"Dealing with Difference"

            It’s my opinion that we as Americans no longer do a very good job of dealing with people who have different beliefs. We’ve never been great at it, but in many ways, I’ve think we’ve gotten worse.

            Perhaps it’s because of cable TV and the rise of the Internet. Perhaps it’s because we don’t get much practice at it.

            In Bill Bishop’s 2008 book The Big Sort, he argues that Americans are living in ever more segregated, homogeneous communities, with people of similar religious, social, and political beliefs choosing to live near people of similar beliefs.

            The result is that in our daily lives, we have ever fewer opportunities to interact with people whose beliefs are different than our own. I have to admit that part of me really likes this situation, but in the long run, I know it’s not good for us, and so this morning I want to talk about interacting with people whose beliefs are different from our own.

            When we think about interacting with people who have very different beliefs from us, I think we sometimes get stuck in a false dichotomy. We think our only choices are fight or flight, so to speak.

            Either we think we have to get into an argument with the other person and prove him or her wrong or we try to avoid interaction with the other person as much as possible. I suppose when we have to be in relationship with people who have different views from us, perhaps such as relatives at family gatherings, we often enter into tacit “Don’t ask/Don’t tell” agreements with them.  As Linus once said in a Charlie Brown cartoon, “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

            I think we often forget that there is another real possibility - - the possibility of having an open, honest, and civil interaction with a person whose beliefs are different.

            The other day, I was standing in a long line next to somebody. We struck up a conversation. He asked me which part of the country I was from. I told him I grew up in the Chicago suburbs but had moved out to Washington State about 11 years ago. He asked me what brought me out here. I said work. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was the minister of a Unitarian church. He asked what Unitarians believed. I gave him my standard one sentence answer. I asked him if he had any religious affiliation. He told me about the church he attended. It sounded like a theologically conservative Evangelical Christian church.

            “It seems like we have quite different beliefs,” I said.

            “It seems like we do,” he said, and that was okay with both of us.

            We went on to talk about other things, and he didn’t attack me, and I didn’t attack him, which was a good thing because it might have gotten both of us thrown out of the Cheesecake Factory.

            The idea that people with different beliefs can get along with one another is one of the most important shared values of this congregation.

            Theologically speaking, I think I’m about in the middle of the road in this congregation. Some of you, I know, believe in things that I find…well, just a little far out there, at least for me. Some of you, I know, are skeptical of anything you can’t see under a microscope or measure with a ruler. And yet, I love you all, and most of the time, we seem to do pretty well getting along with one another.

            The idea with people with different beliefs can get along with one another is also one of the ideas that this country was founded on. The official motto of the United States is “In God We Trust,” but its unofficial motto for nearly 200 years, also printed on some of our money, has been, “E Pluribus Unum,” Latin for “out of many, one” expressing the idea that there is a unity in our nation that transcends our differences.

            Kwame Anthony Appiah, is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. His parents’ 1953 interracial, intercultural marriage helped inspire the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. I heard him recently tell this story:

One of the great lessons of my childhood of which I'm extremely grateful for was that, when my grandmother got older, she moved from the bigger house that she lived in into the cottage next door, and she sold the big house to a man who was a member of the British Parliament and was very right-wing, but extremely nice and very nice to me. You know, I had a subscription to the Soviet News and the Peking Review. I was a young lefty, but he was incredibly nice to me. He was not only nice, but he was willing to talk to me about politics and he was willing to let an 18-year-old — whatever I was — young man talk to him about politics and say things that he obviously thought were, you know, and he told me what he thought. He was frank. I mean, he didn't pretend to believe things that he didn't believe. I learned a lot. I had to admit that I liked this guy even though I thought he was wrong about everything, and that was luck. It was luck that I had that experience when I was young. But I think that we could try and arrange our world so that more of us had that sort of experience more of the time and especially we could try and arrange Washington so that people could behave in the way that I'm told senators used to behave.

            But what makes these kinds of interactions possible?

            There’s a related question that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. In fact, I’ve spent years thinking about this question, and the question is, “How can so many people believe so many different things?”

            Sometimes, in a weak moment, I have heard somebody say something, and I have thought to myself, “That is the most ignorant, irrational, morally unconscionable thing I have ever heard!”

            Of course, sometimes ignorance, irrationality, and lack of morality does explain difference in belief, but I have also slowly come to learn that there are other people in this world who are just as intelligent as I am (if not more so), who are just as overly-educated as I am (if not more so), who are just as knowledgeable as I am ( if not more so), who are just as reasonable as I am (if not more so), who are just as moral as I am (if not more so), who have very different religious, social, and political beliefs than I do.

            What I want to suggest for your consideration this morning is that it’s this idea, this attitude, this stance of mutual respect - - an ideal toward which I strive but often fall short - - that is most important to having an open, honest, civil interaction with another person with different views.

            I’m not suggesting here that we all adopt a warm and fuzzy, sentimental, saccharine, subjective, and solipsistic world view where we each have our own truth, and nobody’s truth is better than anybody else’s truth.

