Generous Orthodoxy (Summary)
In Malcolm Gladwell’s eighth episode of his podcast, Gladwell makes a point of quoting theologian Hans Frei, who once stated that “To be orthodox is to be committed to tradition, to be generous is to be open to change.” Frei theorized that one’s life is at its best a mixture of both; “generosity without orthodoxy is blind and orthodoxy without generosity is shallow and empty.”
In Generous Orthodoxy, we’re introduced to two stories that on their surface appear to have no crossover, but instead reveal two sides both attempting to reach that elusive middle space with very different results.
The heads of this dichotomy comes to us in the form of Mennonite Pastor Chester Wenger, whom Gladwell sketches a compelling portrait of. He’s not just a member of the Mennonite community — He’s been at the helm of his particular chapter for forty-years. In the span of that time, he’s allowed in his conservative-minded community, for women to speak at the pulpit, under a cloak of being too tired after his own sermon to continue. He’s went as far as to travel to foreign countries, to spread a message, that is more than just words to him — it’s the beating heart of Chester’s values.
Gladwell explains that Wenger, through small acts, has always demonstrated a curious capacity for generosity. This generosity is put to the test when Chester makes the choice to ordain his gay son’s marriage, something against traditional Mennonite values.
Gladwell makes a point of saying to us, as he talks with Wenger, that most people would have expected his opinion of the Mennonite community to be fairly negative — for him to view them without a lot of generosity.
But Chester doesn’t.
Gladwell explains to us that this is because Chester Wenger knew the rules and how far he could push them. By ordaining his son, he had effectively broken from the Mennonite community due to their stance on gay marriage. Family and God himself meant more to Chester than his position within the church but that did not translate to disrespect towards the Mennonite community’s traditional values. It is that unwavering respect for this institution, despite the personal cost, that Gladwell encourages us to assess another scenario.
A storm brews on Princeton’s campus, and as Gladwell is quick to note, he finds the reasons their for protesting compelling. A segment of students want the name of Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth President of the United States, removed from one of Princeton’s buildings due to his thumbs-up to segregation. But are they capable of communicating to this to both Princeton’s board and older alumni in a way that communicates an level of respect to Princeton?
At their meeting with the board, the words spoken are full of fire. We hear Wilglory Tanjong saying “Woodrow Wilson perpetuated an ideology that has lead to the continous genocide of African Americans in this country — he is a murderer, we owe him nothing. This university owes us everything…”
Regardless of the matter of how much truth may be contained in these words⎯which Gladwell makes a point of saying in his own youth, he might have put them together as clumsily as the protesters do⎯Gladwell rightly predicts they’re words unlikely to sway an audience whose disposition tilts more towards preserving tradition.
The board concludes there is not enough reasoning to remove Wilson’s name from a campus building. It is a lack of orthodoxy in their approach, Gladwell explains, that makes their protest futile from the start. This is what makes them ‘tails’ — they’re all generosity and very little orthodoxy.
Gladwell proposes an alternate position the protesters could have proposed to Princeton’s board. It is his belief that for them to have best communicated to Princeton that they meant business would have been by threatening to withdraw from Princeton altogether and to tell prospective students of all colors to not choose Princeton unless they made removed markers. This, Gladwell believes, is a sacrifice of self more on par with that of Chester Wenger and a better blend of a desire for change and adherence to tradition.
Wilglory Tanjong, the young woman who lead the protests, however questions if the idea of walking away from Princeton is even within the realm of possibility. She cites in her letter to Gladwell many reasons why she felt the Wenger comparison falls flat but the most striking difference is that of age.
Chester Wenger is an old man.
At the point in which Winger is excommunicated, he has already lived his life largely in accordance with his beliefs, played a significant role in a community he believes in and had been successful in achieving many of his desires in life. Wilglory, however, was only nineteen years old at the time of the protest. Her biggest accomplishment to date pre-protest, most likely is getting into Princeton. Her real life and ability to positively impact others is only just budding.
It is unfair to contrast two individuals at such very different points in their life and with very different amounts of potential loss to one another. Removing herself from Princeton also symbolically communicates that she agrees she has no place at this institution — effectively white-washing herself.
Gladwell acknowledges leaving Princeton altogether may be a flawed solution and might have even resulted in the exact same responses the protesters received from the board but stresses the notion that regardless of the validity of the claim one is trying to make that ‘you must respect the body that you’re trying to heal’.
It is unlikely that the elder Princeton alumni were able to discern much else from the words spoken by the protesters other than disrespect and entitlement to access to Princeton. This belief of the protesters, Gladwell stresses, is largely ineffective because the amount of tradition is negligible in comparison to the amount of desire for change.
At the end of his podcast, Gladwell tells us that Chester Winger achieves true generous orthodoxy in his letter to the Mennonite Church leaders. His respect for the church, despite the personal cost to him, is visible to all that read the letter, as well as his own progressiveness. It is having found the mixture Frei theorized about, Gladwell concludes, that Chester will ultimately be vindicated because he has effectively communicated the potency of being both generous and orthodox.