Angela Weszely:
Welcome to the ProGrace Podcast in the months leading up to the 2024 election. Over the summer, we spend a lot of time listening to you at the ProGrace community. We wanted to know how you feel about the landscape of what's happening in this heated social and political climate. We also wanted to know how ProGrace and this community is helping you promote unity and grace and what you need from us to continue to do this. So stay tuned for a variety of topics where we will address your concerns and your questions. And stick around for the end of the podcast. There'll be an opportunity for you to send us more questions that I can address on future podcasts. Here's today's episode.
Hi, and welcome to the ProGrace podcast. I'm so excited to be here with our guest today, Andrew Hanauer, who's the CEO of One America Movement. So glad to have you with us today, Andrew.
Andrew Hanauer:
Thanks for having me, Angela. Appreciate it.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah, and we've just gotten to know you all in the last several months and love what you're doing. Could you share what the vision is of One America Movement and the work you do?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now we're in a country that feels very divided in really unhealthy ways, and that's really sad. For us at One America, we believe that that's a spiritual crisis, that the divides in our country are more than just what kind of country we're going to be. It's also like what kind of person am I going to be? And so we really believe that a spiritual crisis requires the faith community in America to put its efforts, its resources, its spiritual might to bear against that crisis. So we support faith communities, we support faith leaders to be the opposite of our divided, disconnected culture, to come together across divides to help them lead and just be there to support them as they can be a model for this country right now.
Angela Weszely:
So I actually love that vision, and I'd love to hear why you landed on it being a spiritual crisis, because there's a lot I read that it's about you got to pick the right political side or put your values out there, but you're actually speaking deeper to an inner reality. Can you share how you came to this conclusion and why you work with faith communities, why you think they're the ones to make a difference?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think first of all, the types of division we have in our country, to your point, they speak to this idea that we have become people who are looking for their belonging and their identity in politics. And the thing is that politics, it can excite us. You go to a rally, you hear an inspirational candidate, maybe you believe that it's really, really important who wins and who loses. But at the end of the day, politics is not going to fill the spiritual holes in our lives. It's not going to give us a vision for human flourishing and for understanding the nature of the universe and our purpose on earth. And so it's an incomplete identity in that way.
And what we're finding out, of course, is that it's also really, really negative in many ways. It pits us against each other. It convinces us that we're right all the time. It tells us that our neighbors are actually our enemies. Our faith tells us that actually even if our neighbors are our enemies, we're still supposed to love them. And so we really see the teachings of our faiths as the response to division. I go to a lot of conferences. I hear a lot of explanations of how we can solve polarization. And I think the things that are in scripture to me, they give us the answers to those questions, we just have to live them out. And I think that's what we're focused on.
Angela Weszely:
Can you speak to why this is happening now? And I'm thinking about what's happening is we have the largest loneliness crisis in our country, and there have been books written about that, which I've really appreciated. I've actually experienced that myself. COVID, I think came at a time where we were already experiencing that and then it just magnified it. And the fact that we moved so much, my issues are based on moving in COVID and that feeling of being adrift and not belonging. And I think that's just more common to our generation, let's say, than our parents or our grandparents' generation. So can you speak to this belonging need? Why is it such a crisis now? Where can we go instead? Because I think you're right. I think that's the core of why we go into our political tribes, it makes us feel safe. It makes us feel like we can make sense. But what are you seeing and maybe you can speak to what you do. What are you seeing happening on the ground that replaces politics with this belonging or this spirituality?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, I think I love this because you're getting at really the heart of it. The problem doesn't start with us arguing on Twitter or our politicians doing X or Y. At our core as human beings, we are wired, I believe, by our creator. But for anyone out there who isn't religious, still by evolution, by the way that we're designed, we're wired to want to belong. We want to be in a group. A group gives us protection, it gives us a sense of stability. It gives us meaning. It gives us a way to understand the rules of life and of living.
