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Learning to Listen, Ready to Talk: A Pilgrimage Toward Peacemaking

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Harold Heie taught at The King's College and Gordon College, and was chief academic officer at Northwestern (Iowa) and Messiah Colleges, before becoming the Founding Director of the Center for Christian Studies at Gordon College, retiring in 2003. In this book he summarizes what he learned in more than forty years in the world of Christian academe.

In the first half he sketches his career, describing "seeds"--germs of thought--that were planted through his time at each institution, as well as four sets of what he calls "lived beliefs", which amount to a personal ethic oriented around the idea that the Christian's calling is to participate in the work of God, who is restoring all things in Christ. This conviction leads him to seek to foster restorative conversations among those who disagree, but who will, through thoughtful conversation, come not only to a better undestanding of each other's convictions, but also to the realization that they actually agree on some things.

He addresses practical issues, such as evangelicals (he calls himself a "chastened evangeliclal") and politics, the Church and homosexuality, evaluating competing claims to knowledge (the title of ch. 18), justice and peace (ch. 20-21), and Christian higer education (ch. 22-23).

His purpose is not merely inter-Christian dialogue, however, but respectful conversations between Christians and those of other faiths ... or those who claim no faith at all, based on the conviction that the restorative power of the Gospel of Christ begins when Christians love their neighbour as themselves--love them in such a way that they are willing to listen to them in order to learn from and understand them, not in order to convert them. If the world is indeed the result of the creative act of a personal God, then we should expect that the same issues should deeply concern every human being, even if his or her belief system leads to different expressions of those concerns.

This book will confront and challenge, and encourage, everyone who reads it with a mind to learn to listen ... in order to talk. I recommend it most highly.