Yesterday, Colleges and Evangelicals Collide on Bias Policy ran on the front page of the NY Times. For 40 years, evangelicals at Bowdoin College have gathered periodically to study the Bible together, to pray and to worship. They are a tiny minority on the liberal arts college campus, but they have been a part of the […]
Uncommon Decency
“Uncommon Decency” in the context of Pluralism
Christian hearts must be open to other people. God wants that of us. That is what I have just been arguing. But just how open are we supposed to be? We live today in the midst of many lifestyles, many systems of thought–don’t we run the risk of having our hearts pulled in so many different […]
Cultivating empathic sensitivies vital to “Uncommon Decency”
Civility requires that we reduce the psychological distance between ourselves and others. We need to develop a sense of commonality with people who initially strike us as very different from ourselves. One important means of doing this is by cultivating empathy. “Empathy” literally means “in-feeling” — it is to project myself into another person’s feelings […]
The Day for “Uncommon Decency” has come. Let’s embrace it!
As Martin Marty has observed, one of the real problems in modern life is that the people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility. I like that way of stating the issue. We need to find a way of combining a civil outlook […]
Three Concerns about Anti-Christian Rhetoric
Last week, I asked how you handle anti-Christian rhetoric. This week, let me share my three concerns about verbal attacks on Christianity — specifically, those that come from academic scientists like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. Spiritual/Theological: I’m currently reading Richard Mouw’s Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (InterVarsity Press, Revised and Expanded, 2010), […]