And the scariest thing for a human being is the idea of being kicked out of their group, of being left behind in a way that then maybe that I don't to this group but I still can't belong to that other group and so where am I, right? So human beings are going to search for belonging. And if they're not finding it in a healthy religious community, they're not finding it in a local community group of some kind, they're going to look for it online. They're going to look for it wherever they can find it. And one of the easiest ways to find it is to say, who hates the same people I hate, right?
Angela Weszely:
Right, right. Straightforward.
Andrew Hanauer:
Who believes the same thing... Yeah, you're right. Exactly. Who believes the same things about politics as me. And in fact, these yard signs and Twitter photos of solidarity with this group or that group is a way of shortcutting to say, who's like me that I can affiliate with. But if faith communities are healthy, then at their core, they give you all of those aspects of belonging and a language and a set of values that teaches us how to then be in the world with other people who don't agree with us. And that's what our country needs so badly. And I think that's what a lot of faith communities all across the country are doing. But it's up against a lot of loud, angry, divisive rhetoric that is oftentimes much better funded than your local church and has a large megaphone.
Angela Weszely:
Right. Well, and I'm just thinking, sorry if I'm camping on this, will you let me know. But I'm thinking when I grew up, I didn't even think about trying to find a tribe to belong to. I think there were just structures in place. I lived in a smaller community. My parents had never moved. We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. My friends were in the youth group. I mean, I just didn't think about it. But there's a lot of things that have shifted in our culture where we're of a generation now in our kids, they're going to have to be intentional, but I don't even know that we're prepared for that. Can you speak to that?
And I'm thinking about even the mental health crisis with Gen Z. I really think this is all tied together. For generations, we lived a certain way just naturally belonging, and that's not there. So what are you seeing Christians doing, or how can we start to build this belonging for ourselves, for our kids? Because I worry for the next generation to be intentional in this new reality. Because I don't think we're going back to how it was in the eighties. We watched Stranger things. We love how it was in the eighties, but we're not going back there.
Andrew Hanauer:
Well, I think you're generally right that we're not going back. But I will say that I think the world that social media and 24 hour cable news is giving us, I think a lot of Americans are starting to see on how unhealthy it is and they are going the other direction. So my wife and I are one of many parents that I think have not allowed their children to have certain types of apps or cell phones or things like that, when even a few years ago it been automatic that your 13-year-old or whatever got a fully loaded iPhone. Cable news viewership is down.
Angela Weszely:
Wow, really?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, perpetual outrage is exhausting. It really is not a recipe for mental health. And so I think that what you're seeing is when human beings get out of equilibrium with the way they're designed to live, eventually that becomes hard to ignore. But I think to your question, we have to realize that we think we have much more control than we do over world events or national politics or things like that. We have way more influence over our local community and way more ability to make change, way more ability to help other people. And so I think a lot of this has to come down to, is my church healthy? Am I healthy? Am I living in a way that would make someone else want to understand what I believe rather than am I shouting into the void at people who I see on TV, who I don't agree with and what am I accomplishing?
And I think I talk a lot about how when I go around the country, I get in Ubers and the Uber driver says, "What do you do for work?" And I say, "Well, I'm trying to make the country less divided." And they usually laugh first. They're like, "Good luck with that." And then they'll tell me how excited they are that we exist because almost nobody likes our division. But then the most interesting part is they say, "Well, let me tell you why we're divided." And invariably it's everyone's fault that they don't like, right?
Angela Weszely:
It's the other side.
Andrew Hanauer:
It's the Democrat's fault, or it's Republican's fault, or it's media or mass media, whatever. We're ready to look everywhere for the problem except the mirror. And I think we have to start with who am I? What am I doing? What am I putting out into the world? Because you can't control what other people do. You can't control what politicians do, but you can control how you influence the people directly around you.
