I am starting to think that the blogosphere may have some form of intelligence or higher order of organization. It seems like disparate blogs intersect on the same theme around the same time. Yesterday I noticed this in relation to my post on the incarnation. Today I’ve found several people have mentioned ideas related to my post on the ‘radical middle’.
The idea of a ‘radical middle’ is not to occupy an absolute centrist position, as if that were even a meaningful concept. To do so would require two clearly-defined extreme ends of the spectrum, but of course, all the terminology of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ is comparative by definition and does not delineate precise positions. The point of taking up a stance in the ‘radical middle’ is to
Anyway, Jim Wallis offered a message to all “values voters”, repeating his longstanding emphasis on the fact that neither of America’s main parties really addresses all the values that many of us consider important, nor do they do so in a consistent fashion. Abandon Image also drew attention to this. Scot McKnight’s blog Jesus Creed has been interacting with Brian McLaren’s recent book. Jesus Politics asks whether Christian activists will form a third party, which is not an attempt to stake out the middle ground (quite the opposite!), but perhaps at least perhaps it would enrich American politics by diversifying the parties and positions represented.
I hope that over the coming days and weeks (and months and years…) we can further explore what it means to be the ‘radical middle’. For now, I’ll just suggest that it means (1) rejecting extremism, and (2) listening to, and being willing to draw from, things people have to say on ‘both sides’ of the religious, political and economic spectrum, without following any party line uncritically or dogmatically.
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