Wired Word Lesson of the Week
Topic for Sunday, September 14, 2025:
“Politically Opposed Professors Become Best Friends”: For our lesson we will look at the story of two politically opposed professors becoming best friends. The relationship between Robert George and Cornel West gives us an opportunity to discuss what it means to be truth-seekers, truth-speakers and people who show Christian unity in a time of division.
In the News
Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the September 14th bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:
Robert George, a professor at Princeton University, is a devout Catholic and a strong conservative. Cornel West, on the other hand, is a Baptist, a professor at Union Theological Seminary and a passionate progressive. One is white and one is black, and they sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum. You might not guess that they are close friends.
But, according to Deseret News, the two are united by the challenge of being "determined truth-seekers" and "courageous truth-speakers." When they first met, they were both teaching at Princeton. West was asked to interview a professor for a campus magazine, and he chose George, whom he knew only slightly. A half-hour interview turned into a four-hour debate on philosophy, politics, literature and faith. "From the first moment -- some people talk about chemistry -- we had magic," George says.
The two decided to co-teach a freshman seminar called "Adventures of Ideas" based on 12 great books. West picked six books, as did George. Students read Augustine's Confessions, John Stewart Mill, C.S. Lewis, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, among others.
Over two decades, the seeds of the interview and freshman seminar grew into what Deseret News calls "a deep friendship and an ongoing dialogue grounded in mutual love and respect. West and George know each other's families, co-teach, travel, pray together, and now share a recently published book Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division."
"Their friendship is a counter to so much of what ails our public life," said Dean Thomas Hibbs at a Baylor University event in 2018, marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. Baylor arranged the discussion of King's legacy, featuring George and West, as a display of brotherhood from two people of widely different perspectives.
"We're a couple of guys with some pretty strong opinions, but we recognize nobody has a monopoly on the truth," said George at the Baylor event. "We have something to learn from each other, even across the lines of religious or theological or philosophical or political difference."
According to Religion News Service, West and George comfortably took turns highlighting how King had crossed divides in search of his goal of a "beloved community." They agreed that the emphasis on King should be on his role as a Christian minister, though his civil rights activism is also grounded in his being a product of the black community.
"The last thing we ever want to do with Brother Martin is view him as some isolated icon on a pedestal to be viewed in a museum," said West. "He's a wave in an ocean, a tradition of a people for 400 years so deeply hated, but taught the world so much about love and how to love."
The two scholars noted that King was influenced by the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas, the Hindu leader Mohandas Gandhi and the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. But this deep reservoir of thought did not lead to broad appeal in King's lifetime. George said that King was criticized not only by white racist segregationists but also by black activists who did not agree with his commitment to nonviolence.
Recently, West and George appeared at a speaking series in Boston. Said Brandon Terry, a professor at Harvard University who moderated the August 2025 conversation, "Cornell West and Robert George have given us in their friendship and in their teaching a luminous model of what it means to live one of the most urgent but neglected dimensions of democratic life -- the discipline of truth-seeking across difference."
West said that he often gets asked why "a conservative vanilla Republican" would spend time with a "chocolate hang-loose Baptist," who is on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. "What I love about this brother is that even when he is wrong -- that he's honest," West said.
West argued that many contemporary public figures posture for attention or career gain, while ignoring honesty and decency. "What happened to character? Character is destiny," West said, citing the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. West said that his friendship and collaboration with George reflects his broader calling to live faithfully, defending what is true and serving "the least of these," even when it comes at personal cost.
George is concerned that we are living today in an "age of feeling." He warns that when feelings are not disciplined by reason, they can lead us astray." In Boston, he said, " If we are guided by our emotions, we're guided by our feelings, we're guided by these subjective features of ourselves, we have no very reliable source of truth."
For George, reason is a steadier guide than emotion: "My belief is that the least reliable way to find the truth is to consult your untutored feelings." In the relationship between emotion and reason, he noted, it is reason that should be in the "driver's seat." George called for a return to the "medieval ideal," in which faith and reason work together.
West added that today is not only an age of feeling but an age of nihilism. "Nihilism is the concrete experience of lovelessness and meaninglessness, touchlessness and not being able to cultivate the capacity to love one's neighbor," West said. Without strong institutions, cultural virtues and deep values to curb greed and indifference, West said, societies risk becoming nihilistic, governed by a "might makes right" mentality. He and George remain good examples of how people can focus on the truth and have fruitful disagreements in a time of division.
More on this story can be found at these links: