Finding Uncommon Ground (John Inazu)

Tomorrow evening, The Carver Project and Christianity Today are cosponsoring a free online forum on my new book, Uncommon Ground. My friend and colleague John Hendrix will moderate.

My hope is that the work and spirit of The Carver Project reflects the values and aspirations that my collaborators and I lay out in Uncommon Ground. Two of those values are the importance of story and the importance of friendship.

When Tim Keller and I began discussing the possibility of writing a book together, we quickly settled on a compilation of stories rather than a book-length exposition of our ideas. As we note in the book’s introduction, “narrative provides a kind of surplus of meaning, revealing and enriching our understanding in ways that a list of propositions, however clear, cannot.”

We have tried to embody a similar attention to narrative at The Carver Project and in these Carver Connections.

The second overlapping value is that of friendship. As I look at the book’s cover, I see a public expression of twelve friends committed to a common enterprise. I don’t mean to overstate the relationships: not all of my fellow collaborators are close friends. But we undertook this project together, beginning with a gathering of all twelve of us in St. Louis where we shared some of the stories of our lives and our hopes for this book. And over the ensuing months, all of us challenged and encouraged one another to think and write better than we otherwise could have on our own.

I’ve felt a similar gift from my friendships at The Carver Project, which is why I am particularly excited to have John Hendrix joining us to moderate this forum. John is not only a friend; he is also one of the most gifted moderators I have seen (and I’ve seen quite a few). Come for the content and stay for moderator’s witty ad-libs. Check out the second video below of last year’s Carver Conversation to see for yourself, and we hope that many of you are able to join us on Tuesday.

John Inazu is The Carver Project’s executive director and the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis.

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