Once while speaking in the fellowship hall of a rural church, I was confronted by a Christian Nationalist upset about my inclusive worldview. After my presentation, he wanted to talk. I listened, we had a good chat, and then he offered an apology in his own way: “I know you mean well,” he said, his words seemingly heartfelt.
Then there was the time I was invited to the home breakfast table of someone with whom I had voiced perfunctory greetings a number of times with little apparent impact. We were an odd couple. Picture a bearded lumberjack devouring a rather substantial breakfast spread sitting across from an oatmeal aficionado. Yet we had some obvious similarities, including both having grown up in rural America’s gun culture.
[And I’m betting I was the better shot, having first honed my shooting skills by hunting squirrels with a single shot .22 rifle. Quite successfully. Squirrel with rice or dumplings were common meals in our rather modest household. Not that I recommend those dishes.]
At that breakfast table it quickly became apparent that many of my host’s views aligned with white Christian Nationalism. Soon his face grew red, and he began pounding the table and yelling (at the wall in front of him, not at me) as he drove home certain points. I politely listened even when bits of eggs and sausage sprayed here and yon.
When he calmed down, I remarked on one of his comments that struck me as sensible. A conversation began. To my surprise, it turned out that he was reconsidering some of his views.
“You never know,” I thought to myself when we parted ways.
There are understandable reasons many of us tend to avoid listening to one another across cultural chasms. Yet scholarly literature indicates such avoidance further widens the divide by fostering self-doubt, insecurity, lower self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and even anger among individuals who feel they are not being heard.
But this does not have to be. While it is true that psychologists — and our own experiences — often observe that the most devout of Christian Nationalists have been trained, cult-like, to dismiss realities contrary to their extremist ideology, this is not true of all adherents. Indeed, the presence of many questioners within Christian Nationalism ranks is arguably the movement’s weakest point. Their doubts dismissed by movement leaders and struggling with the trauma of feeling condemned, isolated, and ignored, many questioners are searching for someone who hears them. Therein lies an opportunity for us to listen with empathy and dialogue with compassion.
Psychologist Marlene Winell, author of Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion, coined the term religious trauma syndrome (RTS). “[A] rigid religion will produce judgment,” she writes, which “leads to discrimination and, all too often, to persecution. Dogma can never bring us together to understand each other in our shared humanity.”
But listening — which is abhorrent to dogma — can bring us together. If we know how to listen.
Communication scholars speak of effective listening as being an art, a skill, a talent, an active process, a sign of respect, and a superpower. This reflects the reality that effective listening is neither reflexive nor easy, but instead is intentional and — at times — quite challenging.
Effective listening, after all, is more than merely absorbing someone’s words; it also involves paying attention to facial expressions, body language, and other non-verbal signals on the part of oneself as well as the speaker. And beyond intentionality and self-awareness, the most effective listening takes place in the context of empathy.
Granted, it may not be easy to momentarily detach from our own view of the world in order to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and seek understanding of their particular thoughts and experiences. But how many of us cannot recall certain occasions when we desperately needed to be heard, and were grateful in those moments that someone truly listened to us?
It is in those moments of truly listening that meaningful dialogue often emerges.
It is in those moments of being truly heard that the harmful, dehumanizing grip of white Christian Nationalism most commonly loosens — and often falls away sooner or later — one person at a time.
It is in those moments that our common humanity is affirmed.
And upon our common humanity, the preservation of church-state separation rests.
A superpower capable of helping turn back the oppressive forces arrayed against equal freedom of religion and from religion for all, authentic listening is a conscious practice that really does make a difference.