Extremists may get better ratings, but some politicians and theologians are seeking the middle ground on an increasingly polarized spectrum of liberal and conservative viewpoints. Brian McLaren says the world is "hyperpolarized" in his article in Sojourners magazine this month and points out the oversimplification in viewing issues through an either/or lense.

Charles Colson also writes this week in Christianity Today about how neither liberals nor conservatives have it quite right when it comes to justice. He says biblical justice calls not only for the liberal solution of welfare and social reform, but also the conservative solution of punishment.

And on the homosexuality issue, at least one church is calling the ball on the underlying issue of Scriptural interpretation. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, called for a global, ecumenical council on the Christian interpretation of Scripture. In his report Aug. 9 at the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA Hanson called for the Pope, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, and the Anglican and Lutheran Communions to come together to address a church identity crisis due to the dominance of a "fundamentalist-millenialist-apocalypticist reading of Scripture."

Blaming one interpretation or another for the Church identity crisis may not be the point, however. Most Americans have no interpretation of Scripture impacting their lives at all. The latest Barna survey of 1,002 adults nationwide indicates that only 5 percent of Americans claim a biblical worldview. In spite of the fact that most Americans consider themselves to be Christian, very few adults base their moral decisions on the Bible, and surprisingly few believe that absolute moral truth exists.

So if not the Bible, on what do Americans base their moral decisions? According to the study, some 54 percent said they use specific principles or standards they believe in. Another group (24 percent) simply does what feels right or comfortable. The rest are conflict avoiders and base their decisions on pleasing people or on whatever choice will create the best outcome.

And I couldn't leave off the one-side-or-the-other blog topic today without including the debate recorded this week in Time magazine that laid out the conflict between evolution and Christianity. Of course that wasn't news, but the fact that President Bush sided with the intelligent design theorists, created a cover story that reinforced the polarity.

Back to the middle ground thing. McLaren's Sojourners article called on every side to forget about the horizontal spectrum in favor of the vertical.

"Jesus' rhetorical strategies made Jesus something far more valuable than a bridge between ‘left and right,'" McLaren writes. "They showed him to be a bridge by which both left and right could come to God, and to God's truth. That, I hope, can be our higher calling today in these divisive, polarized times. May God help us."