Listening as Intellectual Hospitality

Listening requires us to adopt a posture of humility and a willingness to learn from those we converse with. This habit of listening is a key component of the practice of intellectual hospitality, in which students embody an attitude of openness and receptivity to the ideas of the person teaching. As a current graduate student and teacher, I have found myself in a unique position of learning how to listen well and to enter my voice into the conversation simultaneously. Many Christian students of my generation find themselves in a similar place, wondering how to embody intellectual humility and hospitality and engage with our peers in a fruitful, unifying way. From elementary classrooms to graduate-level seminars, students are asked to listen to their teachers, professors, and peers to perceive truth and acquire wisdom. As lifelong learners, even when we are not physically present in a classroom, we extend this same listening to our pastors, our favorite podcasters, and our friends. We welcome others into our conversations by listening to them and showing them that we value what they have chosen to share with us. In this way, listening is an integral part of not only hospitality but of learning itself.

Although I was raised in a Christian school and received my bachelor’s degree from a Christian university, I am attending graduate school at a public research university. My field, Rhetoric and Composition Studies, considers how students engage in writing, mainly in first-year college writing programs. We study how to teach composition courses and encourage students from diverse majors to value writing. Writing is a way of posing questions and contemplating truth. In higher education, this field is also permeated by critical theory, which considers whether truth even exists behind our questions and analyzes these questions through different lenses of identity. Largely, these lenses consider the concept of Truth to be problematic and perhaps prejudiced. These aspects of the field present a difficult problem for Christian students seeking to make contributions and participate in academia. How can we engage with those without a truth-centered worldview? Should we engage in critical theory and other contemporary movements upon graduation? Or should we run screaming?

This paper is partially a testament to my educational experience and the instructors who shaped me, and also a prediction of what new college students will face in their disciplines. There are many people in my life who warned me about the “liberal, woke brainwashing” that I would experience at a public university — but that’s not what I’ve found. What I’ve found is people who are asking good questions about how students can become better humans and love their neighbors, how we can protect natural resources, and how we can teach students to value their education. Even when the answers to these questions are not the same as my own, the exploration itself has allowed me to practice intellectual hospitality. I want to offer you a reflection on how I’ve listened and what I’ve heard. I also propose the need to teach students how to fearlessly look for the truth in contemporary movements and ideas, first by listening.

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle describes the four tropes of interpretive invention as reading, writing, speaking, and listening.¹ High school language arts or rhetoric classes go into great detail about writing, speaking, and reading, but listening is the trope often forgotten. Maybe we all assume that listening occurs without us consciously thinking about the practice. It’s assuredly a hard skill to teach, but one that, as students, we are expected to excel at. I’ve noticed, too, that the further removed from the traditional life of a student we are, the more difficult it is to be a good listener. It is harder to practice good listening when we are outside of a classroom or sanctuary. For example, we must still listen to our friends at the coffee shop, our colleagues across the hall, or even the latest video on our TikTok page.

Listening must not be confined to the lecture halls. In any conversation that we choose to engage in, our listening habits must transfer. In one of the textbooks I teach, Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers, the writers state: “The lifelong rhetorical analyst will be a cautious believer, a considerate listener, and a careful, effective speaker and writer.”² In this definition, listening is an important characteristic of an effective communicator, and we cannot communicate effectively when we fail to listen to our audiences and discern their needs. Listening allows us to “become rhetorical” — to make listening and carefully responding part of who we are. David Fleming describes the goal of a rhetoric-centered pedagogy to be “becoming a certain kind of person, one who has internalized the art of rhetoric. Rhetoric is resident in the educated person, who doesn’t so much as learn rhetoric as becomes rhetorical.”³ When we internalize the habit of listening, consideration can become our natural, first response to all forms of communication, even the most divisive ones.

So, how do we listen well? How do we practice this skill? And how will this help us navigate contemporary ideas? These questions led me to the work of Krista Ratcliffe and her book Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, and Whiteness.⁴As a work of critical theory, Ratcliffe’s work was an excellent opportunity to practice listening, even though her work is not necessarily aligned with Christian apologetics. However, her concept of rhetorical listening is an important intervention in our conversation about intellectual hospitality. It was her work that caused me to consider how we all can engage and join in critical theory conversations, not in argumentative or even apologetic ways, but from a place of genuine attention to the perspectives of others and careful listening for the truth.

Students know that all theories are just that — theories! They are explanations of how one presumes things work within our world. Even works without the label “critical theory” are works of theory! It’s important we recognize that even our stories and other forms of media bring unique ideas and theories to the table. Though they may not help us form or solidify our own Christian theory about how various things work, what these works can do is introduce us to what other people think about the topic and allow us to perceive moments of intervention.

We must remember, as we approach contemporary scholars, our own generational biases or snobbery, as C.S. Lewis would say. We regularly engage with the Romantics, the Modernists, the Platonists, and Enlightenment thinkers. But, we know that each of these movements did not directly align with Christian intellectual thought. We guide our students through the many questions these movements asked and how they sought to answer those questions in their contributions to society. We can see the beauty of Romantic poetry while still acknowledging their anti-religious sentiments and radical revolutions. We praise the virtues of Platonists and the depth of their wisdom, while simultaneously remembering their paganism. In each movement of our human history, we find elements or glimpses of truth in the questions and searchings of others.

But I would argue that we do not extend this same grace, this same listening, to the questions of contemporary thinkers. While we are in our postmodern moment, we lack the ability to distance ourselves in order to clearly distinguish what is good, true, and beautiful from contemporary works. Sure — it’s easy for us to criticize the elements we know are directly opposed to Christian thought and virtues. And rightly so! We know right from wrong. But it seems that we are throwing out many worthy questions our contemporary moment is asking because we disagree with the answers that non-Christian minds, minds who cannot fully comprehend the truth, have produced. In order to truly practice intellectual hospitality, we must be willing to engage with the questions of our contemporary moment.

