Only dead people rest easily in boxes
Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future by Shirley A. Mullen. Baker Academic, 2024. 200 pp., $26.99
“Stuck in the Middle with You,” the one hit of Stealers Wheel, contains some particularly relatable lines, including “Clowns to the left of me/ Jokers to the right/ Here I am stuck in the middle with you.”
But what if the middle isn’t where one gets stuck but where one does their best striving? In Claiming the Courageous Middle, Shirley Mullen makes that case, beginning with its encouraging subtitle “daring to live and work together for a more hopeful future.” What is that courageous middle? It is the space that can be fully claimed neither by the left nor the right, nor by one culture or another, or grasped by any binary. It is not just a waystation between views. It offers a way to better pursue the truth.
These are ideas that Mullen has been talking about and trying to implement for many years. She is the recently retired president emerita of Houghton College, a member of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), founded in 1883 and located in Houghton, New York, near Buffalo. This book reflects her leadership philosophy as a college president, as she tried to navigate between the political left and the right, working actively to foster dialogue and collaboration between various, sometimes antagonistic groups on campus and among alumni. The point was not to be wary of upsetting one group or another but rather to keep the interests of the whole community in mind, pursuing the truth apart from too close an affiliation with any one interest group.
The book draws extensively on Mullen’s personal background and experiences. She grew up in Canada, in a family that was part of the Reformed Baptist Alliance, which is in the Holiness tradition. Though her family’s denomination was quite conservative and could be very rigid, her family valued thought and education and encouraged her to make her own decisions as she became an adult. As she writes, “whatever the clarity of the moral directives that came to me formally, I saw a far more generous and gracious practical style modeled by my parents and grandparents.” In a way, she was living in the “courageous middle” from the beginning.
This book not only draws on personal experience, it demonstrates the importance of experience. Mullen herself was a student at Houghton College. She studied history and began a career that took her into the professorate and eventually landed her back at Houghton. That allowed her to understand what Houghton was and had been and could be. Across the journey, Mullen was able to discern and appreciate the distinctives of the Wesleyan tradition. This could only come from her experiences both in it and in environments not dominated by it. This book is a clear demonstration of what such diverse yet deep experience has to offer to ongoing conversations in the CCCU and American Christianity.
Mullen argues that the middle really can be courageous. It is not mere compromise or being lukewarm. Mullen does not endorse those options. Here the courageous middle includes people who can operate like Third Culture Kids—those who can draw from different ideas and groups and work in that space to pursue truth and bring about the good.Mullen’s biblical examples of people operating from the courageous middle include Joseph, Daniel, and Esther. All of them existed and acted at intersections between cultures. People in the middle include those who can recognize when a binary has become unhelpful. Mullen’s examples of disappointing binaries include “faith versus science, science versus religion, social gospel versus biblical inerrancy.” These are not good or authentic “either or” options—which, she acknowledges, do sometimes exist. Mullen also argues that Christian liberal arts universities and the CCCU have always represented a middle space—meaning, these are institutions that uphold rigorous academics and intellectual inquiry while remaining grounded in faith. According to Mullen, the middle space is often “discovered” rather than created and can show us the benefits of “not quite fitting.”
The middle advocated in this book is active and brave, not passive or fearful. The work includes “embracing humility and making time for . . . rethinking.” That means a recognition that the truth is much greater and more complex than one single voice or viewpoint is likely to be able to represent. It also means that we are not as much responsible for the truth as to the truth.
This middle space demands that people “know they are not in charge of the world—they are not called to be heroes on the models of the gods of Greek and Roman legend. They are called to be faithful servants of the God of all creation, who will accomplish his purposes for the cosmos and has invited us to be his creative partners in that redemptive enterprise.” The third space is for those who will listen and obey, not just those who delight in oppositional stances and contrarian positions. Neither is the third space a place for hiding. If you are trying to work in or from a third space, “you will need some transcendent goal toward which you are inviting your respective community.” It is much more than a flight from extremes.
Whether you are undertaking a journey through Middle Earth or attempting to work in the “courageous middle,” you will benefit from some guidance. This book offers that. Mullen gives practical encouragement and advice. Each chapter ends with reflection questions, guiding the readers through processing the content and their lives. Claiming the Courageous Middle strongly suggests that you “develop your own philosophy and theology of middle space.” Though the book includes examples of successful work from the middle space and historical examples of when the lack of middle space made life worse, it also acknowledges the middle is a place of risk. Opting out of any in-group can mean endangering “many of the practical and psychological features that secure a strong support base.”
Claiming the Courageous Middle is written by a historian and speaks to both past and present. Mullen has historical examples to validate the idea and importance of the middle space. She also draws on the Bible. Yet this book was published in 2024, and it fits into a whole family of books that has emerged in the last ten years. Their authors are people who are too conservative for many liberals and too liberal for many conservatives. They tend to be pro-life but not pro-Trump. They tend to believe in biblical authority, but they aren’t skeptics of mainstream science. Sometimes people find themselves in this family by adoption, other times they are exiled from somewhere. Mullen’s examples of people in the middle include Russell Moore, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and John Fea.
Books like this one ask some questions directly and prompt others about the broader context indirectly. For example, why is it we are so afraid of compromise? Claiming the Courageous Middle does not advocate it. One can hardly imagine a book of any kind or political stripe advocating compromise being taken seriously today. But maybe we are due a serious argument in favor of compromise. Another question is why we only try to have serious and gentle, persuasive arguments about this topic. Only dead people rest easily in boxes. Wake Up: You’re In the Middle! could be a fun read. Instead of encouraging people to take a stand in the middle, why can’t a smart aleck show them where they are already standing?
A smart aleck who would be more than capable of satirically showing us the middle would be Erasmus. One could easily imagine him writing a Praise of Folly-style book about the culture wars, or ideology, or simply uncompromising opinions. Of course, Erasmus also tried to occupy that middle space when the Protestant Reformation began. He pleased neither side and ended up decentered from the conversation that he, in many ways, helped begin. His legacy is a clear example of trying to live in the “courageous middle” and a cautionary tale about possible outcomes. Erasmus and his advocacy for peace did not slow the advance of division in the Church or the onset of violence in the Reformations. Yet Mullen helpfully reminds us that a successful outcome is not reflected by public standing, but by fidelity to “partnership with the God who is the final arbiter and even embodiment of truth.”
Ultimately, Claiming the Courageous Middle is a resource for those who are finding themselves in that middle space or who are already walking that middle way. Mullen explores “covenantal pluralism,” shares biblical examples of middle space and its importance, offers compelling arguments, and calls us to action. She introduces numerous people and organizations doing this work right now. Though those opposed to the middle space might hate this book, it is very clearly not an attempt to be “better than” opposing camps, but an attempt to build bridges. Rather than despair or dismay, it offers optimism and enthusiasm and endorses an approach, not a reaction. This book is not a warning about the far right or the far left. It simply advances a position with its own goals. That is very refreshing.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, where she also serves as the assistant director of the Honors Program. She is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023). In her spare time, she enjoys ultimate frisbee and putting together a review, Orange Blossom Ordinary.