Union Theological Seminary, home of Dr. James Cone, has had a hey day in the wake of Glenn Beck’s attack on social justice and black liberation theology. I’m not the biggest fan of Glenn Beck, but I certainly don’t think he’s all wrong.

So when I read this interview over at Religion Dispatches between a student at Union Theological Seminary and the seminary’s President, I felt obliged to respond.
I addressed the letter to both the interviewer and the interviewee. Here it is in only slightly modified form:

Dear Mr. Prewitt-Davis and Ms. Jones,

Let me lay my cards on the table from the very beginning.

I am white. I am a conservative Christian, raised in churches on the other side of the Fundamentalist-Modernist divide from you. And I am more or less a political conservative. I am also from a medium-sized town in the West far from the injustice and vitriol that fuel American racial conflicts.

So, in many ways, we likely have little in common. And yet I will also add that I do care about social justice and I am ashamed of the injustice that has existed and continues to exist in American society.

My fundamental question to you is: can you and I can agree to disagree without demonizing each other?

I’d certainly like to think we can, but your recent interview calls your intentions into question. Particularly because you assume that people would agree with Glenn Beck only because of a deformed ideology, “all the unspoken but evident racist, sexist, and fascist sensibilities that [Beck] is playing to in our country”. Had you considered that there might be justifiable anxieties or fundamental philosophical differences, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat points out in his column yesterday? Or is everyone who disagrees with you automatically a “racist, sexist, and fascist”?

Completely absent from your discussion of Glenn Beck’s coverage of black liberation theology was a discussion of Anthony Bradley and his book about Black Liberation Theology, both of which appeared in the segment of Glenn Beck’s show that you discuss. Beck may have used them more as props to support his emotive performance than as sources for a detailed professorial lecture, but Dr. Bradley’s ideas undergird a large part of what Beck was saying.

May I ask: Have you read the book? Do your “more erudite modes of engagement” involve reading books you are likely to disagree with and then interrogating your own beliefs? I mean the question sincerely, with no hint of irony. Despite the amazing diversity in the United States we all reside much too often in the echo chambers of our own ideology.

As a traditional conservative I believe in human fallenness and depravity. And so I believe we’re all too capable of idolizing our own ideologies. It’s disturbing to see so often among fellow conservatives, especially the public ones–likely the only conservatives you ever encounter—but it’s equally disturbing to see the same sort of thing from those on the political and religious left.

The fact is that in our society today there are fundamental disagreements over reason, faith, Scripture, the individual vs. the collective, the role of government, and the proper way to deal with societal injustice. I will be the first to say that Glenn Beck obscures the deeper issues and panders to an audience that doesn’t really want to think.

But your interview does the same thing.

If you really wanted to engage in a meaningful way, you might have tried to engage conservative ideas of social justice, the proper role of government, or the nature of theological truth rather than attempting to psychoanalyze American conservatives en masse and pandering to your own (perhaps slightly more educated) base.

If you want to have a fight with Glenn Beck over who the real fascist is, then go ahead. I won’t stop you. But then don’t claim self-righteously that you are seeking “more erudite modes of engagement”. Because you’re not. You’re playing the same game he is playing.

Chris Schaefer has lived in all four continental US time zones and on three other continents. He has B.A.’s in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Spanish from the University of Oklahoma and a M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Currently on leave from Penn’s Ph.D. program, he lives in Morocco where he studies Arabic, teaches English, and spends lots of time in cafes. Schaefer is a regular blogger at Anthony Bradley’s The Institute and this article is used with permission.