Good post Gerald. Both the church and the secular government benefits from the debate between progressives and conservatives. I read the book Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. He wrote:

"Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead, it figures out how to use mechanisms- like market prices, or intelligent voting systems- to aggregate and produce collective judgments that represent not what any one person in the group thinks but rather, in some sense, what they all think. Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible."

Our constitution made room for the continual debate between progressives and conservatives and our country has benefitted from the constant tension of ideas. The church too has benefitted from people of different opinions worshipping together. Barbara Wheeler wrote in an article in the Christian Century:

"I suspect that even those of us who hate the idea of an outright split have a secret hankering for a church in which the most irritating of the others woon't be around to make our lives miserable. If we can hammer the other side long enough, perhaps it will be cowed into silence, give up or go away, and then we will have an improved if not purified church.

I want to advocate an alternative church: a tense, edgy, difficult church made up of zenoi, strangers, who cling to each other for dear life in the same chilly, baptismal boat because we are headed toward the same destination: a better country. I think I could make the full-blown ecclesiological case for a church of strangers. For now I'll focus on three practical advantages: strangeness is better for us, better for the church, and better for the world than the warmer and cullier options.

A church that contains members whom we think are strange, even barbaric, is a healthier setting for Christian formation. Familiarity and affinity breed bad habits as well as virtues. As Richard Mouw points out, conservatives are a contentious enough among themselves. If this denomination splits, within minutes the new conservative church will be organized into warring factions. Aggressiveness is part of conservative religious culture, it's both the secret of its effectiveness and its downfall.

As for liberals' bad family habits: We are often smug. We are pretty sure that our views are advanced and others' views are outmoded. When everyone else grows up, we believe, they will look and think like us. You could say that our progressive openness to the world, which is where this sense of being ahead of the curve comes from, is the ecret of our effectiveness and also our downfall. In my experience, we are less likely to slide over into snobbishness when "they"- those we have defined as inferior- are in the room with us, thinking as clearly and acting as maturely as we are.

The strange members in our midsst make us self-conscious. They make us less likely to display some of the uglier traits of our subgroup and perhaps more aware that if we want greater righteeousness for the church and all of us in it, we may have to fix ourselves as well as those others."

Angelo,

You are so right! I often wish it were a lesson that I learned earlier in the pastorate.

I once had a meeting with my choir, who often complained and wanted me to intervene with choir members who didn't rehearse and would come to sing on Sundays. I told them that I don't sing in the choir and they needed to be the ones who confronted the members who broke the rules.

Two of the older members in the choir said, 'You mean you want us to fight?!' I told them that they were exactly right. They needed to fight. Especially if they were tired of being disrespected.

It worked!

Sometimes the most constructive 'fights' in church are to be had between within the church.
Some of the most ineffective and unproductive members are the ones who want 'peace'!

Strange thoughts for a Baptist preacher, huh!

Thanks Angelo!

Thanks Pam and Gerald. We should thank James Surowiecki and Barbara Wheeler too. Barbara Wheeler's comment is from her article "Why Liberals Need Conservatives" from the January 13, 2004 edition of the Christian Century. One of the benefits of working in the library is that I have access to all this material.

I got interested in anything to do with dissent and speaking out because of some conflicts I got into in a church I was in several years ago. I noticed a group of people who weren't very tolerant and did what they could to silence anyone who ask questions or expressed different views. When I noticed them trying to harass and pressure other individuals to conform, I didn't do anything to aid that individual. When I got into a few conflicts and those people started harassing me, no one was there to aid me. I learned a lesson that stuck with me.

After those conflicts, I got into a reading binge where I read books and articles like Surowiecki's and Wheeler's, anything that talked about how important it is to speak up when we disagree. I love blogging because it's easier for me to write about my opinions than it is for me to speak out to a group of people. In person, I tend to fumble my words or I think of a good counterargument two hours after the conversation is over. I tend to speak out only with people I feel comfortable with, and I'm trying to learn to express my feelings more in public settings and not be intimidated.

I think from my experiences, I learned that within many churches there is a lot more diversity of opinions than it appears. I don't mind it if conservative Christians express their opinions or fight for their beliefs. All of us have that right. My big gripes concerning conservative Christians is their attempts to silence or smear anyone who disagrees with them.