Angela Weszely:
Okay. So actually when you said make sure we're healthy, make sure our church is healthy, I felt lighter. I think a lot of our listeners too would say that feels doable because I think you're right. It's the powerlessness of what's happening on the national stage or international. But when you think about here and now I can do that. So I know you all focus on discipleship, which that's what that is, making sure we are following the ways of, for Christians Christ or the other religions that you guys work with, those same attitudes of love and belonging and churches or faith communities. How do you guys see, what are some of the best ways our listeners could start focusing on making themselves healthy or bringing things into their church that make the church more healthy?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah. I mean, so first of all, I think there's a couple easy low-hanging fruit. The first, we do this exercise with folks sometimes where we ask them to close their eyes and then say in their head the sentence, "Of all the 7 billion people on Earth, I am the most correct about my beliefs". And it's sort of funny, right? Because I mean when you say it out loud, you sound ridiculous. Although there are some people who kind of open their eyes and say, "And? Of course I am." But the point is that if we start off with a framework of I could be wrong, I could be wrong about some of the things that I believe, and not saying to question all of your core beliefs and values, but just simply to have a posture of humility enough to hear other perspectives.
It makes an enormous difference in how you read the news, how you talk to your friends and family and neighbors, how you consume the statements of politicians and others. That's such an easy first step because it's not about doing 3000 different things. It's about doing one thing repeatedly, which is just having that kind of humility. I think that similarly, we're losing touch with the human side of this. So my pastor told a story this Sunday actually. He said that he had come out of contact with his grandparents because of political disagreements. Really bad, in the number of years, had only had a few conversations with them or something. And I think a lot of families have experienced a version of that.
And he said a couple of weeks ago, he called his grandmother and he said, "I miss you guys. I just wanted to see how you're doing. I just wanted to see what's going on in your lives right now? How do you spend your time? Now, I don't want to argue with you about politics, I just want to hear how you're doing." And he said that his grandmother cried and that he said, "I'd love to come visit." And she said, "That would be fantastic." And that is the kind of reconnection that I think so many Americans need to have with friends and family who have become separated over the last eight, nine years from each other over politics. But it doesn't start by arguing and sending your talking points. It starts by being the kind of person who can care for another person, even if that person disagrees with you.
Angela Weszely:
And value connection over being right is what you're saying? Okay. So since we both, I'm assuming you grew up in a Christian context, I did too. And with the work we do with abortion, this idea of being afraid of being wrong, I think has some roots, maybe even in wrong understandings of Christianity for those of us who are Christians, because I can't speak to other religions, but I find this almost like there are certain things we were told that to be a Christian, you have to have this belief. And so that does start to threaten our identity if we think we might be wrong about that.
But I just don't see Jesus operating that way. I see this freedom. I see him talking about we can communicate with the spirit, but it's like we're almost absorbed some wrong thinking about, oh my gosh, my moral position is going to be compromised if I say maybe I'm wrong, that actually speaks to something deeper inside of us. Do you guys see that? What do you do to help people, help us all grow into being more comfortable that I might be wrong and that doesn't threaten my whole religious framework, if I might've been wrong on an issue or not seen the whole picture on an issue, let's say?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah. Well, first of all, actually I did not. I actually converted to Christianity in college.
Angela Weszely:
Oh, wow.
Andrew Hanauer:
So that's probably another story for another time.
Angela Weszely:
Well, you didn't have the background. Well, that's interesting. Yeah.
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah. It's a great question, right? Because if you say, well, we all need to be more humble and we could be wrong, then it starts to say, well, do you mean about anything? Do you mean about Jesus? It can go down a hill very quickly. I think the point is that when we are dealing with questions of politics or policy, that's one step removed from questions of morals and values. So in other words, I am a hundred percent sure that it is wrong to abuse children. That's not a question. I'm not interested in the other side of that. The question of how should or does the government best protect children is one step further down a road where I have to have a little bit more humility about what the answer is.
