“[A]s far as I’m concerned, he can go to hell.”
— President Jimmy Carter on Jerry Falwell, Sept. 1986
Dialogue across social and political lines often seems to get a bad rap these days. I wish I had counted how many of my social media peers had gleefully announced over the past two to three months that they were unfriending anyone they saw supporting the candidate they opposed or views they deemed reprehensible. It was probably a dozen.
There seems to be a prevailing sense that dialogue just doesn’t work anymore — that “you just can’t talk to those people.” In a recent New York Times article, Wajahat Ali recounted his efforts over the past four years to dialogue with his ideological adversaries, and ultimately instructed readers not to “waste your time reaching out […] [I] refuse to spend any more time trying to understand and help the architects of my oppression.” That perspective feels pretty widespread these days.
Part of me wonders if this is all just the inevitable result of living in an extremely pluralistic society. At some point, does the bewildering array of opinions swirling around us from infancy become so difficult to navigate that we just stop listening to people we disagree with? Are “fundamentalisms” perhaps just the natural response — a kind of psychic coping mechanism — when the cultural center cannot hold?
I hope not. With every degree of separation, it becomes easier for us to dehumanize one another. It would seem to me like a dangerously slippery slope to write off vast swaths of the population.
It’s also counterproductive. As Daniel Cox has illustrated, “When Americans are more distanced from society, they become untethered to local and national institutions and are less invested in their continuing function.” David Brooks points out that, among “those awash in anxiety and alienation,” “conspiracy theories have [paradoxically] become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century.” These sorts of trends suggest, of course, that maybe shaming and shunning aren’t the best tactics, politically speaking. (Ya think?)
If you’ve ever heard the message of Jesus, you might suppose that Christians would be better than average at talking to people they disagree with. Sadly, the historical record indicates otherwise.
But perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s certainly a grave need for more across-the-divide grace, and one place that we as churchgoers can start to reach out to folks we may disagree with — in fact, perhaps the most meaningful place — is within our own faith tradition (intrafaith dialogue).
There’s a fascinating chapter from longtime Harvard Divinity School professor Harvey Cox’s 2009 book The Future of Faith that deals with the importance and challenge of intrafaith dialogue. Cox begins by making a more obvious point about interfaith dialogue — that the world is so interconnected and culturally heterogeneous today that cooperation across religious lines has in some sense become a matter of survival. We are “all each other’s neighbors” now, he explains, so we will either learn to live alongside each other in peace or destroy one another.
But Cox then points to something much closer to home for most of us: the need for more intrafaith dialogue, which may well be more urgent. Christianity itself has become dramatically more heterogeneous over the past century: “In 1900, fully 90 percent of Christians lived in Europe or the United States. Today 60 percent live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America, and that figure will probably rise to 67 percent by 2025.” That mind-boggling global diversity means that intrafaith interactions in general are only going to become more common and important to the work of the Church moving forward.
Yet, in the U.S. context, the particular kind of intrafaith dialogue that Cox identifies as most pressing is actually within predominantly “Western” versions of Christianity but across theological and political divides, which are, to state the obvious, where the really explosive fault lines lie.
It’s probably not a stretch to say that most of us American churchgoers have become so politicized that our religious beliefs and priorities are more shaped by our politics than the other way around, something that’s true of both the religious right and left.
In this highly politicized context, Cox argues, interfaith dialogue is not actually that meaningful, because it’s basically just liberals talking to other liberals. During his years traveling the globe doing interfaith work in the ‘70s, Cox became “increasingly aware that the people I met were much like me. They belonged to the ‘dialogue wing’ of their traditions. The other wing was always missing.”
According to Cox, “fundamentalists in every tradition […] vociferously oppose interfaith dialogue,” which can be incredibly frustrating. But the response of liberals is often just as unhelpful:
Christians who take part in dialogue strongly prefer to converse with sympathetic Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. They rarely try to communicate with the most refractory wing within their own camp. […] What dialogically oriented Christian would not rather spend an afternoon with the Dalai Lama than with Pat Robertson?
