When Dialogue Becomes Diatribe
My life on the Oprah Winfrey Show
Donovan Martin
Issue date: 3/7/07 Section: No Gods, No Masters
What exactly does it mean for a community to be inclusive? Does it do any good to have a formal pronouncement of inclusiveness for the government? It seems to me that a community’s inclusiveness has little to do with any institution and more to do with what actually goes on in the community that encourages diversity and inclusiveness.
That is why I’m happy to see a lot of dialogues going on campus right now. A week ago I attended an open dialogue on religion, a topic most people get squeamish around. The forum centered on the presentations of three FSU students and two representatives of local clergy. Following these brief presentations, the forum became an open discussion and the real fun began.
I opened with a question regarding the role of religion in perpetuating military struggles. How, when misused, can religion be used to pull people into military conflict to which they have an intuitively negative reaction?
No one was really interested in talking about that.
Instead, I felt as though the forum had been relocated to the set of the Oprah Winfrey Show. The only thing we were missing was Dr. Phil.
It’s frustrating when you attend an event on a college campus expecting an intellectual dialogue on a topic overflowing with issues to be discussed. Instead, people were anxious to proclaim the virtual relativity of all matters religion and move on to spout their own personal religious convictions. I’m sorry, but that’s not really a dialogue.
The most prevalent viewpoint expressed was that the Bible and other religious texts are “open to interpretation.” After this sentiment had been expressed in roughly a dozen different ways, we moved on to hearing everyone’s slightly personalized expression of Christianity (at which point the dialogue became less about religion, per se, and increasingly about the adaptability of Christ’s message to everyone’s personal worldview).
Oh, and there was one Jewish guy there who was actually the most articulate person in attendance, aside from the small group of atheist students who were largely marginalized by talk dominated by the Christian perspective.
Then came the testimonials. Monologues featured: a masturbation problem that God healed, how the church doesn’t accept homosexuals and finally, and most predictably, how Jesus is the only way to salvation.
It was all very moving and sentimental. However, there was very little intellectually stimulating about it. I don’t think that a public forum is a place for people to indulge their egos by flooding the room with their personal, and highly emotional, rhetoric on religion in their lives.
The forum is a public place dealing with public issues. The tradition of the open forum extends back to the democratic values of the ancients Greeks. At these forums, individuals would be given the opportunity to deliver a speech on a particular topic that would subsequently be debated and, here is the important part, help the group to reach a consensus. There were concrete terms available to make truth claims and to prove one argument against another.
There was nothing so subtle in the open forum I attended. In fact, the only consensus that was reached was that there was no consensus on religion; everything was open to interpretation. Thankfully, at least one other person there had conviction. Unfortunately, that conviction was expressed in an emotional tirade that only served to alienate him from the group, and the group from him.
Where is truth when everything is open to personal interpretation? Where is there room for consensus when the debate de-evolves into “everyone can just say whatever they want”? Sure, that sentiment works nicely in casual society where everyone just wants to get along, but this was an intellectual event, meant to stimulate meaningful discussion.
I guess I’m tired of hearing people cry about their personal problems, especially when they hijack a college-sponsored event geared toward dialogue and diversity. This is the problem with inclusion as well, a topic I will pick again next week.
In the end, total inclusion will invariably degrade the quality of an event or a community. By allowing just anyone to caterwaul about their sexual frustrations and how God has or has not helped them with that, the entire dialogue collapses and all forward momentum is halted by people who are stuck on themselves and on what they have to say.
That is why I’m happy to see a lot of dialogues going on campus right now. A week ago I attended an open dialogue on religion, a topic most people get squeamish around. The forum centered on the presentations of three FSU students and two representatives of local clergy. Following these brief presentations, the forum became an open discussion and the real fun began.
I opened with a question regarding the role of religion in perpetuating military struggles. How, when misused, can religion be used to pull people into military conflict to which they have an intuitively negative reaction?
No one was really interested in talking about that.
Instead, I felt as though the forum had been relocated to the set of the Oprah Winfrey Show. The only thing we were missing was Dr. Phil.
It’s frustrating when you attend an event on a college campus expecting an intellectual dialogue on a topic overflowing with issues to be discussed. Instead, people were anxious to proclaim the virtual relativity of all matters religion and move on to spout their own personal religious convictions. I’m sorry, but that’s not really a dialogue.
The most prevalent viewpoint expressed was that the Bible and other religious texts are “open to interpretation.” After this sentiment had been expressed in roughly a dozen different ways, we moved on to hearing everyone’s slightly personalized expression of Christianity (at which point the dialogue became less about religion, per se, and increasingly about the adaptability of Christ’s message to everyone’s personal worldview).
Oh, and there was one Jewish guy there who was actually the most articulate person in attendance, aside from the small group of atheist students who were largely marginalized by talk dominated by the Christian perspective.
Then came the testimonials. Monologues featured: a masturbation problem that God healed, how the church doesn’t accept homosexuals and finally, and most predictably, how Jesus is the only way to salvation.
It was all very moving and sentimental. However, there was very little intellectually stimulating about it. I don’t think that a public forum is a place for people to indulge their egos by flooding the room with their personal, and highly emotional, rhetoric on religion in their lives.
The forum is a public place dealing with public issues. The tradition of the open forum extends back to the democratic values of the ancients Greeks. At these forums, individuals would be given the opportunity to deliver a speech on a particular topic that would subsequently be debated and, here is the important part, help the group to reach a consensus. There were concrete terms available to make truth claims and to prove one argument against another.
There was nothing so subtle in the open forum I attended. In fact, the only consensus that was reached was that there was no consensus on religion; everything was open to interpretation. Thankfully, at least one other person there had conviction. Unfortunately, that conviction was expressed in an emotional tirade that only served to alienate him from the group, and the group from him.
Where is truth when everything is open to personal interpretation? Where is there room for consensus when the debate de-evolves into “everyone can just say whatever they want”? Sure, that sentiment works nicely in casual society where everyone just wants to get along, but this was an intellectual event, meant to stimulate meaningful discussion.
I guess I’m tired of hearing people cry about their personal problems, especially when they hijack a college-sponsored event geared toward dialogue and diversity. This is the problem with inclusion as well, a topic I will pick again next week.
In the end, total inclusion will invariably degrade the quality of an event or a community. By allowing just anyone to caterwaul about their sexual frustrations and how God has or has not helped them with that, the entire dialogue collapses and all forward momentum is halted by people who are stuck on themselves and on what they have to say.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 5
ben bernard
posted 3/07/07 @ 2:12 AM EST
Your last comment "By allowing just anyone to caterwaul about their sexual frustrations and how God has or has not helped them with that, the entire dialogue collapses and all forward momentum is halted by people who are stuck on themselves and on what they have to say. (Continued…)
April Bernard
posted 3/07/07 @ 8:39 AM EST
What a scholarly, unbiased article we have here. It seems as though you must have walked through the door of this campus meeting with highly skeptical and narrowminded views yourself. (Continued…)
Jeremy Bruno
posted 3/07/07 @ 11:43 PM EST
I was also at the forum last week, so I feel somewhat qualified to respond to the Bernards. (You can read my full commentary on the forum by clicking my name above this comment post; I'm being brief here. (Continued…)
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