How to Disagree with a Friend

Rev. Douglas Taylor

September 15, 2024

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/E7u-Nl8y-vc

I wonder how many of you did not watch the recent presidential debate (Sept 10, 2024) back on Tuesday night. If you didn’t watch it, I’m guessing you’ve heard about it, picked up some news or conversations about the debate.

Do you know who won? I’m pretty sure I know who won. But I’ve learned the answer depends on who you ask. Generally, the winner was whoever you were hoping would win. This is one of the deeply frustrating features of modern politics. Not only are we divided in our politics, we seem to be divided in our recognition of reality.

As a side note I will notice that what we witnessed last Tuesday, while billed as a debate, was not in fact a debate. It was entertainment. A real debate has rules and judges, and the candidates would actually debate their policy differences with facts, reason, and evidence. But that is not what happens in what we call presidential debates now. All of which is simply more fuel for the division among us politically.

I keep hearing the presidential race is tight, it could go either way, the point spread is easily within the margin of error for a standard poll, it’s too close to call. In other words, the division is not overstated by a vocal minority who happens to have seized a modicum of airtime. The division runs deep through the country. 

It can be hard to engage with people who have an opposing view. And I am not talking about internet trolls and random people you may bump into in the real world. I’m talking about friends and family members with whom you disagree. It has grown harder in the current divisive climate to have an open conversation or reasoned disagreement with a friend. We’ve grown hostile and are pushing the extremes.

And I want to pause for a moment and clarify the scope of my invitation today with a James Baldwin quote. James Baldwin, writer and civil rights activist who died over 35 years ago. This past summer would have been James Baldwin’s 100’s birthday, (2024) on August 2. And I’ve made a commitment to myself that I will bring a Baldwin quote in my sermons at least once a month for the course of this church year to honor his legacy and his message to American religion and life.

Baldwin said, We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

I am not advocating that we push ourselves into harmful engagement with friends or family on political and social issues. And I will concede that there are multiple ways that our political discourse as our country has grown harmful. There is violence and the threat of violence happening against women, against the LGBTQ+ community – particularly our *trans siblings, against school children through gun violence, against Haitian immigrants in Springfield OH – indeed against all the citizens in Springfield OH at this point … all due to “disagreement” rooted in someone’s oppression and denial of their humanity and right to exist. So, when I encourage you all to engage with your friends and family across the political divide, I need you to hear the caveat that if there is harm against you in so doing – then don’t.

And, our political divisiveness is a problem. Interestingly, it is also a path toward the solution. Historian Kathryn Schulz suggests our division is not the root of the problem, merely the context. She writes, “The United States only stabilized as a nation when it gave up the dream of being a one-party utopia and accepted the existence of political opposition as crucial to maintaining a democracy.” [from Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz, 2011; p314] 

Her point being that different political perspectives are crucial for our country’s stability. This is why Freedom of Speech is such a key feature to democracy. We need to engage our differences in our common spaces, particularly in the political arena, so that the best ideas have a chance to rise and we can continue to move forward together.

But that version of political engagement is not what we are doing anymore. We’ve stopped meeting each other, stopped listening to different viewpoints. We’ve grown stuck in our conceptions and misconceptions with no way of uncovering the difference between them. It is a problem.

But it’s not a new problem!

A Bill Bishop book from 15 years back talked about this. His book “The Big Sort” is focused on a longitudinal study of census data and election results data at the county levels spanning five decades. (The Big Sort, the clustering of like-minded America, Bill Bishop, 2008.) 

The major finding of the study was that for the past half-century, Americans have been sorting themselves into homogenous geographies. In the 1950s, the book states, people with college degrees, for example, were rather evenly distributed across the United States. Nowadays, college-educated people are disproportionately concentrated in major cities like Berkeley, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts, and similar places along the east and west coast. In these communities, people tend to be more interested in politics and less likely to attend church. They tend to listen to National Public Radio, vote Democrat, and own cats. 

People without college degrees tend to be found in places like Lubbock, Texas; Gilbert, Arizona; Lafayette, Louisiana; or Allentown, Pennsylvania. These communities tend to be less densely populated and have bigger lawns. People in these communities watch Fox for their news, they own guns, volunteer and participate in clubs and churches, vote Republican, visit relatives a lot, and own dogs. 

