INTERVIEW: Shirley Mullen on the Courageous Middle

Wanted: those with the skill and desire to host difficult conversations

Shirley Mullen is President Emerita of Houghton University and Current Contributing Editor. This interview is about her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future. Baker Academic Press, 2024. 200 pp., $26.99

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Thank you for writing this book—this is going to be such a useful resource for so many of us who are concerned about the future of not only Christian higher education but about the flourishing of Christian institutions more broadly. I would love to hear some more of the story behind this book: How and when did you come to the decision to write it? Who are your target audiences for this book? What do you hope it will accomplish?

I will start with the story, since it ultimately accounts for the book. The story of the “courageous middle” began with my family and my roots in the Wesleyan tradition. The motivation to write came out of a deep sense of gratitude for having been given a vision of a certain way of being in the world. 

Now back to the origin of the book. I first used the phrase “courageous middle” in one of my presidential letters to the Houghton constituency in 2012. As I surveyed the increasingly polarized landscape of the church and the country and our alumni base as a Christian college in the Wesleyan tradition, I saw clearly that our constituency did not fit into either of the poles. 

I realized next, that this was not happenstance. Our Wesleyan roots would not allow us to fit with either pole. There were issues in our denominational history that pulled us to the “right” and those that pulled us to the “left.” From that realization, I began to see that this “not fitting” could itself be a gift to the world. As a community that embodied thoughtful individuals of deep faith on both sides, we might have a distinctive role in actively convening conversations in a “middle space” that complicated and enriched what could happen at either of the poles.   

From 2012 until I retired in 2021, I continued to include references to this calling in my presidential correspondence to our constituency. I also began to develop the notion of the “courageous middle” in conversations with our Board and our internal community. It was a Board member who encouraged me to elaborate on the concept in a paper to the Board of Trustees.   

But the more I worked with the idea, the more I realized that the concept had much broader application than just to Houghton or even to those in the Wesleyan tradition. I especially want to challenge graduates of faith-based colleges and universities, who have been given the intellectual and social tools to host complex and gracious conversations and who know from their own experience that getting at the Truth is a complicated and lifelong task. I want them to see the work of hosting “middle space” as part of the stewardship of their gifts—the general gift of an education but also the particular gifts of their own experiences.  

So, I address this book, first of all, to recent college and university graduates. But as I have spoken with adults of all ages—especially those who are troubled by the pain of the current paralyzing cultural polarization, and who feel that they don’t fit entirely on either pole—I have shared the notion of a possible “middle space” that is not timid but courageous. Their enthusiasm has encouraged me to include them in the audience as well!  

I love that more than anything this is really a work of practical theology! Could you explain a bit about this concept of “middle space” that undergirds your argument in this book? What are “middle spaces” and why do we need them? 

The “middle space” of this book is always relative to a context. It is created whenever there is a complex issue that generates two sides—and where thoughtful, good people find themselves on both sides. We are not speaking about situations where there is an obvious right and wrong, good or evil. (So, to take an obvious case—everyone believes that murder is wrong. But not everyone agrees on what constitutes murder.) The “middle space” I am speaking of can happen in political parties, in churches, in families—again, wherever good and thoughtful people find themselves torn about which side of an issue to take.   

Usually, when there is a high-stakes, complicated issue, each side believes itself to be in the right and the other side to be in the wrong. In these situations, the “middle” is usually seen as a place for those without the courage to take a side. It is seen as a place of either intellectual or moral laziness and irresponsibility—a place of compromise at best.  

And I would agree that the “middle” can be this sort of place. The assertion in the book is that it need not be this kind of place—and ought not to be. When good and thoughtful people find themselves on two sides to an issue, it may be because there really is wisdom and insight on both sides—and someone needs to have the courage to host a conversation where both sides can share their insights, where they have the assurance that they will be treated with dignity and respect. They will not be asked to give up their convictions but rather asked to consider what has led other good and thoughtful individuals to see another side.  

One more comment about “middle space.” The calling to host this space or to be part of the company of the “courageous middle” will also be particular to each individual. We can only host middle space where we have connections of trust on both sides, and where our own personal story has given us reason to be able to translate or interpret those on either side to the other. To play host in middle space, one must be, in some sense, “bilingual.” 