Abortion is particularly tough because if you have different conceptions of when life begins, if you have different ideas about the nature of life in that sense, of course you're going to come to different outcomes. I think the question is not how to shift your beliefs or anything like that, but more how do you be the best version of someone who holds those beliefs? How do you best understand perspectives that aren't yours? And by the way, if you ever want to persuade anyone that you're right, that's the only way to do it, not yelling at them on a street corner. But secondly, where is there common ground? Because when we shout at each other on street corners, what we actually miss is how much we agree on so many things.
Angela Weszely:
Yes.
Andrew Hanauer:
A great example, there was a protest about guns in state capitol, and a group was out there sort of advocating to pass a law to restrict guns. Pro-gun rights group heard about it, called their folks said, let's go counter-protest. So they go counter-protest. So they're yelling at each other, holding signs. And at one point, one of the gun rights folks did an amazing thing, which is he walked over to the other side and said, "So what is this law that you guys want passed anyway?" And they said, "Well, we want to keep guns out of the hands of people who've been convicted of domestic violence."
And the gun rights guy said, "Well, I agree with that." So they're protesting, and they weren't even sure why. And so I have a friend who has a perspective on abortion that is very extreme when he articulates it. But then when I ask him, "So when do you believe life begins?" He gets very nuanced. He's not sure like most of us. There's a lot of people in America who are kind of not really sure when life begins, and am I okay with it at this many weeks or that many weeks? Those are conversations we can have, but when it's just, which side are you on? We're not going to have a conversation. We're just going to end up yelling at each other.
Angela Weszely:
Right. No, that's-
Andrew Hanauer:
And I think that's not helpful.
Angela Weszely:
No, common ground. And I don't know if you can speak to what you see work in your programs and discipleship to help people get to the point of common ground. Because I feel like the fear of if I say I agree with this person on anything, I'm going to lose my moral bearings. That fear keeps people from even looking for that common ground. So in the abortion conversation, the common ground is support women. Unconditionally, let's look at all the places where women feel like their only choice is abortion. Can't everybody get behind that? But there's so much fear in working with the "other side" that how many of those initiatives do we see happening? Not nearly enough in my opinion. So what have you guys seen be successful, maybe even in other issues of getting people to relax enough to work towards common ground or to be able to have those conversations?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah. Well, and first of all, I mean, I think as Christians speaking for myself personally, I believe we're taught to have confidence that God is up there and we're good. And nothing that someone says about a political issue should ever make me question whether that's going to cause me to slide down some slippery slope, right?
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. So stop there. Stop there.
Andrew Hanauer:
Okay.
Angela Weszely:
So that's a view of God and his power. But I don't even think we're taught that. I guess this is why I'm camping on this. There's so much, at least the way, now, you weren't raised Christian. I was raised very legalistic. Angie, you need to do this. You need to be careful. You need to, and I think you're right, we have flipped the onus onto us. And what you're speaking to is God is up there. If he is who we believe he says he is, he can help us have conversations where we disagree and we still stay grounded with him. But I don't know that we're taught that. So can you expand on that a little bit?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard, right? Because I know there's a perspective that that culture generally is oppositional to Christianity and therefore we're in danger of losing our children to that culture. But I think there's a lot of merit to the idea that children are going to be taught something. They're going to be taught to worship something, they're going to be taught to follow some path. And I want my children to grow up as Christian. I want them to learn that path. And so yes, I'm aware that they're being exposed to other things and other things in the culture. The question is, do we believe that what we have is so important and powerful, that if it's lived out in the world in the most beautiful way, people will say, wow, I want to be like them, as opposed to holding onto something that we're afraid of losing.
And I think with this question about politics or about abortion, how you engage is how you build trust, is how you get anyone to care what you say. We had a group of faith leaders who had a conversation about abortion. They were mixed in terms of their perspective. A couple of them were actually women who were pregnant at the time of the conversation. One of them was someone whose mother had been encouraged to have an abortion. Instead, she had him and gave birth to him. So very, very deeply personal perspectives on it. And the reality is that they don't agree on the policy, but many of them heard for the first time the other perspective and actually heard it as opposed to just seeing it as some sort of caricature of it on cable news because they trusted each other as people enough to listen. And that sounds corny, but it's like nobody cares what you have to say if they don't trust you. And I think we, all of us, whatever side we're on, we have to be able to build trust with people if we want them to hear our perspective.