These demographical descriptions are 15 years old now and I imagine they have shifted a bit – the I suspect the trajectory still holds. We have been, over the past few decades, sorting ourselves into geographic clusters of like-mindedness. The internet over the past 15 years has not helped. Despite early predictions that the internet would globalize our neighborliness and democratize our access to information, it has done nearly the opposite – because we are more easily monetized when we are more carefully compartmentalized.

One pertinent observation from this longitudinal research is that like-minded groups tend to enforce conformity and grow more extreme through a self-reinforcing loop. Mixed company tends to moderate while like-minded company tends to polarize. 

As political liberals and conservatives keep themselves in enclaves, they grow more zealous and become more distrustful of each other. Churches, even our diversity-loving liberal Unitarian Universalist churches, do not escape this clustering of like-mindedness. Many is the time I have heard a person comment about how great it is to have found a church home and to be around like-minded people. And yet, mixed company tends to moderate while like-minded company tends to polarize.

And, this is old news. We knew this was happening for at least a generation. This leads us to the title of my sermon this morning: “How to disagree with a friend.” We need to break out of our like-minded enclaves and hear each other.

I’m going to give a shout out to a new board member, Bob Neigh. Bob sent me a note about a group called Braver Angels and he encouraged me to look into them because he knew I would be preaching on this topic.

Braver Angels formed shortly after the 2016 election with the goal of political depolarization and civic renewal. On their website, https://braverangels.org/ they say: “Braver Angels is leading the nation’s largest cross-partisan, volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide for the good of our democratic republic.”

They have a podcast and information available, they host events and workshops, they supply members with talking points for engaging across political differences. Their leadership is explicitly comprised of a balanced number of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

They describe their approach https://braverangels.org/our-mission/ this way:

We state our views freely and fully, without fear.

We treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity and respect.

We welcome opportunities to engage those with whom we disagree.

We believe all of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.

We seek to disagree accurately, avoiding exaggeration and stereotypes.

We look for common ground where it exists and, if possible, find ways to work together.

We believe that, in disagreements, both sides share and learn.

In Braver Angels, neither side is teaching the other or giving feedback on how to think or say things differently.

The one that really struck me is “We seek to disagree accurately.” I love that. Just as some basic advice you can work with for a one-on-one conversation with a friend or family member, can you offer that ground rule? I want to talk with you about this, not to change your mind or have you change mine. I just want us to disagree accurately. Can we do that?

Another one that seems easy but in practice is proving quite difficult – Can we treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity, and respect? I can see how it is helpful to have a non-partisan organization hosting the conversation. These ground rules are theirs; we don’t have to start with an argument about making these ground rules. The Braver Angels organization can host the event and participants just need to agree to participate. Wouldn’t it be helpful for us to bring that here to Binghamton?

My mother Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Strong had participated in something like this, many years back. She was an outspoken Pro-Choice advocate in Syracuse while serving at May Memorial UU Society in the 90’s. She was invited to participate in a conference hosted by a Common Cause group focused on the abortion issue. She wrote in one of her sermons about the experience; how they spent the first part of the workshop just meeting each other without knowing which side they were on. Then they split off into sides and engaged each other from their perspectives of pro-life and pro-choice. But by then they knew each other as human beings, which greatly aided the conversations.

She wrote:

It was an amazing experience.  From it I developed a very powerful relationship with a young woman who was Pro-Life.  We went on a radio talk show to share our beliefs.  I remember one caller was angry that we could even talk with one another much less understand and respect the other’s beliefs. 

… I know that in Syracuse, at least for a time, the volatile environment eased and the work that came out of the Conference and the dialogues between those of us who were Pro-choice and Pro-Life helped many who were open to listening with respect came to a deeper understanding of all the dimensions of this issue.

A better way is possible. A braver way. The vitriolic divisiveness does not have to be the only story in this election season. We don’t have to burn all the bridges with ‘the other half’ of our country’s population. (Actually, the other third. In the 2020 election 1/3 voted blue, almost 1/3 voted red, and 1/3 didn’t vote. – so you can hear that as a call to encourage more voter participation – which is a different sermon.)

And hear me when I say – this is not a call to quietly take some abuse from someone who does not care one whit for decency or your humanity. It is a call to engage in good faith toward understanding and mutual progress. And, remember, convincing us to get angry and push each other away is one of the tactics being used against us. Resist. Move a little closer and hold each other with a little more grace.

A better way is possible. But it is not found in huddling among the like-minded and bemoaning the situation. That can be personally healing and at times necessary. But to truly move forward, we need to lean in a little closer to these brave conversations.

In a world without end,

May it be so.