Is charitable disagreement possible?

An example, a proposal, and a prayer

Recently Elif Batuman, a writer that I admire, reconsidered in The New Yorker whether her beloved Russian novels deserved to be censured by Ukrainian readers. As a lover of Russian literature, I both desired to read this piece and was anxious about doing so. Only those with hard hearts and soft heads will be unable to hear what Batuman suggests in this piece: not that we should forego reading these masterpieces, but that we should contemplate how much our time and place registers in our reading. I appreciated the idea that “thinking is never placeless or disembodied,” which she borrows from Madina Tlostanova: “The first principle of thought isn’t, as Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am,’ but ‘I am where I think.’”

Illustration by Karlotta Freier (from The New Yorker)

Through reassessing the Russian novels that she loves, Batuman find more traces of imperialism than she had hoped to find. She tries to move readers to understand the Ukrainian ban against Russian literature. Twenty-first century Americans may not observe echoes of imperialism as easily as those from occupied countries. While I do not agree with all of Batuman’s argument, we will lose an opportunity for empathy and the pushing of our paradigms not to read this piece.

That said, I have a couple of points of contention.

One, Batuman reads with confirmation bias: she’s able to find what she is looking for. Like many versions of critical lenses, you can cause yourself to see something in the text that is inauthentic to the work itself. In his 1961 Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis warns, “Nothing is less illuminating than to read some author who is at present under a cloud (Shelley, say, or Chesterton) for the purpose of confirming the bad opinion we already had of him…. We can find a book bad only by reading it as if it might, after all, be very good.” Because Russian novels are currently under suspicion of imperialism, read with that view, we will find imperialism. It does not meant that taints of imperialism do not stain the work of Russian authors, it just means that a reader who is predisposed to find that tarnish will find it. What author could withstand such a scrutiny? I fear I could read the novels of refugees and find the same marks. To me it reveals more of the human condition: authors will likely share the sins of their current culture (Read Alan Jacobs’s Breaking Bread with the Dead, which I reviewed in 2020).

In the case of Dostoevsky, the man himself was not a saint. He was anti-Semitic; anti-Catholic, and a Russian nationalist. But when Batuman casts a spotlight on what she infers is Dostoevsky’s political endorsement of imperialism, she offers Raskolnikov as the hero of that worldview. Any high school reader of that novel knows that Raskolnikov is an unhinged soul, misled by false ideology, and duly condemned for his actions. If, as Batuman claims, “The logic of Raskolnikov’s crime…was the logic of imperialism,” then Dostoevsky should not be indicted but heralded. As Alyosha says to Ivan Karamazov of his “Grand Inquisitor” and the protest against Jesus: Your work praises him, not reviles him, as you intended.

I argue regularly for reading the works of Dostoevsky and also Solzhenitsyn as anti-imperialist, anti-totalitarian. If you want to read The Brothers Karamazov, I have a virtual book club available via YouTube.

What I hope to showcase is an example of charitable disagreement.

Our culture lacks these examples and misses them where they occur because they do not make headlines. Episode 547 of The Holy Post (French Friday) was compelling: David French pointed out the discourteous move by his opponents to destroy his career when he disagrees with them. He also lamented that the civil disagreement he experienced as a religious liberty lawyer did not exist among his journalism peers. We must practice more generous disagreement with one another that does not lead to slander, name calling, categorizing, or loss of friendship.

Disagreeing: Classical Education & the Church

Over the past years (but especially the past few weeks), I have been debating—within classical education circles—the expansion of the great books canon (specifically from its 1952/1990 Adler edition). I have been pushing to showcase the fullness of the great tradition, what my friend Dr. Anika Prather calls “The Human Story.” I would like to engage in civil dialogue and debate about this question rather than feel labeled by one side as woke and by the other side as elitist. In the Dallas Morning News, I argue why both sides lose if we cannot follow a third way through the middle, celebrating the great tradition by reclaiming from outside the narrowly defined canon the voices of indigenous people, Africans, South Americans, Asians, Middle Eastern writers, and others who have been contributing for centuries—millenia even!—but ignored by a certain contingent in the West.

We cannot assume these texts are not “great” simply because they were not exalted by the powers of their particular time and place. Classical education is about practicing recovery. In the same way that Christian educators sought out Christian texts missed by Adler, we are seeking the women and persons of color that he missed. To do so is not to be influenced by critical theory, but to not be blinded by the fallacies of the past.

Within the church, I find myself at odds with those who discount the perspective of women especially, in regards to our place in the kingdom of God. Consider a review I published in Christianity Today of Mallory Wyckoff’s God Is and Amy Peeler’s Women and the Gender of God. While I recommend people read both of these books (which is why I reviewed them), I did not feel compelled to agree with everything they claimed. Why are we so afraid to dialogue with challenging ideas? What is the reality here?

Imagination of Abundance

Perhaps we should rescind our fear that reading non-Western authors will displace the Western writers from the canon, or that considering women in the Bible will mean the loss of manhood for men, or that Reading While Black dismisses all the other ways of reading the Bible. The artist Makoto Fujimura compels us to move from a “scarcity of resources” imagination to one of abundance. Just as having a child does not deplete the love a father feels for its mother, we should live under the gospel of abundance.

As Virgil explains to Dante, while material goods decrease when shared, spiritual goods increase.

And when there are more souls above who love,
there's more to love well there, and they love more, 
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
(Purg. 15.115-17)

Loving new writers, Bible characters, and even thinkers with whom we disagree only increases love over all. Loving them does not mean accepting all their ideas; it means extending charity even when we disagree. “Speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), writes St. Paul, for, the Christian imagination is one of abundance and fearlessness. St. Augustine encourages readers to embrace whatever reading of the Bible increases one’s love of God and charity for neighbors. It’s a good reminder for us all.

What I read in January

I’m writing on Dorothy L. Sayers right now (hence her plays); I’ll be at the Wade Center doing research in their archives via a Clyde Kilby grant from Feb 5-8. Ramsey’s book was read just for fun, after I saw it win TGC’s book of the year in arts and culture. I recommend it highly! McLaughlin’s book had me jumping up and down—her insights are flooring.

What I’m reading now

I plan to review A History of the Island. I will be a guest of the Collegium Institute on March 6 at 7PM ET to discuss Houslander’s Dry Wood; I’m loving this novel so far. The other two books are part of my continued investigation into women in Christianity and culture for my next book.

To hear more of my thoughts on reading this way, preorder Reading for the Love of God or listen to our podcast The Scandal of Reading (season 2, spring 2023), cohosted with Austin Carty & Claude Atcho (who lead a book club via Facebook on great books).