COMMENTARY: Common-Sense Center Must Assert Itself

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In 1919, after a pointless war had decimated Europe’s youth, Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote an epitaph for the center, where common sense, compromise and reason join hands to sustain civilization. “Things fall apart,” he wrote; “the centre cannot hold.” He blamed the “blood-dimmed tide” on too little “conviction” […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In 1919, after a pointless war had decimated Europe’s youth, Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote an epitaph for the center, where common sense, compromise and reason join hands to sustain civilization.

“Things fall apart,” he wrote; “the centre cannot hold.” He blamed the “blood-dimmed tide” on too little “conviction” and too much “passionate intensity.”


Yeats died 20 years later, as the cresting of national socialism in Germany, Stalinist totalitarianism in Russia and imperial arrogance in Japan were about to lay waste to another generation’s “ceremony of innocence.”

Extremes are always on the march. Religious extremism joins forces with political opportunism, tribal hatred buys weapons, the rich demand too much, mobs shout for blood, and the crafty plot while their targets relax.

When extremes triumph, basic human rights are sacrificed without remorse. Civility and mutual respect are abandoned. Some citizens are deemed expendable. Far-fetched? History suggests it takes little to unleash the “passionate intensity” of those who reject other points of view.

Now, as ever, the center must assert itself.

The center isn’t a place of no opinions, but of many opinions, some strongly held and some less assured. In the center, right and left disagree and yet coexist. Religious conservatives and religious liberals study the same Scriptures, come to different conclusions, and agree to accept each other as children of God. In the center, certainty doesn’t bully questions into silence, and the questioning don’t think themselves superior to those seeking certainty.

In the center, those who have power agree to restrain their use of that power, and those who lack power agree to use ballots, not bullets, to seek justice.

In the center, common sense has room to blossom, even when powerful institutions try to lead people astray with persuasion and intimidation. Parents train their children to think, to question, to imagine.

In the center, compromise is valued as essential to democracy, and not dismissed as “wishy-washy” and soon to be vanquished by “truth.” When “true believers” encounter other “true believers,” they compete and orate, but in the end defer to freedom.


In the center, belief in God is valued as a call to humility and servanthood, not as the right to rule. Potent words like “evangelical” and “faithful” are shared, not owned. Prayer takes many forms, worship takes many forms, and God’s will is no one’s sole possession.

In the center, persons matter more than opinions; conflicts are resolved through dialogue, not shouting; and suffering stirs compassion, not gloating. In the center, all belong, all have rights, all matter.

In the center, some ground their faith in Scripture, some in ritual, some in reason, some in mission, some in belonging, and some in questions. None quite understands the others, but they agree to get along and to resist the temptation that has bedeviled humanity from the beginning, namely, the temptation to declare war on other opinions.

In the center, avid partisans, mild observers and the disenchanted all vote as equals, sing national anthems as their right, and ignore boundaries like class, race and religion when a neighbor needs help.

In the center, diversity is recognized as inevitable and, if not valued or understood, is allowed. One expression of diversity isn’t declared uniquely holy, righteous and above all others. The odd neighbor is still a neighbor.

In the center, when your truth and my truth disagree, we don’t deny the other’s worthiness before God. Being boneheaded isn’t a sin. Cruelty and arrogance are sins.


In the center, even morality is debatable, because the search for moral conformity leads to repression.

The center has plenty of room. But we cannot take the center for granted. Extremes are always with us, and they have a nose for lack of conviction. The center must want to stand and not take the easier course of avoiding conflict with those voicing “passionate intensity.”

MO/PH END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His forthcoming book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” will be published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a file photo of Ehrich.

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