More dialogue cannot save democracy
David Allred/Going on Faith
In part one of what I am calling, “Meditations for a New Year,” I thought I would begin with one of the conclusions that I am taking away from 2020. Simply put, I learned last year that more dialogue cannot save democracy. We are going to need something else. We are talking around, above, and over each other these days. If talking has been a big part of the problem, I struggle to see how more talking could be the solution.
Allow me to back up a minute. In 2017, I was afforded an opportunity to join a group of spiritual innovators at Harvard Divinity School. It was an opportunity that this outsider, often marginalized, rural-educated Oliver Springs High School graduate would not normally receive. My friend and co-laborer in ministry, the Rev. Jake Morrill of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, put in a good word for me and I was accepted to the program. In Boston for nearly a week, the academic elite (for whom I had always been suspect) were introduced to an East Tennessee flavored, Southern conservatism, of which they seemingly were not used to encountering. Similarly, I was introduced to a way of thinking about the world that was so foreign to me I had mostly dismissed it as pedantic.