            In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we might say to another person, “I disagree agree with your facts. I disagree with your reasoning. I suspect you have been overly affected by outside influences, and I think it’s very likely that I’m right and you’re wrong,” but as long as we also somehow say or convey, “I see you as my equal. I don’t see myself as intellectually or morally superior, and I don’t see you as intellectually or morally inferior,” then I think the possibility for honest, open, civil interaction exists.

            I say this because this is what I see as the source of a lot of our rancor in our nation - - not the questioning of one another’s facts or reasoning, but the questioning of one another’s intelligence and character.

            In addition to mutual respect, I want to suggest something else that might go a long way in our relationships with people who have views different from ours.

            Does anybody here know who Frances Kissling is? For many years, she was president of Catholics for Choice and a fierce pro-choice activist. In recent years, she also became very interested in what’s necessary in having civil dialogues with those on the other side of the abortion issue. She’s said she’s found one of the most important questions she can ask is, “What can I see that is good in the position of the other? What troubles me in my own position?”

            One of the U.S. presidents I admire most is Lincoln. Lincoln, unlike most U.S. presidents, refused to identify God’s will with his own, and more than any other U.S. president, he balanced moral certainty with moral humility. He was certain enough about his beliefs to act on them, but humble enough about his beliefs to acknowledge at least the possibility he might be wrong, even about the issue of slavery.

            Sometimes standing here in front of you, I have talked about my “finite, limited, imperfect, flawed knowledge,” and I use this hackneyed phrase to remind myself and all of us, “You know, there’s at least a possibility I might be wrong.”

            In addition to mutual respect, I want to suggest just an inkling of humility can go a long way in interacting with people with different views than us. I say “just an inkling” because I think that’s all most of us can manage, but I think even an inkling can go a long way.

            Let me suggest something else we should keep in mind.

            Sometimes when we interact with people who have different views from us, we think our goal should be persuasion - - changing the other person’s mind. Sometimes, perhaps being a bit more realistic, we think our goal shouldn’t be persuasion but finding some common ground. This is a good goal, I think, if it’s possible.

            Richard Mouw, is an evangelical Christian and the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, but he has also devoted a great deal of time and effort to interfaith dialogue. He says he has learned the following:

The fact that our kids are going to school together, that we are in the same parking lots, we are in the same supermarket aisles, we're driving the same freeways; that [shows] there's a common life. And beneath all of that, there's something that binds human beings together that politics can't create and it shouldn't be able to destroy. And we really need to be thinking as people of faith, how is it that our common life can flourish?

            I think that’s a good question. But listen to what Frances Kissling - - the former president of Catholics for Choice, said about the same topic in a recent interview:

… I think that common ground can be found between people who do not have deep, deep differences. And in politics, you can find compromise. Politics is the art of the possible. But to think that you are going to take the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Organization of Women and they are going to find common ground on abortion is not practical. It's not going to happen…But I do think that when people who disagree with each other…come together with a goal of gaining a better understanding of why the other believes what they do [emphasis mine], good things come of that…you really have to start with this first idea that there are some people — not all — who see some benefit in learning why the other thinks the way that they do. And, you know, some of it's the simplistic stuff of humanization that the person becomes a real person, not an extremist, not evilly motivated…perhaps for some people you can overcome the epithets that we have charged each other with. And that, I'm a very strong believer in.

            Regarding this, let me share what I’ve observed in this church over the years. In this church, we have a lot of people with a lot of different views about a lot of different things, and I have rarely seen people quickly change their minds about something because somebody else shared some new information with them or made an utterly convincing rational argument that changed their mind on the spot.

            But here’s what I have seen.

            I’ve seen people change their mind about political issues. I’ve seen people change their mind about social issues. I’ve seen people change their mind about religious issues.

            Usually, it has happened slowly over time.

            Usually, it has happened in relationship.

            And usually it has happened when the people haven’t felt attacked or criticized or ridiculed or shamed for their beliefs.

            Usually it has happened when the people have felt accepted and loved even if they knew other people disagreed with them.

            Usually it happened when the other people didn’t try to force their beliefs down anybody’s throats, but gently shared their own beliefs and their own reasons for believing things.

            I’ve seen it over and over again. A little bit of mutual respect, a little bit of humility, a little bit of an effort to try to understand rather than persuade, and it’s amazing what can happen.

            Here’s my hope.

            Within this congregation and within our wider world…

            Let us get angry about those things in this world we indeed should be angry about.  Let us be strong voices for what we believe is best for our own lives and for the world we share. Let our voices be especially strong when we call for compassion and justice.

            But when we meet others who see things differently, let us question their facts. Let us question their reasoning. But let us not question their character.

            Let us see within them the same worth, dignity, and potential we wish them to see in us. Let us even sometimes listen and seek to understand.

            Let us be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.

            So may it be. Amen.

The interviews I cited in this sermon were from Krista Tippet’s public radio program On Being and part of a series of interviews called The Civil Conversations Project. These interviews can be found at http://being.publicradio.org/first-person/civil-conversations/ .