Deep and Wide: Cultivating a Global Consciousness
When I share the story of how I’ve experienced God at work in the Middle East with local congregations or other interested groups in the USA, I often receive this question: “What unbiased source can we read in order to better understand what is happening in the Middle East?” What I have learned from my own experience and from asking my Middle Eastern colleagues for their thoughts on this question is that there are no unbiased sources. The best we can do is to develop the discipline of critically reading several sources and understanding what each source’s particular bias may be. To understand the nuances as well as the big picture, I have found it important to read and listen to voices that represent the whole spectrum of religious and political life in this complex part of the world and how it interacts with, responds to, and is impacted by similarly complex dynamics in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
This assignment, to curate sources that help me further develop a geopolitical and global framework, has led me to a similar conclusion. Understanding what is being said about a topic from multiple perspectives helps me to think more deeply about my own assessment and on what I am basing my opinion. Multiple perspectives also help me to interrogate more deeply my own history, theological understandings, scriptural grounding, and anthropological frameworks. To this end I find it helpful to understand as much as I can about a writer’s or source’s worldview assumptions. This helps me to listen with less reactivity and a more generous but also critical ear. Two on-line sources I use help to identify a news source’s assumptions and to see a wide range of perspectives:
- https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
- https://ground.news/ (I like that you can select international, USA, UK, or Canada and it pulls sources for those areas).
With this in mind, I found our two assigned articles fascinating and thought-provoking. I would personally place both right of center. Both N.S. Lyons and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn speak from a position that places a high value on tradition and a worldview that arose out of different expressions and movements of Christendom, though from different historical and contextual vantage points. Lyons, from a 21st-Century position, writes in “The Upheaval,” “…the New Faith…rejects nearly every fundamental principle of liberal modernity…[it] is enthusiastically taking an axe to the decaying pillars holding up liberal democratic civilization just as it enters a potentially existential struggle with a rising authoritarian challenger.”[1] Solzhenitsyn, from a much longer view of history given his Orthodox faith, critiques both liberal modernity and the authoritarian/totalitarian structures of his 20th-Century generation, writing, “It seems more and more apparent…the noose around the neck of mankind draws tighter and more hopeless with every passing decade, and there seems to be no way out for anyone…the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.”[2]
I appreciate the questions posed by Lyons as his article concludes. He outlines in this article the “three concurrent revolutions” he sees “forcibly” reconfiguring the world today: geopolitical shifts from West (USA) to East (China), ideological shifts from the liberal international order of the past nearly one hundred years to what he calls “the New Faith,” and technological developments that feed the previous two. He concludes with his desire to further explore these simultaneous revolutions in future writings, guided by these questions: “What is happening? Why is it happening? Where are we headed? What, if anything, can and should we do, individually and collectively?”
These questions feel particularly important to pursue in light of this evaluative statement made by Lyons earlier in his post: “…this ideology seemed to emerge so suddenly, and is in its stark irrationality so alien to the modern liberal mind, that surprised observers and hapless opponents so far struggle even to settle on a name for it.”[3] As I read this, I was reminded of what the Reverend René August from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation counseled: “Start reading theologians who are not white.” My sense as I listen and learn from my black colleagues and other colleagues of color is that this ideology referenced by Lyons has not suddenly emerged, nor is it without rationality, nor is it monolithic. It has emerged out of several global contexts over multiple decades, and in many respects, it has been fomenting since the advent of colonialism. It is, at least in part, the expression of diverse voices that have always been there, just not in the position of economic, military, and thus cultural power. One blog my black colleagues have referred me to in order to learn more about this history is: https://lorettajross.com/dred-feminist-blog. Loretta Ross is a professor at Smith College, an activist, and a public intellectual. Her writing would most likely be received as far left of center in the context of this assignment but provides a different and important lens into this conversation about ideological revolution. Michael Frost is an Australian missiological voice I find helpful in this conversation as well. He writes blogs on several themes (Christian faith, Christian ministry, mission, culture & politics, art & popular culture, and Bible/Jesus), and would likely be received as left of center in the context of this assignment. For example, a recent blog exploring issues related to the ideological revolution described by Lyons is entitled: “Picturing Jesus-Part V: Does it Matter What Color Jesus Is?” https://mikefrost.net/category/art-popular-culture/. I also find that the PBS NewsHour hosts very helpful interviews on this and a wide range of topics. Their website has very informative follow-up articles and podcasts (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/). They are categorized by ranking websites as centrist/balanced or nonpartisan in their coverage.
I hope to read additional blogs by Lyons to discover how he explored the revolutions he described. I am very interested to see who he draws from in his conversation. I hope he introduces his readers to a wide range of voices so that a truly comprehensive response to his thoughtful questions can be developed.
[1] N. S. Lyons, “The Upheaval,” Substack newsletter, The Upheaval, April 7, 2021, accessed April 23, 2022, https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-upheaval.
