A point of agreement…
28 April 2007 - 11 אייר 5767 by Huw
Where do the folks who are splitting up agree the most? Where do you get “liberals” and “conservatives” (=) “traditionalists” and “progressives” (=) “reappraisers” and “reasserters” to sit down and say, “ok, we can agree to that”?
Dylan’s marshaling a list and invites participation:
“I’m going to start a list of points on which I think I and many ‘progressives’ agree with the vast majority of ‘reasserters.’ Progressives and reasserters, please use the comments either to add your own points on which you think we’d agree or to let me know if you don’t actually agree with one of the points posted up here, and I’ll periodically edit the list in light of the comments. I’m not using the most specific or detailed language I could use, as the goal is to come up with the greatest number and most specificity possible while still allowing broad agreement. “
It starts with “Jesus is Lord”.
I’m down with that. As someone who, increasingly, feels himself to be on the Progressive/Emergent side of things, it seems connexion is more important than agreement, per se. But I know that for a good portion of my readers, agreement is important.
For my Orthodox and RC readers, where could you sit down with “the others” and agree to not walk away? From an ecumenical standpoint, where do we agree? I don’t think that’s part of the scope of Dylan’s invite, but feel free to post that here.
Hmm,
I had not read of the term “reasserter” before. But I can see why it became necessary to come up with new terminology, as the words “conservative” or “traditionalist” or “biblical” had become much too loaded with inaccurate connotations to allow for their continued use. In passing, “fundamentalist” as a term (though I do use it) is really almost gone as a word for anything other than having a perjorative bad feeling about someone. I probably need to not use it anymore.
Sorry, forgot to say that Republicans have been quite successful in making “liberal” into a word on the same level as “fundamentalist.”
I was kinda amused at “reasserter”. I was equally amused by “traditionalist” and “innovationist” in the 90s. I think Progressive works, although the opposite isn’t so much regressive as it is stick-in-the-mud. The problem, of course, with the use of synergetic binomialism is that one always sounds “bad” to the speaker (depending on her POV). None of them have the same sort of neutral qualities as “Ying/Yang”.
I liked the one comment over there where the guy says “reasserter = Christian” in a way that totally disenfranchises everyone who might disagree with him.