Angela Weszely:
Totally. Totally. And I find back to our kids, I do think it's interesting. Kids seem to be the way in actually for people to start listening when their kids start questioning. And I know that feeling of my kids questioning things and that anxiety that comes up inside me, and I've literally sensed God at times calming me down, the still small voice, "I love your kids more than you do". And I think that idea, you said he's up there, he's in control, he cares. I keep thinking God has a way to navigate this.
We just need to be tuned into him. But sometimes I think we take on his work and try to fight, and we think that listening to the other side is what's going to derail us, when you're right. It's actually the answer is building trust, listening, and then people seeing, does this person look like Jesus because he's attractive? People followed him. And I would argue that a lot of what we're doing in the public square doesn't look like him, so it's not attractive. He asked questions, so I forget the exact number, but the sheer amount of questions he asked, and we don't do that.
Andrew Hanauer:
A hundred percent.
Angela Weszely:
But you did that in your group.
Andrew Hanauer:
Well, right. I'm so glad you brought that up because again, I go to these conferences and it's like, what's the tool to use to bridge divides, right? Jesus literally asked question... He answered almost every question in the Gospels with a question. And it turns out not surprising to us, but maybe to some folks is that's really smart from a neuroscience perspective.
Angela Weszely:
Okay, speak to that. Yeah.
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, no. So when you ask questions of someone, you are more likely to get closer to the actual thing. If you respond to a statement with another statement, you enter into basically this oppositional framework where we're arguing our points. We have conversation guides like every group like us that has these kinds of things, but-
Angela Weszely:
Which we link.
Andrew Hanauer:
... one of the things-
Angela Weszely:
We will link them in the show notes. So I'm glad you mentioned them.
Andrew Hanauer:
Awesome.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah.
Andrew Hanauer:
One of the best questions to ask someone in a conversation that's hard is when have you ever had a doubt about your position or what do you wish the other side would ask you? So you'll hear people say things like, "Yeah, I'm solidly pro-choice." And I have this question about when life begins or whatever. And that's the opening to say, yeah, we all have questions. None of us are robots. None of us have all the answers. So let's dig into those questions instead of being afraid to admit that we have them.
It's ideal if you mutually disarm, right? It's ideal if you have a setting where both people are participating in that way. The sad thing is, and I think this speaks to my perspective, is this speaks to kind of how Christianity works. We as Christians should disarm first. If the other person's not going to disarm, I should still disarm and I should be able to go to that person, to go to my grandmother who I haven't talked to in years, to admit my own doubts first, because it's a model for how we can all be and maybe the other person won't reciprocate. But I can't control that. I can control me.
Angela Weszely:
Wow, that's so good. And I agree it's in line with the gospels. And let me ask you this, because you came in college, maybe this is not your experience. My experience was I was really not taught that. Somehow I ingested that my responsibility is to tell people what I believe and why, that that's the best way I can show up as a Christian, that's how I can represent Jesus. And I wasn't actually walked through the gospel stories and said, let's look at how Jesus interacted. This is the best way. But maybe your experience was different. Maybe that's why you're in this work. I don't know. As an adult coming into Christianity, did you hear this? Hey, we should ask questions. We should disarm first. Or did you also pick up, Hey, your responsibility is to speak. It's like this proclamation responsibility as opposed to engagement?
Andrew Hanauer:
It's a great question. Well, first of all, it's kind of you to suggest that 18-year-old me was an adult.
Angela Weszely:
Okay, well.
Andrew Hanauer:
My roommate was Christian. And so that's how I got into it. And his father was a seminary professor. He was part of the PCA church and still is a part of it. I think that there is an element of we should be clear about our beliefs and we should share them, and we should share them in a way that compels people to want to know more. And I think my roommate had grown up in that culture as well, of you're supposed to share what you believe. What we did was build trust because we were roommates and we liked each other, and he showed up for me when some girl didn't like me or whatever.