[2] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Remembering Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Men Have Forgotten God’ Speech,” National Review, December 11, 2018, accessed April 23, 2022, https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-men-have-forgotten-god-speech/.
[3] Lyons.
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Elmarie Parker
13 responses to “Deep and Wide: Cultivating a Global Consciousness”
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Elmarie, I love the wisdom throughout your post, and how you elevate and reflect on the wisdom offered to us in Cape Town. I agree that there is no such thing as an unbiased perspective, and when it comes to being globally consciousness, I believe that’s even more true.
I also agree we need to engage the full spectrum of geopolitical perspectives. How do you suspect we should engage the nationalistic and fascist perspectives that are rising up throughout the West in particular?
Hi Michael. Thank you for your reflection on my post and for your thoughtful question. I remain convinced, out of what I have learned in a Middle Eastern context that also lives with its own kind of sectarianism, that we can best engage what we might consider more extreme viewpoints at the local level and in collaboration with partners who have relationships in both directions of whatever spectrum is being experienced. I find, in the Newberg area, the work that Ron Mock (George Fox University) is doing under the banner of the Civility Project is an example of practical steps that can be taken to begin listening to each other, rediscovering one another humanity, and beginning to work through and/or past ideology to address shared practical concerns that can be addressed together.
What are your thoughts on the question you pose?
Elmarie, I so agree with your statement about a lack of objectivity in perspectives. It seems like the first step in overcoming our bias is to admit that we have one. When it comes to Christian thinkers/theologians, are there a few you’ve found insightful and somewhere near the “middle?”
Hi Roy, Thank you for your thoughts on my post and for your question. Your question raises another question for me: how is ‘middle’ defined? I’m wondering if we would each have our own way of describing ‘middle.’ With that in mind, I find theologians like NT Wright to be an important ‘middle’ voice. Here’s a fascinating “Atlantic” article that explores his viewpoints and insights on challenges both in the USA and GB (from 2019): https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/12/nt-wright-american-evangelicals-and-trump/602749/
Your thoughts on the question you posed?
Elmarie: Thank you for the resources that you’ve identified this week. Is there any specific tie from this week that you are hoping to make with your NPO? Or anything you experienced or learned while in South Africa that has caused you to adjust anything with your project as it is right now?
Hi Kayli…thank you for your questions. I think one of my main take-aways from the advance conversations for my NPO is to use the metaphor of maps (and layering maps) to structure the content of my project.
Elmarie: The two sources you mention I checked out and I added both to my “favorites” tab. I will go there for international news in the future. I would also put both Lyons and Solzhenitsyn right of center and both essays were thought provoking. A little unnerving, given the fast change of pace in the world today. I feel like I am doing all that I can to keep up without sacrificing my time in scripture.
Thank you, Troy, for your feedback. I’m curious which 2 resources really grabbed your attention (I had mentioned 5 overall). I agree that it is challenging to keep up with the themes of what is happening in the world while also making a commitment to the Word. I think often of Karl Barth’s admonition to read scripture with one hand and the newspaper with the other, with the intent that scripture guides our interpretation, discernment, understanding of the news.
Elmarie, I am constantly inspired by your listening heart.
Because I am low on data I can’t comment much, so let me ask, as you listen to Lyons, how does he push on your growing edges?
Hey Nicole…thank you for your question. One of the things I’ve been sitting with since reading both Lyons and Solzhenitsyn centers on the challenge of how to understand and engage with the ‘new ideology’ that Lyons describes, what I sensed from him that this new ideology is dangerous or threatening, and Solzhenitsyn’s critique that societies around the globe are forgetting God. What to do with the fact that there are many Christ followers who in their journey of remembering God are some of the voices making up this ‘new ideology’? Just realizing I have yet more to learn both about this ‘new ideology’ and those who reacting to it with a sense of threat. I found his statement interesting that those who have been surprised by this don’t yet know what to call it…it left me wondering why they don’t talk to those who are generating this ‘new ideology’ and ask them what they call it…any thoughts on any of this?
Thanks Elmarie. Great blog with much to chew on! In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head with this statement: “there are no unbiased sources.” Well said. I personally believe that is a good principle to keep in mind as we read and engage more broadly. In fact, as I was writing a lesson yesterday for my doctoral project, more or less this is a theme of “effectual listening.” Can we truly learn to effectually LISTEN to one another? That is the challenge and the call for engagement. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom!
Hi Eric…thank you for your reflection on my post. I’m very interested to hear more on how you are describing effectual listening in your project…I love that term! What skills make up effectual listening? I’m wondering how it might be similar to or different from active listening? I do agree that we need more and more people with the understanding and practice of deep listening to those around them…and to Christ’s Spirit.
Elmaire,
Great post! I am so impressed because I know how off balance the week has been for me. Thank you for sharing your sources. I am particularly interested in checking out https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news. Thank you for a great adventure!