An Approach to Engaging with Mainstream Thought

This is intended for a Christian readership.

Over the past century, Christian academics have not really engaged much with mainstream thinking as Christians. In the main, either we have acquiesced to the world's theories, paradigms and ideas without much question, or we have taken an antithetical stance to it, seeing it as something to fight. Business and management, and technology are two disciplines where Christian academics tend to acquiesce (e.g. the Self-Interestsed Rational Economic Actor, SREA, especially as expressed in "The only aim of business is to increase owner value"). Biology and postmodernist or critical sociology are disciplines where some Christian academics see themselves as antithetical (e.g. Theory of Evolution).

Can we instead engage critically and fruitfully? Shaping Our Disciplines for Christ urges us to do so. But how might we do it? We can LACE:

Listen - "What are they really trying to say? What are they reaching for? What is truly important to them?" (Get below the surface of the words and slogans they use, against which we sometimes react unthinkingly.)
Affirm - "What valid insights are there here?" (Regardless of things that might seem unsound to us.)
Critique - "What assumptions and presuppositions underlie their ideas, which narrow, impoverish or distort their insights?" (Assumptions they would acknowledge, not just those that their enemies use as ammunition against them.)
Enrich - "In what ways might their ideas be 'blessed'?" (Widened beyond their presuppositions, often by gently introducing aspects of reality that they had not yet considered.)

Note that these are both activities but more importantly also attitudes: we want to listen, we want to affirm rather than undermine, we want to critique properly, we want to enrich rather than replace or reject. In taking this attitude and taking this action, as Christians, we help fulfil God's promise to Abraham [Genesis 12:2-3] "Through you all peoples will be blessed."

Those four are for engaging academically with thinking that seeks to understand, but if we want to engage with those who wish to transform or act in the world, then we can add one more element to make it LACER:

Recommend - "What recommendations might they welcome from us?" (Bearing in mind we don't yet understand their whole situation fully.)

LACE can apply to whole paradigms (or worldviews), to individual theories, or even to individual papers that we read or conversations that we have. The examples given are for the paradigms of feminism and the Self-interested Rational Economic Actor.

The elements of LACE need not be taken in sequence, but can proceed somewhat in parallel - though usually Recommending must come after the others, and Listening must come first, though is wise to occur all the way through, so our understanding of what they are reaching for develops and deepens throughout. They are described in the following pages:

Author: Andrew Basden.

First created: 26 September 2020. Last updated: 16 January 2021 links. 18 January 2021 links; better intro to links. 7 February 2021 LACER. 29 May 2022 Questions for each. 4 October 2025 rewording some.