The power of '&'

By Tyler Tankersley

I think our culture is becoming increasingly "either/or." It seems like we are continually moving toward a more polemical rhetoric. I am sure there are a variety of factors that contribute to that, but it is increasingly clear that we are being made to choose between two options: either Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, you are either a liberal or a conservative, either Republican or Democrat.

The church I pastor belongs to an organization called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Last month, I attended the CBF General Assembly in Greensboro, North Carolina. When I arrived at the convention hotel, I noticed a number of people wearing a pin of an ampersand on their shirts. One of my friends helped organize the assembly, so I asked him what the purpose was of this symbol. He told me CBF had adopted the ampersand as a sign of cooperation within our network of diverse churches. It was the admittance that we do not have to all agree on everything, but by embracing the power of "and," we are acknowledging we still are in community with one another.

The more I thought about the symbol of the ampersand, the more it made me proud to belong to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Our world needs more places that embrace the power of "and." We need more places that do not set up for us a false dichotomy of an "either/or" choice.

And if we are being completely honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that those of us in church leadership have often been the guiltiest of setting up these false dichotomies. We implicitly imply or explicitly say one candidate over another embraces "true Christian values," or we say one side of the political spectrum is more "biblical" than another. Pastors also are frequently guilty of speaking for God. There is a passage from the book of Joshua in which Joshua comes across the angel of the Lord in the desert. Joshua asks the angel, "Are you one of us or one of our adversaries?" The angel replies, "Neither" (Joshua 5:13-15).

I am sometimes accused of being both a political and theological moderate. In our increasingly polarized world, I wear that label as a badge of honor. Being a moderate does not mean you are lukewarm in your beliefs. Being a moderate means you acknowledge that neither side of the political aisle holds a monopoly on truth and that there are things to learn from both perspectives.

What if instead of perpetuating the myth of "either/or" we were to embrace the power of "and?" What if we were to acknowledge there is something powerful and beneficial to being in friendship with those with whom we may disagree? What if we were to hold strongly to our convictions, yet also have the humility to remain teachable?

Maybe the world needs to see people of faith who are able to be in loving friendship with those who are different from them. That sounds like good news to me.