My parents gave our family an outing to a Red Sox home game as a Christmas present. They were playing the Mets in inter-league play, and we grew up as Mets fans.
At one point someone asked who was rooting for the Mets and a few family members raised their hands. One or two said instead "I cheer for great plays". One person wore a Phillies hat to the game.
I promise you, we did not try to understand each other. And I promise you, all those other people were rooting for the wrong team.
Structured Conversations
We asked on Monday if we wanted healing for our nation.
I do want our nation to be made well. While I take part in protests and fund lawyers and write letters to try to save us in this moment I also believe we must figure out how to cure our the underlying illness.
As a doctor must ask about symptoms, but then goes beyond the symptoms, we must not focus on what people thought was the solution, but on .what problem they were trying to solve. We must talk to people who don't have the same views as we do. We have to get at their underlying needs, which means we must build enough of a relationship that people will be willing to share.
Who should do this? I propose that Church, that our existing congregations, are distinctive in our ability to share with people who are politically different from us. We connect over worship and bible study and coffee hour and communion every week. Christianity calls us to love our neighbors, and our enemies, and ourselves. Regardless of our political views we all believe this message, which is a great foundation for making the effort to understand each other.
Obviously this is not about the people who are so deep in conservative Christianity they aren't even sure we are called to love. These conversations should happen with people in our purple and light blue, and light red mainline congregations. That is who we must talk to. Listen to.
Our talking must be about more than how delicious Marge's coffee cake turned out. We must ask about more than recipes.
For many of us the fear is that it will turn into "That Thanksgiving" when Uncle Mark threw the fork and stomped off in anger. These are not conversations that happen after a few glasses of wine, nor with lots of bystanders adding comments.
Take advantage of the many organizations that provide training on how to have difficult conversations. I have links to two of these below.
These conversations must be structured, naming both the topic and the strategy. The topic should be narrow enough keep the conversation focused. The strategy is active listening.
Plan the discussion for a specific time and place. To attend, participants must agree to be part of the conversation -- no observers. Set-up a time to talk and a time to listen. Practice the skill of listening to understand, rather than listening to respond. Don't identify inconsistencies or inaccuracies. Listen for both their viewpoint, and the emotions behind it.
When you are in the listening role you must be listening to understand; don't look for ways to show how they are wrong nor identify their inconsistencies. You want to understand both what is their viewpoint, and what is the emotional foundation for that view. What happened in their life that got them to where they are? Affirm their experiences, even if you would have a different learning from them.
While the long range goal is identifying commonalities, in the first conversation you want to build relationship and make sure they feel heard and understood. You want to learn about their underlying fears and passions. It is not honest listening if your end goal is to change their mind. If you can, assume that there is something they say that will change your mind, or at least give you a new understanding.
I served a church where people were worried about immigrants who failed to learn English. It was a particularly odd concern for a congregation that had had it's last Swedish language service only thirty years earlier. I made that point. And that is the last I learned about their fear. I won the argument and lost the battle. They certainly never talked about immigration with me again -- and that is not because they changed their views. They had learned that it wasn't safe to discuss their fears with me.
You will want to have several listening sessions. This is a long term strategy. You can't move to the question of what we have in common until you have built a diverse community.
Once you have a group that can really hear each other, everyone will start noticing things you agree on. One strategy is to meet in pairs, make a list of points you agree on, and then combine the pairs into quads, adjust the list as necessary, then meet in groups of 8 to again find agreement. Share what you've found with the whole.
At this stage it is great if you can find a project you want to do in support of whatever common beliefs you found. For example, you might find that everyone in your group agrees that immigrants who came here legally should have the ability to learn English, together you can get started helping that to happen. A white man I know thinks we talk too much about race. He was interested in learning what he could do to stop a neighbor from telling him racist jokes. We ended up with some people who are "anti-woke" at our racial justice Active Bystander training because we made sure to include strategies for dealing with bullying.
We are, somehow, one in Christ. That is what church is about. We can make our spiritual lives deeper by looking for how we live out our Christian life in conversation with people who think very differently about the world.
Have you engaged any of the hot topics of the day at your congregation? How did it go? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
Braver Angels is a group aiming to help groups to talk across the red/blue divide.
Living Room Conversations provides guides for how to have small group conversations on controversial topics.
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