“We can be confident without sacrificing compassion, and compassionate without surrendering our confidence in the one who loves us.”
How do we live faithfully and witness effectively in a world of difference? In this session, Professor Inazu outlines a framework for what he calls “confident pluralism” and explains how we can hold steadfast convictions while making room for others to disagree.
Key Terms
Confident Pluralism: A framework for living together in a world of difference that takes our differences seriously and seeks common ground, even when we can’t agree about a common good.
Pluralism: Describes both the fact of difference in the world as well as the political response to that difference.
Main Points
- Confidence without pluralism misses the reality of politics, while pluralism without confidence misses the reality of people.
- Pluralism describes the fact that the differences in our world aren’t going away. It also suggests that we find ways to live together despite those differences, recognizing that we won’t resolve them in this lifetime.
- Confident pluralism recognizes three realities:
- We are beyond interfaith.
- We are beyond propositions.
- We are beyond simple agreement.
- Confident pluralism proposes that the future of our democratic experiment requires finding a way to be steadfast in our personal convictions while also making room for others to disagree.
Content Questions
- What ideas or beliefs are difficult for you to imagine being wrong?
- What ideas or beliefs are difficult for you to imagine being right?
- Think of particular people that you find difficult to love or like: Can you think of ways to separate the people from the ideas they hold?
- Are there opportunities that come to mind from the ideas in this session that give you a new way to think about engaging with difference?
- How is leading with confident pluralism different from relativism?
Application Questions
- In what ways could you lead with confident pluralism in your local church community—whether your role involves leading a congregation, facilitating a small group, or relating to friends? Spend some time considering what this might mean in your particular community. What need do you see for this framework? What resistance might there be? What would it take to lead effectively using confident pluralism as a guiding principle?
- What does confident pluralism look like outside your immediate community? What do you see as your role in the larger conversations that divide our society? How do you participate in those conversations
- There are many issues that divide today’s church. They often are some of the same things that divide us politically: LGBT issues, immigration, race, abortion, etc. How do you see people missing the realities of politics and people on these issues? How might you be missing those realities? Do you think you could partake in communion alongside someone who disagreed with you in one of these areas? Why or why not?