Unclench Your Fist
This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.
Questions about the place of Christianity and the posture of Christians in a pluralistic society have never been merely theoretical for me. They have always been very personal.
I was first drawn to the Christian faith as a child in London. Both the city and the school I attended there were marked by profound religious, ethnic, and cultural pluralism. A few years later, while a freshman in high school, I began to follow Christ more intentionally after a conversion experience in a church youth group in the Washington, DC, area. I spent the rest of high school and college navigating how to inhabit my faith in settings where few shared my convictions.
When I got to grad school and discovered the life and writings of Augustine of Hippo from the fourth and fifth centuries, I felt like I’d finally found the resources I needed to begin imagining a faithful, generous Christian witness in our own time and place.
Instead of white-knuckling our way through life in a pluralistic, rapidly changing society, Christians should learn from Augustine’s openhanded discipleship.
We live in a diverse and quickly changing democracy, surrounded by people with many divergent beliefs and ways of life, and this comes with both opportunities and challenges. We’re able to know and love neighbors very different from ourselves as we share and embody the gospel. But navigating deep difference and rapid social shifts can also be difficult and scary, and we may end up hurting our neighbors rather than loving them well.
About Kristen Deede Johnson
Kristen is Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs and G. W. and Edna Haworth Professor of Educational Ministries and Leadership at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. In partnership with International Justice Mission, she and co-author Bethany Hanke Hoang wrote the award-winning The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance (Brazos Press, 2016). Kristen's scholarship focuses on theology, culture, formation, and political theory.
