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<\/a>Well, the University of Chicago has been all over my feed lately because of a \u201cwelcome\u201d letter they sent to incoming students informing them there wouldn\u2019t be any \u201ctrigger warnings\u201d or \u201csafe spaces\u201d on their campus. Naturally, the pundits have been tripping over themselves to crank out a new round of think-pieces about how ridiculous those hypersensitive millennials\u00a0are to need a safe space. It seems a bit ironic\u00a0to me when these manifestos defending the so-called \u201cintellectual rigor\u201d of academia settle for truthy ideological grand narratives rather than actually seeking to understand the perspective of those they\u2019re critiquing. Since I actually work directly with college students on a daily basis, let me explain what safe spaces really mean and why I think Christians should be all about creating them.<\/p>\n
First, let me clarify what I\u2019m not in favor of. I don\u2019t believe in\u00a0censorship. I\u2019m not sure exactly where I would draw the line on that, but I think the way to deal with hateful, harmful ideas on a college campus is either to ignore them or to engage them vigorously and nonviolently in a way that cannot be discredited. One of the most asinine aspects of postmodern discourse is that we don\u2019t have any direct arguments anymore. Instead of debating ideas, we seek to deconstruct, dismiss, and discredit their purveyors.\u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good use of student activist energy to pressure administrations into disinviting harmful, hateful speakers. Their speaking events are actually really helpful to consciousness raising, because they create the context for public critique and protest. Trying to silence them altogether only makes the speakers into martyrs and gives their fans a source of righteous indignation to build a movement around.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s make it clear from the beginning that creating safe space has nothing to do with censorship. Safe space can have a variety of meanings depending on who\u2019s talking. Within marginalized communities, safe space refers to a space where you can let your guard down and speak freely with other people who get what you\u2019re experiencing and aren\u2019t going to attack you for speaking with less than impeccably defensible logic at all times.\u00a0It\u2019s not that marginalized people want to spend their entire lives in a comfortable space that\u2019s void of any challenging ideas. They just need places where they can retreat after a day of being bombarded by patronizing, presumptuous discourse that they don\u2019t have the energy to dispute at every turn.<\/p>\n
Many classrooms in elite, expensive universities like Tulane have at most a few people of minority identities who must contemplate minute by minute how contentious and disagreeable they really want to be when classmates are saying things that are ignorant and hurtful.\u00a0Marginalized students spend all day nodding and being agreeable while white male messiahs dominate every classroom conversation in epic pissing contests with each other. So it\u2019s not unreasonable for there to be safe spaces that are purely black or queer or female or whatever else where people can vent, cry, laugh, and decompress without having to appease and humor the\u00a0members of dominant cultures who need to control of every conversation they\u2019re a part of.<\/p>\n
The president of Northwestern University shared<\/a>\u00a0about an incident in a dining hall where a group of black students were eating together. Two white students who were strangers approached and asked if they could join the table in order to have a cross-cultural learning experience. The black students politely said no, and the internet went crazy. Marginalized students are not obligated to provide cross-cultural learning opportunities on demand for students from the dominant culture. They are not zoo animals who exist to be studied by the self-appointed expert protagonists of the universe\u2019s story. They\u2019re not being racist or sexist or heterophobic to huddle together in groups of shared identity whenever they need to take a break. Until Christians are willing to let Muslims enter our churches and debate our pastors while they\u2019re preaching, then we have no basis for disrespecting the safe spaces that marginalized communities want to create for themselves.<\/p>\n So one way of understanding safe space is as a retreat space in which a marginalized group can decompress and relax together. It has to be okay with me that the black, queer, or female people I love sometimes need to spend some time apart from white male messiahs like me.<\/p>\n As a pastor, I also see another meaning for safe space that describes a community rooted strongly enough in grace that everyone is safe in the sense that they will not be mocked, abused, or thrown out regardless of what they say.\u00a0In my campus ministry\u2019s welcome letter to new students, I describe our ministry\u2019s safe space as a judgment-free zone where it\u2019s okay to have questions, doubts, and passionate opinions as long as we speak and listen in love. I don\u2019t believe anyone should walk on eggshells. Every church says that everyone is welcome, but living this out incarnationally is not always easy, especially when you\u2019re dealing with wounded outsiders whose drama and outbursts can cause huge forest fires in your community.<\/p>\n Creating safe space is simply intentional, proactive hospitality. It means that\u00a0I actually care about building trust and love in a community more than making one brilliant point after another. It means that I would rather see others learn and grow from the place they are than berate them for all the ways they offend me. It means that I am able to love people without giving them feedback until they ask me what I think.<\/p>\n Some\u00a0Christians like to talk tough about how church shouldn\u2019t be comfortable or safe. I blame this bravado on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a wonderful thinker though he committed a great exegetical crime in writing the Cost of Discipleship <\/em>that has been such a profound influence on the evangelical world. His book offers a very peculiar interpretation of the\u00a0Beatitudes, which are supposed to be Jesus\u2019 assurance of a safe space for the poor in spirit, the meek, and the persecuted. Bonhoeffer twists these words of comfort into demands for costly grace which he pits against cheap grace. I understand why he did it. He was dealing with a church that refused to challenge Hitler! But his words have been co-opted and abused in an entirely different context.<\/p>\n So many chest-thumping conservative evangelicals are in love with the idea of costly grace. They need for their Christianity to feel mean and hard enough that it cannot be accused of worldly compromise. But it isn\u2019t cheap grace to create safe spaces for other people. It actually requires costly grace. The more my ego is crucified with Christ, the more I ought to be able to make anyone feel safe in my presence. Radical hospitality is tremendously challenging; it requires vigorous personal honesty and humility. It means I have to give up being the protagonist of the conversation, which is very hard to do as a white man with a fragile ego.<\/p>\n The apostle Paul writes in Philippians 2:3: \u201cDo nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.\u201d If I really live this way, then I will treat other people as the expert guests of honor in every conversation that I have. As Christian grow in our discipleship, we evolve from being honored guests to self-emptying hosts who put themselves beneath other people for whom we create a safe space. The measure of how saved I am as a Christian is how safe I am able to be for other people.<\/p>\n We live in a very graceless, cut-throat world. Some universities have decided to build their brand off of being that way. But as Christians, our most fundamental act of evangelism is to create safe space for those who are poor in spirit, meek, and persecuted.<\/p>\n Check out my book How Jesus Saves the World From Us!<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our podcast Crackers and Grape Juice!<\/a><\/p>\n