Of course, in conversations between people from differing [faiths] […] differences always come up. But the differences seem to be at a safe remove, since the participants are not a part of the “family.” […] This is not the case, however, with the discrepancies that inevitably arise [within one’s own faith tradition.] In these encounters, things get tense, tempers often flare, and people sometimes stomp out of the room. More seems to be at stake. Many people try and then just give up.
But if we give up on engaging other wings in our own traditions, we’re not changing much. If anything, we’re making problems worse, as the various subgroups only become “more isolated and truculent.”
Recognizing this conundrum in the early 80s, Cox decided to do something unthinkable today: He invited Jerry Falwell to visit Harvard. Of course, “Some faculty and students were aghast […] They strenuously opposed inviting him to the campus and warned me against the danger of ‘giving him a platform.’” But Cox managed to make it happen, and while Falwell’s visit was certainly “a tumultuous event,” it was also mostly civil and extremely well-attended. A few years later, he tried the same approach with faculty from Pat Robertson’s Regent University, and had similar success.
Ultimately, Cox concludes,
The idea that “you just can’t talk to those people” was [thus] not necessarily true. […] Admittedly, this kind of intrafaith dialogue is often more difficult than interfaith dialogue. Both sides understandably tend to avoid it […] But the result is that tensions between the wings within each tradition deepen […] Sibling rivalry is the nastiest kind. In the first murder Cain killed Abel over the proper way to sacrifice to the God they both worshiped.
To me, at least on a theoretical level, Cox’s across-the-divide approach is inspiring and as vital as ever. In our current political climate, the stakes for such dialogue within Christianity are certainly high, but the opportunities are great.
It’s also a chance to practice something Christ himself models repeatedly in the Gospels. As a Jew, his heated encounters with Pharisees and Sadducees offer excellent examples of intrafaith dialogue done right. Instead of avoiding his counterparts, or say, trashing them on Facebook, Jesus engages them with wit and knowledge of shared scriptures. He doesn’t talk past them but appeals to them as fellow Jews — thus setting a standard for the rest of us.
And yet, if I’m honest, I’d probably find it difficult to stomach an hour-long lecture from Falwell were he still alive — let alone justify paying the speaker’s fee. That kind of “dialogue” sounds nauseating. These days, I struggle to discuss hot-button issues with my own (literal) family.
But maybe “dialogue” doesn’t have to mean something official. Maybe we don’t need to go straight to the heart of our differences — sexuality issues, biblical inerrancy, eschatology, etc. It might be better if we didn’t. Maybe “dialogue” can mean something more basic — just talking to people about nothing in particular, breaking bread, sharing space, working together. Maybe we just need ways to cross paths with the other wings in the church. When COVID ends, why not picnic with churches across the spectrum? Or host joint choral concerts? Maybe build a Habitat house together? That all might at least freshen the air.
There’s a great scene from the first season of Modern Family where Jay Pritchett is struggling to connect with his new stepson Manny. Gloria, Jay’s new wife, decides to make them work together to install a ceiling fan. “In Colombia,” she says, “there’s a saying: if you have two stubborn burros that don’t like each other, you tie them to the same cart. The ceiling fan is the cart.” The tactic immediately sparks conflict, but of course, by episode’s end, the pair have gained a better understanding of one another.
I’m a stubborn burro. I’m writing this post to myself as much as anyone else. I know I need to work on connecting to people I disagree with, even if just for “ceiling fan” activities, and the most natural and important place I could do that may be within my own faith tradition, perhaps my own family.
Dialogue likely won’t heal many of our deepest divisions, but it will at least humanize our adversaries. The destructive power of ideology is that it turns complex human beings into tribal symbols. Dialogue tends to remind us of the complexity — and need for forgiveness — we all have in common. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of the Christian faith, so let’s start there. Christ lived and died for us all, y’all. I think we can at least talk to each other.
