Coming to understanding: building a web of civil conversation

We are caught in an extremely dangerous circle of mistrust.

The depth of political polarization is obvious, but what is really frightening is that people on each side now use the other as an automatic indicator of what’s right and wrong: If they’re for it, then I must be against it. These emotions feed on each other. They can reinforce increasingly irrational behavior. It’s a dynamic that historically has often led to internal violence and external wars.

How can trust be restored? Many people nowadays are attracted to notions of “dialogue” or “conversation” – as in a conversation about race, about the environment, and so on. This is a moment at which such conversations could have a great impact. A large segment of the country – my estimate is at least 50% – has not yet dug in to the ideological polarities. If we don’t do something, they may get pulled into the walled camps of the ideologues. But for the present, when people from the other side engage them respectfully, they can listen and understand, and often find that they share more than they expected. They can even work together on some projects.

Such experiences and relations can be extremely powerful in cutting through the vicious circle of mistrust. People can begin to build visions of shared futures and to work together towards it. They are less likely to accept tribal groupthink, and thus less likely to be be driven towards violence.

But how could it work?

Government is clearly the wrong sponsor now for such bridge-building. A locally-sponsored network of conversations working outside the political institutions  could have a much greater effect.

Churches might be the most effective organizing centers. There is no other institution so deeply embedded in so many communities, and crossing so many ideological lines. In recent decades many churches have engaged in interfaith dialogues, including Southern Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews, Muslims, and even modern megachurches. A coalition of such churches, by sponsoring a web of conversations, could be a profoundly constructive force in healing the wounds of our polarized politics.

There has been a great deal of progress in the last half century on organizing cross-group discussions. They have focused on three kinds of conversation:

• understanding: exchanging perspectives, learning about each other’s pasts through stories, sharing experiences
• visioning: building shared images of the future through exploring possible scenarios
• collaborating: reaching judgments and commitments that everyone can agree to, and acting on them.

Together, these three sets of practice can deepen relations and build a sense of community among highly diverse actors. Getting people of different beliefs in a room; having them talk to each other about their backgrounds and experiences; working to build visions of the future that they can share; defining some tasks that they can work on together – that could open space to help rebuild a sense of unified destiny and cooperation.