000 presidential election
-- with the famous blue-and-red map of the US -- illustrated the
geography of our nation’s political divide.
To be sure, this division --
between the left and the right, between conservatives and
liberals, between Republicans and Democrats -- is nothing new.
It has been a fact of American public life for generations. But
since “the Sixties” it has intensified. And since Watergate,
since the United States Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork
and Clarence Thomas, since the Clinton years, and since the
Bush-Gore presidential election, this division has intensified
even more.
Why has our nation become so deeply
divided? One could venture many answers. But this one seems
especially persuasive: until the 1960s most Americans held a
common public philosophy or a common vision of the public good,
but the radicalisms of the late sixties drove a wedge between
the left and the right. This division became so deep that
conservatives and liberals no longer shared many (or any) common
political ideals. Then political conversation, debate, and
persuasion were replaced by political argument (the overheated
kind), accusation, and diatribe. When the time comes for a
nomination to the United States Supreme Court, the ensuing
political warfare will display, for all to see, the degree of
division in our nation.
It is not surprising that the division in politics has had an
impact on the American churches. For example, in The United
Methodist Church today, there is a United Methodist left and a
United Methodist right. After being in the denomination’s
driver’s seat for generations, the Methodist left is now
threatened by the rising power of the Methodist right. Since
The United Methodist Church is the most American of churches,
which means that our church (compared to the others) most
reflects what is going on in American society, it is predictable
that conservative Methodism is currently gaining some strength.
On the Methodist left today, the
plea is for “dialogue.” Whatever the concern, whatever the
issue, the prescription is dialogue. This is assumed to be the
way of Jesus and the way of love.
On the Methodist right today, the
move is for political organizing and mobilizing in the
denomination. Playing by the rules laid down in The Book of
Discipline, those on the right are employing the church’s
political processes and procedures as never before. Not content
to dialogue, they are anxious to push forward their agenda.
This, in turn, stimulates fear in and reaction from the
Methodist left. And the division in United Methodism worsens.
Many well-intentioned United
Methodists are profoundly disturbed by the division in our
denomination. So they search for a “third way” to lead our
church out of the quagmire of political confrontation. For
example, Cynthia B. Astle of The United Methodist Reporter
(6/13/03) has suggested that the 2004 General Conference simply
table all legislative proposals, except for a denominational
budget, until the 2008 General Conference. “Then General
Conference delegates could devote themselves to prayer, worship,
and genuine ‘holy conferencing’ [that is, holy conversation]
about God’s will for the future of the people called United
Methodist.”
But there might be a better way.
That is the way of proposing Christian truth. To propose the
truth in love pushes beyond a form of dialogue that just shares
the opinions of all concerned. Proposing the truth in love also
moves beyond the imposition of an agenda on the denomination at
large.
The Church’s calling, from God, is to serve joyfully the truth
-- the Truth who is Jesus Christ, the truth of the Church’s
faith, the truth of the present and coming Kingdom. To assume
that the truth is elusive (as the Methodist left does) or to
believe that the truth is to be politically imposed (as some on
the Methodist right do) is to miss the Church’s main task of
proposing the truth.
