A Study in Charity and Public Discourse

Meg Giordano

An article I wrote for the Canadian-American Theological Review, Vol. 13, Issue 2 (2024).

This paper engages the problem of social polarization, specifically with

regard to the theological challenge of how Matthew 5:38–48 applies

to the Christian’s role in contexts of social divisiveness. It begins with

the problem of polarization both as experienced and contributed to by

Christian communities. Should we be “turning the other cheek” when

the world is antagonistic to Christian faith? The paper works through

this difficulty by placing the ethos of Matthew 5 in conversation with

Christ’s prayer in John 17. Our reading of that prayer challenges the

common “in the world but not of it” dictum, understanding it instead

as a call to be fully present in the world, just as Christ was. Finally, the

paper imagines this incarnational vocation specifically in terms of the

divisive realm of public discourse. It proposes that the typical framing

of public discourse around a polemic of “fact-vs-opinion” is itself part

of the problem. It offers an alternate framing of “fact and analysis”—

a reimagining that is concretized in the dispositions of intellectual

charity, moral imagination, and moral humility. The paper presents a

vision of discourse as informed by Christlike charity, offering concrete

dispositions that help us better cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the

fulfillment of Christ’s difficult mandate to turn the other cheek, hand

over one’s cloak, and go a second mile.

The paper is published in the Canadian-American Theological Review:  https://cata-catr.com/journal/catr-2024-volume-thirteen-issue-2/ shared here, with my gratitude, by the permission of Dustin Burlet of CATA.