We should shift our posture to one of listening first. And again, I think Ratcliffe provides a good paradigm for how this can be enacted in both our pedagogy and our daily lives. Ratcliffe’s book draws attention to the fact that progressive education does not teach students how to listen. Listening, she argues, is just as important as the other invention aspects of rhetoric.⁵ Students should know how to listen just as they know how to write, speak, and read. We have become ocular-centric, she argues, only valuing the tasks of reading and writing, without considering that listening is also a part of analyzing written texts: “For just as all texts can be read, so too, can they be listened to.”⁶And I would argue that we practice listening with our students too when we ask them to see how Christian virtues or truths exist in pagan or non-Christian texts. We’re asking them to listen for missing elements while also gleaning those truths that do exist. We fail to listen, she explains, when we fail to acknowledge that everyone’s arguments are based on their individual experiences and worldviews.⁷ This is true. We should practice the art of rhetorical listening because rhetorical listening is a way to find elements of truth within the personal narratives of others. Just as we may perceive elements of truth from listening to the stories of others, so they may perceive truth by listening to us. While only Christ is the source of absolute Truth, we, as Christians, can still acknowledge revealed “truths” that accurately reflect our understanding of God and His creation.

If we’re lifelong learners, lifelong students, it’s bold for any of us to say that we clearly understand the Truth and all of its facets and nuances. We’re always getting better at understanding truth, especially as we interact with the Great Books and Scripture. As Augustine stated, all truth is God’s truth.⁸ And every movement, from the Platonists to CRT, is looking for truth. We know the Truth, and we can help show it to others. Don’t fear the truth. Wherever it is found “it belongs to the master.”⁹ Augustine’s verbs in the rest of his statement in On Christian Doctrine are “recognize” and “acknowledge,” and also “reject” what is not true. It’s definitely harder to do this with contemporary theories because we lack the distance that helps us more clearly discern what will be lasting and what is insignificant. We must be confident that even when we listen well to others and explore perspectives, the logos remains the logos. If we’re really searching for Truth, we will find it. The Lord will reveal it to us.

It is difficult to believe that even a well-developed argumentative speech will completely shift the opinions of someone. But stories are effective in shifting the understanding of our audience as members are invited to consider another perspective in a non-confrontational way. Even after sharing stories and engaging in listening, we will likely still disagree with others. But we will “recognize that the other person is not simply wrong, but functioning within a different logic than us.”¹⁰ We can acknowledge that they do not perceive Truth. It should not surprise us when non-Christian thinkers arrive at non-Christian answers to societal problems. Without the revelation of the Truth, this will always occur.

However, we can see when good questions are being asked. Just as we listen to William Blake or Thomas Jefferson, we pay attention to moments in their work when they discovered or encountered the logos. We can even do this with thinkers such as Nietzsche or Freud, acknowledging the validity of their questions while disagreeing with their solutions. We appreciate the beauty of their language, the way they posit their questions, even when we realize that the answers may not directly align with the values and virtues we know to be true. We must approach modern critical theory in the same way. Even though critical theories may use terms in ways that sound problematic, unless we slow down and listen and really try to understand perspectives, we will never be able to market ourselves as Christian apologists and show our unique intervention. Listening may actually help us answer a lot of the questions we have about education and society and arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the logos ourselves.

Christian students should not fear listening or questioning; instead, we should welcome them! In the spirit of apologetics, we are raising our students to be thinkers. They will not be content with Sunday school answers to life’s greatest questions. They must fearlessly wrestle with the truths, themselves. But, they should not do so in solitude. Again, I am grateful for my Christian education with teachers who wanted me to wrestle but also wanted me to find and delight in the truth. My questions were always met with kindness and listening, even during my moments of confusion. We must be that for our students, both while they are in our care, and when they are further along in their journeys. My listening and questioning did not lead me away from the Truth; it only increased my confidence.

Listening must result in an action to have been true listening. In the best scenario, the audience will do something with the revelation they’ve experienced. It may inform their worldview, causing them to consider an issue in a new light. It may prompt further questioning. And often, it will provoke a response of some kind. As Ratcliffe considers it is “perhaps through listening, that people can engage more possibilities for inventing arguments that bring differences together, for hearing differences as harmony or even as discordant notes (in which case, at least, differences are discernible).”¹¹ This is a beautiful metaphor for our ability to discover differences, whether those be harmonious or discordant. When we practice listening in our classrooms, it will be much easier for our students to form a habit as they continue their journeys.

We can be confident that even when students listen well to others and explore their perspectives, the Truth remains the same. We should not be afraid for our students to participate in contemporary conversations or in the academy. We should want our students (those who we’ve trained to love learning) to pursue graduate degrees and to become as knowledgeable as they can in their fields of study if that is what God is calling them to do! We should want their voices to have influence in our contemporary world. We must express confidence in them as students that they will recognize the truth when they encounter it. But beyond our confidence in them, we must ultimately place our trust in Christ. That He will reveal Himself to them in each and every place that they may seek Him. That He will guide and direct their paths. That He will place them with people who will guide them. That He will also bring others who are seeking into their paths, that they may be “mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”¹² And that they may introduce the Truth to those who have never before witnessed it.

Notes:

1 Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, and Whiteness (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 25.

2 Longaker and Walker, Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers (London: Pearson, 2011), 7.

3 David Fleming, “Becoming Rhetorical: An Education in the Topics,” Selected Works of David Fleming (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), 93.

4 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 25.

5 Ibid., 24.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (II.18)

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 26.

12 Romans 1:12 (ESV).