So what do we do, my friends, in the face of our undeniably incongruent histories-which give us reason to forever suspect one another, a reason dramatically subverted by the call to embrace one another in the way of Jesus?
I believe Diana Butler Bass, again, shows us a way forward. She made the following comment while participating in a panel discussion at the last American Academy of Religion conference. The original context of her thought was the pursuit of friendship (referred to as "convergence") between post-mainline and post-evangelical Christians, yet it struck me as pertinent to this discussion:
"When I'm in rooms of clergy and theologians ... and we start talking about post-conservatism and post-liberalism ... I always remind them that those 'posts-' come out of a very distinctive historical experience. And those historical experiences are always going to remain part of our identity. They don't just go away because
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