Contents
Fractured Dance
Foreword
by Herbert W. Simons 13
Series Preface 16
Series
Editor’s Foreword by J. Denny Weaver 17
Author’s
Preface 21
Acknowledgments 25
Introduction: Dreaming across the Divide 27
1 Searching
through Gadamer for a “We”
that Dances with Difference • 37
Introduction 37
Literature and Cultural/Mennonite Contexts 43
Gadamer’s Hermeneutics 50
Difference and commonality: A
creative tension
Key Gadamerian terms
Longing for completion
Text or person?
Not knowing but being grasped by truth
Shadow hermeneutics
Being possessed
Application
Power
2 Effective History and Mennonites
• 58
Justifying a Starting Point 58
The Effective History Producing Franconia Conversations:
Defining the Scope of Effective History 60
Seeking the Common Accord Effective History Produces 62
Mennonite tradition
Emphasis on the community or
body of Christ
Grace: forgiveness or transforming power?
Traditionalism versus communalism
The body of Christ
The history of Germantown Mennonite
Church
The Bible
The Purdue 87 statement
3 Dance: Characteristics Of
Gadamerian Conversation • 81
The Prejudices in Play 81
Categories of homosexual prejudices
Categories of Gadamerian
Conversation 84
Assessing Gadamer and utility,
normativity, ambiguity
Effective history producing commonality
Goodwill highlighting of prejudices as yours and mine
Awareness of finitude
Openness
Openness through prayer
Openness through play
Risking prejudices in relationship
Presence
Journey
Growth
Our growth
Their growth
Talk versus performance
Relationship for its own sake
Analyzing the Third-way Statement
120
Effective history producing
commonality
Goodwill highlighting of prejudices as yours and mine
Awareness of finitude
Openness
Risking prejudices in relationship
4 Fractured Dance: Characteristics
of Non-Gadamerian Conversation • 128
Introducing Conversation Failures 128
The Categories of Failure 130
Effective history producing
commonality
Antagonistic highlighting of prejudices as yours and
mine
Closure
Certitude
Severing prejudices
Accepting then refusing presence and its questions
Severing relationships unless they grow
Coercion
Mixed Failure and Success
5 Awkward Dance: Complexities
and Ambiguities of Applying Gadamer • 145
The Subject Matter 146
Delimiting Effective History 148
Effective history when the data are
silent
Effective history and the macrolevel
Managing Ambiguity 152
Conversation 155
Application challenges related to
research and methodology
Implications of a non-mediated application of Gadamer
Conversation as archetypal model
Applying Gadamer in relation to
author intention
Applying Gadamer to psychological and relational
dynamics
The Relationship of Openness and
Truth 171
Managing prejudices violated by
enlargement
Gadamerian openness to the closed
Presence as openness of the closed
Gadamer and relativism
How Gadamer avoids relativism
Implications of Gadamer’s vision of communal
truth
6 Who Leads? Challenges of Applying
Gadamer
Related to Organizational Communication and Power •
187
Organizational Communication 187
Moderator roles
Organizational dynamics
Power 193
Gadamer, organizations, and power
Gadamer, society, and power
The risk of Gadamerian
pseudoinnocence
Gadamer’s implicit theory of power
Why for Gadamer power is sometimes the wrong
focus
Relationality of
commonality
Not unmasking but being captivated
Openness
Play
Addressing Rhetoric Versus
Hermeneutics 216
Conclusion: The Value of Foregrounding the Dance 220
7 Concluding Dance: A “We”
Brightened, Shadowed, and Dappled • 222
Shining We 223
A normative vision
The commonalities of effective history
Characteristics of the shining we
Shadowed We 229
Failures of conversation to be
Gadamerian
Closed openness: a Gadamerian failure
Possibilities for Further Research
231
Areas of inapplicability
Finding the right level of abstraction
Some specifics of potential further research
Allowing the object to object
Dappled We 236
Epilogue: One Modest Application 239
Appendixes
A: The Study and its Methods 245
B: The Progression Of Categories 252
C: Draft Proposal for a Germantown Mennonite Church
Relationship With Franconia Mennonite Conference 259
Notes 263
Bibliography 279
The Index 299
The
Author 304
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