One Right Way part 3
As I participated in a few webinars this week, I kept thinking about this notion of One Right Way. It occurred to me that over the last year, there have been so many webinars on different topics and so many of them feel like a long search for the perfect and simple solution to complex issues. This made me wonder if I’ve been going into the webinars with the wrong mindset. I’m looking for one way to solve my problems instead of building a bunch of skills to meet situations as they need different solutions. From there my mind quickly went to Situational Leadership.
I always appreciated that this view of leadership embraced that there is not a one size fits all to leadership. Different people need different types of support. It’s only nature that there are different ways of to lead, but why do we keep trying to seek what is simple and quick? Could it be that we have this unconscious pull to perfectionism, one right way, and right to comfort?
As I started to think about that unconscious pull, I thought about How the South won the Civil War, Caste, and Stamped, then I saw this except from the Divorcing White Supremacy Culture website. (As a side note and full disclosure: I identify as a Christian and hold Micah 6:8 at the center of life.)
Paul Kivel writes: Another fundamental Christian concept is there is only one truth in the world and that truth is contained in Christianity. … If a person believes they have The Truth and all others are misled, this can lead to arrogance and disrespect for others’ beliefs and cultures. Dominant Christianity has relentlessly searched out and tried to destroy the belief systems of other cultures and even of dissident groups within it, partly because of its claim to hold the truth. … The belief in one universal truth can lead to the claim that dominant Western beliefs are universal truths. … The claim to universal truth becomes a justification for appropriation of anything that exists in the world. … Dominant Christianity has always accepted universal statements about the Other. But when Christians are the subject of generalizations, they suddenly become very discerning about the limits of generalizations … and almost never accept that observations made by those in subordinate groups are valid.
I recommend listening to an interview with Paul Kivel about the book. It became clear to me that he is not attacking Christians as a whole, but is pointing out the tendency for some Christian concepts that there is a one right way to Christianity and how that has influenced, some of the very structures of oppression that have been a problem since the country’s foundation.
https://christianhegemony.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Kivel.TalkItOut.12.27.20.FinalEdit.mp3?_=1