COMMENTS
5 responses to “Stubborn Burros: Why Intrafaith Dialogue May Be More Important Than Interfaith Dialogue”
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This is top-notch content! So thoughtful.
Thanks CJ 😉
Ben, thanks for this perspective. I find it really appealing and challenging at the same time. I have a couple of thoughts:
When people advocate for this kind of dialogue and relationship-building with ideological opposites or opponents, I perceive that their frustration is not with the content of people’s disagreements, but with the fact that disagreement exists at all. Thus, they want to foster a world where people stay in relationship to one another and the “air is freshened,” as you say. But from the perspective of people who are challenging the status quo, that’s maddening. The content does matter. Cox may be proud that he invited Falwell to Harvard, but to what end? What was the point?
More to the point: If nobody changes their mind, did it really matter at all? You may say so, but plenty of people disagree these days, and for good reason: if nobody changes their mind, we’re left with the same old power struggle as before, so they get cynical and say “why bother?” Better to build energy among allies than waste it on those who will never change (cf. Ali’s article). I would love to hear more about what Cox felt the purpose of inviting Falwell to Harvard was. Falwell certainly didn’t change his mind, and went on to become even more of an actively harmful reactionary later in the 80s during the AIDS crisis, among many other examples.
Perhaps that’s the crux of the argument here: you argue – and I think I agree – that dialogue shouldn’t be about changing someone else’s mind, but about staying in relationship to one another. These days, though, many Americans are wondering what the point is. Changing people’s minds is the only way to, for example, change political outcomes. I’m torn, because I think of the gay rights movement having astonishing success in changing people’s minds precisely because they engaged in dialogue with their opponents. Decades later, it has paid off in real political change, because people saw the facts in evidence – gay people are your neighbors, fellow church-goers, community leaders, etc. – and changed their minds. It has made the world tangibly better for gay men like me and many others.
But now, we’re in a deep epistemic crisis, where seemingly half the country is impermeable to factual evidence that might change the mind of an otherwise rational person. I may agree with you in principle that we shouldn’t give up on dialogue, but I cannot fault people for doing so. It seems impossible for one person to counter the disinformation media machine of right wing politics, one that is now threatening to tank the foundations of our democracy to avoid its lies being laid bare to its base.
I sympathize with Wajahat Ali in his article. I believe his efforts to have been sincere, and his frustration is palpable and real. And I am certain that his last paragraph, keeping the door open to Trump supporters to reach out to him, concludes with such an earth-scorchingly smug epigram (“Ahead of them”) that it all but ensures none ever will.
Dialogue may “humanize our adversaries,” but no one seems especially interested in that right now.
Man alive, great questions Pierre. I resonated with them.
Just this morning I was leading a handful of our baseball players through a lifting workout and several older adults in the facility were not wearing masks (the facility requires them). For about two weeks I had said nothing, thinking about how to best approach it. I tried to talk to one gentleman about it and as you can imagine it went about as poorly as possible. I found myself frustrated because if some of my athletes get it, many of whom are on the basketball team, their season could get shut down. Add to that I feel about 98% sure I got it in that same weight room when masks weren’t required, and it heightened my frustration that a meaningful dialogue couldn’t be had for the sake of our high school athletes.
I also connected deeply with Ben’s thoughts because I’m an extremely judgmental and critical person. I rarely look at people as a human being, but as an idea to be corrected. It doesn’t even seem to matter that I recognize this. Talking/engaging with those people has been very healing at helping me see them as a human being.
I appreciate both you and Ben and wish we could have a fireside chat of our own to think through this complexity! Thanks for the comments!
I truly believe that the Church is the collective people, not the often self professed or appointed leaders. The power of the People of Faith (83%
worldwide, and being lifted up as more of a unified Reality in 2020); if we are engaging in Intrafaith conversations and common acts of Charity and Forgiveness, shared Christian hopes and dreams… with respect for all Faiths, as an individual within the Church we have been Led to…not doctrinated institutions… we will see the Power of God’s Love, and work, in Unity, towards His Peace in this
greatly suffering world. ????