Summary of Generous Orthodoxy PDF

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Prof. Rob Mawyer Summary of “Generous Orthodoxy” by Malcolm Gladwell In the podcast “Generous Orthodoxy” that was recorded by Malcolm Gladwell, he was talking about what it means to be generous and orthodox and how hard it is to have them both at the same time. He mentioned different situations and applied his concept of Generous Orthodoxy. He said “to be orthodox is to be committed to tradition and to be generous is to be open to change.” That is exactly what Gladwell means by generous orthodoxy. He explained it clearly in two different examples: Chester Wenger and the students of Princeton University. Gladwell speaks about how Chester Wenger ended up writing the letter that went viral. He named it “an open letter to my beloved church.” Chester Wenger is ninety eight years old man who dedicated most of his life to the Mennonite church that he belongs to. He is so intelligent and interested in studying the Bible. So, he spends ten years of his life working as a pastor for the Mennonite church taking over most of the preaches in the church. Gladwell described how good the Mennonite Church is to its members. They help everyone who belongs to church whenever they need that help in any bad situation they get to in their life. For example, one of the church members is a farmer, for some reason his farm was on fire and almost everything in the farm burned to ashes. Everyone in the Mennonite church regardless to their level of education or their jobs came up to help rebuilding whatever was burned in the farm, another example. When one of the Mennonite church members decided to buy a house from another church member, but they need to fix the septic system of the house which is one of the most expensive things to fix in a house. The church helped to solve that problem between the 1

buyer and the seller because of their belonging to that church. So, the money was gathered by the church to fix the septic system. Everything that was done by the church in helping other people is a really noble work. They stood for a belief which says “we are all in this together.” This is how being orthodox is applied to the members of the Mennonite church. It becomes a part of their traditions that they are committed to. The Mennonite Church Community have strict rules. They believe same sex marriage is a big sine so they forbid it. Because of Chester Wenger’s generosity he was put in a position that made him go against his church in what they believe about the same sex marriage. Phil who is Chester Wenger’s homosexual son. He came up to his father and told him how he was feeling about being attracted to males not females and he was going to start dating others guys because that’s how he feels. The Mennonite church forbids same sex marriage. So, when they knew about what was going on with Phil, they dismissed him from the church and he wasn’t a member of the church anymore. Chester Wenger wasn’t happy with what the church did to his son because the church who said “we are all in this together” wasn’t with him this time and they didn’t even bother themselves to think about helping his family or accepting what’s happening. Instead they split his family and let him down. Chester Wenger was encouraging his son to keep his traditions and his faith strong, not to give up on Jesus. Gladwell mentioned that as an example of holding traditions and being orthodox. Later when some churches legalized the same sex marriage Phil and Steve wanted to get married, but in this moment it was hard for Chester Wenger to choose between his son and the church. It is really tough to be generous and orthodox at the same time. He was strongly orthodox to his church for too long, but when they wanted to split his family he felt that it was the

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time to be more generous than orthodox and accept that change because he was never going to let his son down. Chester Wenger knew by signing the marriage certificate he was going to lose his position in the church. This is how he was ready and open to change. This is what it means to be generous. After all that he started to write the letter to his church “An open Letter to My Beloved Church.” His letter was delivering a peaceful message to his church that he and his family still have their faith in Jesus because of their orthodox. The decision he made was because of a change he accepted for his generosity and not to let the church split his family. This is exactly where Malcolm Gladwell completes the structure of the idea of Generous Orthodoxy. Princeton University is another subject Malcolm Gladwell talks about because it shares similar problems as the ones with Chester Wenger. The whole argue is about taking off Woodrow Wilson’s name from the graduate class. He was the president of the university also he served two terms as the United States president. Wilson was so racist against black people, he supported the segregation between black and white. So, black students of Princeton University wants to take down Wilson’s name because of the way he was treating black people. A college student should feel that the campus is like their home but when Wilglory Tanjong who’s one of the protestors walks around the campus, she sees those huge pictures of Wilson everywhere. So, she would feel this university was meant for white men as Malcolm said “rich white guys’ names are all over the place.” for example, the Firestone library, that’s the rich white guy who started Firestone tires, and the name of John D Rockefeller who was the richest whit guy ever. As a respond to the protestors they decided to make a town hall meeting to make a decision about taking down Wilson’s name or no, they discussed lots of opinions. The main point

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was to let everyone know that real harm was caused to people. Wilson said “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit,” that’s Wilson’s idea about treating black people and this is what segregation means to him, while it is so bad and inhuman to treat people like that because of the color of their skin or their race. After that town hall meeting the Wilson committee announced that they’re not going to take Wilson’s name down, to no avail the protestors didn’t get what they asked for. The committee were trying to calm things down by saying “at the end of the day what we learned was that Wilson was complicated and flawed individual.” Malcolm Gladwell’s point of view about how these protestors can attract a better attention and affect in a gentle way when asking for that change. Gladwell opposes the protestors in the way they asked for change, they couldn’t take Wilson’s name down because they were angry and passionate. He thinks that they should’ve shown how much they care about the place that they are in, by telling them that we’re not coming back to Princeton next semester unless you change the name this is generosity mixed with orthodox. “They will accept generosity only if it comes with some orthodox,” and these students should learn to respect the body they are trying to heal. Overall Malcom Gladwell with these two examples presents a clear idea about generous orthodoxy, that if the community is committed to some traditions and they want to make some change. They’ll have a better chance in achieving that change if they approach it with generosity mixed with some orthodox.

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