Claiming the Courageous Middle

A timely book for a difficult time

This weekend I finished Shirley Mullen’s new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future. I was eager to read it for a number of reasons. First, it’s theme resonates in many ways with the themes of my own book. I wish I’d had it a few months ago. Second, I have known of Shirley Mullen for much of my career as a thoughtful scholar and solid Christian university administrator. After teaching at Houghton (her alma mater), Bethel (MN), and Westmont, she became provost at Westmont and then President of Houghton. She retired in 2021, the year after I did.

In the introduction, Mullen says that the book is:

a call to consider the radically redemptive possibilities available to those who find themselves reluctantly — or by choice — not fitting comfortably on either end of the multiple and overlapping poles in our contemporary society and the church. (11)

She recognizes that too much of our cultural life, inside and outside church circles, is caught up in demonizing the other. Any attempt at compromise or finding a third way is seen as settling, abandoning principles, or — in church speak — “being lukewarm”.

In a chapter on her upbringing, Mullen writes of the importance of being in the holiness tradition which looked to discern the right course of action without getting trapped (at least not too much) by legalism. Since four of the five schools I was part of were from the broader holiness movement, I was glad to see her these articulate values in a big-tent and non-culture-war frame. As she fell into the study of history, she found another outlet for exploring the Courageous Middle.

What the study of history added to the experience of my upbringing was a method for exploring and making meaningful sense of this strange world in which I find myself. The historical method allowed for both fervent and earnest pursuit of knowledge about the world, in all its extravagant variety and richness, and acknowledgement of human frailty — whether of capacity or intent — in coming to a full understanding of truth. (37)

I identified with this as well as the sociological imagination allows the same commitment to meaning-making.

As a new college president, she committed to having Houghton conduct a “diversity climate audit”. Her staff wasn’t sure this was necessary. But she argued that they needed to see things from the perspective of minority students, either from big cities or foreign lands. Any reader of higher education news will recognize this as a bold stance that today would likely be denounced by constituents, trustees, and state legislators.

I said above that I wish I’d had this book six months ago. This paragraph would have been in my concluding chapter.

This embracing of humility and making time for such rethinking is the work of those who dare to sign up to be ambassadors of the courageous middle. It is hard work. It is creative work. It is the work that the church is not well practiced in. It is work that the church or religious individuals could avoid at a time when religion still held some kind of sway in the culture. It would have been better if we had started on this work earlier. But it is too late to lament the past. This is the urgent call to learn what it means to be faithful while also facing, with ruthless honesty, the tensions, complexities, and ambiguities of our world. This is the invitation that is before us. (72)

I argue in my book that engaging this complexity and ambiguity is the central task of a fearless Christian university. One of my favorite passages of her book describes an incident that occurred at Houghton. An LGBTQ+ support group painted a rainbow symbol on “the rock” — a feature of central campus — that was subsequently painted over with an American flag. Rather than simply have the maintenance department repaint the rock, the administration initiated a community conversation bringing together the various groups who then repainted the rock with the handprints of all who were particpants in the gathering.

This response shows what a courageous embrace of the courageous middle looks like when offered in humility that respects all parties. Near the end of the book, she writes this:

We want to continue to cultivate both the discernment and the boldness required to engage productively in the conversations of middle space. These conversations must never be about us — but must suggest at least the possibility of moving a community forward beyond polarized paralysis and unproductive binary thinking. There will never be guarantees, but working in the company of kindred spirits can help us work with both minds and hearts informed by love and grace rather than by fear or power (181).

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While this wasn’t the point of Shirley Mullen’s book, my mind kept returning to the campus protests about the War in Gaza. Far too many pundits attribute the worst possible motives to the protesters. Some administrators are treating the protests as legal issues to be controlled. They are threatening students with not being able to complete classes or have commencement. Some political leaders are inviting law enforcement to clear campuses or put snipers on the roof of campus buildings.

There are some campus leaders who are taking a courageous middle approach. They are helping the protesters establish ground rules for protest with camps in designated spaces, keeping off campus agitators away, establishing norms that violence or antisemitic language is not allowed, and perhaps even engaging in dialogue about university investment strategies.

As Shirley’s work implies, this latter group is showing courage. They will undoubtedly be denounced by those with an anti-higher education agenda, or who want to score political points by exaggerating the realities of the protests (as they did with the George Floyd protests four years ago).

The challenge is that this more draconian black-and-white stance will only produce reactions. In the last few days we’ve seen campus protest multiply. Some of those are about the war but many more are prompted by the overreaction of leaders at Columbia University, University of Texas Austin, Emory University (Candler school of theology!), and Indiana University, and here in Denver.

We need leaders claiming the courageous middle: on university campuses, in Congress, and among the negotiators in the Middle East. It is the only way for us to move forward.