In what sense are Christian colleges and universities “middle spaces”?

I believe that Christian colleges and universities are inherently “middle spaces” in the sense that they find themselves with loyalties to both communities of faith and the world of higher education. In certain times, these loyalties converge.   

Most likely when the institutions were created there was some reason that a particular community of faith believed that it would be useful for them to have within their body of believers those with the tools that an education could provide. Over time and for a range of reasons, these loyalties become less overlapping. In today’s world, for example, there may be tensions growing out of assumptions related to faith and science, or even faith and reason more generally. In particular—these tensions often emerge around the reading of the Biblical text—and can be especially acute within educational institutions in the Protestant tradition where, since the Reformation, the Bible is taken to be the final authority at least on matters of faith and practice.  

To the degree that these institutions have been seeking to remain loyal to both their community of faith and the world of higher education, they will be inviting students to an education that embodies the tensions embedded in the modern world, including how one applies one’s God-given critical skills to the various tools for seeking knowledge. They will be asked to think about how one relates the findings of science, the insights of narrative such as history and literature, the wisdom of artistic vision, and an honoring of scriptural authority.   

Those who have responded to the invitation to be transformed by a Christian education—as opposed to simply accumulating grades and earning a credential—will find themselves to be, in this sense, bilingual, and thus able to serve as hosts of conversations to those who find themselves on many of the contemporary debates in our world today.   

To the extent that conservative Christians—most notably those known as “evangelicals”—are associated with the “right” and those who are associated with the academy and the authority of science are associated with the left, the graduates of Christian colleges and universities will find themselves with the competence to speak with credibility to those on both sides.   

I should add here that, while the institutions themselves might also play host to “middle space,” I see this work of hosting “middle space” being done primarily by individuals, and not by institutions.  There is an incarnational and relational aspect to this work that makes it much more difficult, if not impossible, for institutions.   

Can you give us a taste of something surprising that you found in your work on this project? 

One of the greatest joys—and most animating surprises—of doing this project was the enthusiastic response I received from people when I told them about the project. Friends and colleagues both inside and outside of the Christian community were intrigued by the notion that the “middle” could be a place of courage, activism, and moral agency. It was not necessarily a place of compromise, passivity, and irresponsibility. The notion of a special calling attaching to those who felt they did not fit into either of the sides in today’s political and theological polarization provided hope and meaning to the circumstances in which many of these individuals found themselves.   

Furthermore, I discovered that many of these individuals were already actively working to create redemptive middle spaces. I provided a wide range of examples of this work toward the end of the book for those who want to join the “company of the courageous middle.” This is not, in the end, only a position that one holds cognitively; it is a way of being in the world that must be practiced and lived out.

What are the broader questions that fascinate you in your reading, thinking, and writing these days?

As a historian, I have always been interested in how change happens in the world. Earlier in my life, I was much more confident that this was a rational process. Like many academics, I was drawn to abstraction and to thinking about problem-solving as a linear process. One identified the problem, searched for a range of potential solutions, chose the best one, then looked for leaders and funding to “move things forward,” as they say.   

I expect that being a college administrator for twenty years of my journey tempered some of my earlier confidence about how one seeks to bring about change. But also, as a historian of the modern period and most especially of what we might call the Enlightenment world, I have watched over the past sixty years as confidence in the idea of “progress” has gradually waned. For those of us who lived through the supposed end of the Cold War and the optimism surrounding the end of apartheid in South Africa, we know that history does not move in the ways that we expect! 

At this point, I am much more drawn to focus on exploring concrete situations where individual communities are finding ways to flourish and to create redemptive possibilities for those within their sphere of influence. As a Christian believer, this also grows out of my understanding that the most powerful agents of healing in the world often work behind the scenes and 0n the margins. I am drawn to the metaphors that Jesus used to speak of change—yeast, light, and salt. And I am reminded, especially at this Easter Season, that hopeful change most often comes at great cost and often in ways that no one could have imagined.