And so when you do that, you're willing to listen to what someone says about that. But here's the other thing too. I had grown up in an environment where the Christians I saw were people who went to church on Christmas and Easter because their parents made them. I would've thought that someone who was more deeply religious, they would've been a turn-off because they would've been like, oh, they're a zealot or something. But the fact that his faith seemed to actually influence every part of his life, to me, I thought, well, that's actually worth understanding. I mean, going to church twice a year doesn't excite me because why are you doing it if you don't care? But it clearly shaped every part of his life, and that made me want to know more.
Angela Weszely:
I'm actually really glad you shared your story, and tell me if I'm right as I paraphrase this, but it's like you trusted him, he was there for you, and he had strong beliefs. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. And maybe that's part of the problem is we see some Christians feeling like, well, I can't say what I believe, I just need to show up and accept everything. But that's not the answer either. It's almost like a backlash and you're speaking to these two things happening at the same time. And I think we can get wisdom from Jesus on when to say, but that means your roommate had to actually have a relationship with God and a relationship with you. I mean I'm oversimplifying it, but...
Andrew Hanauer:
No, I think you're right on. I mean, when we were founded as an organization, one of the things that was different about us was we said, so much interfaith work has turned off people with deep convictions because it's like you come together and you all say how much you like each other and that God is one, but you don't actually bring your distinctive beliefs. And we said, what if we did, we call it multi-faith work, what if we did multi-faith work in a way where everyone brings their beliefs, show up as who you are and tell people your convictions, but also be willing to hear theirs. And it's not about tamping down your beliefs, it's about showing up in a way that compels anyone else to want to know what you believe in.
Angela Weszely:
I actually love this and I am writing a book right now and you're helping me. I'm going to go this afternoon to a coffee shop.
Andrew Hanauer:
Cool.
Angela Weszely:
Because I think it's the fear of seeing how some people are just saying, I can't show up with my beliefs at all. I do think that fear is what drives what we talked about earlier. I can't be wrong, I can't engage, but I think you're right. Even having a tribe we belong to that says we're going to work to do both things is crucial. So thank you for that inspiration, even that framing that's so good. How can we do that in our time remaining here, we're in the middle of a very divisive election season. What can we do on the ground in our own lives, in our church, in our community, in our relationships, as from now until November, and I would say probably even after November, what can we start to do to build these bridges or have these conversations?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, it's a great question and I hope I get 1% royalties from the book maybe, whatever you got.
Angela Weszely:
Exactly.
Andrew Hanauer:
Just let me know.
Angela Weszely:
This epiphany was due to Andrew.
Andrew Hanauer:
Exactly. In my experience, churches generally fall into a couple categories. And I think the first question for everyone listening is, which category more sounds like your church. In one category, you have a church that is maybe politically diverse and in many cases no one talks about it. We can all come together on Sundays and worship together and just nobody mentioned the fact that half of us are voting for one party and half of us are voting. The other type of church, which I think exists on both sides of the political spectrum, is a much more homogenous political church where actually the challenge is how do we make sure that we don't go down into an echo chamber where we're just reinforcing each other.
If you're a member of the first kind of church, I think the next two months are a great opportunity to ask who in the church who I disagree with, can I begin to build a relationship with? You may already have those relationships and just not talk about politics, but how can you build a relationship where maybe you can begin to find ways to bridge that gap a little bit? Because while talking about politics all the time is unhealthy, not being able to talk about it at all is also unhealthy. If that other person in the church is not talking about politics with people they disagree with in their church, where are they doing it? And if they're not doing it at all, then they're probably only hearing one perspective over and over again.
I think if you're a member of a church that's more all blue or all red, I think the question is how can we make sure that we don't become politics first and Christian third or ninth. We should not be Democrats or Republicans who happen to go to church. We should be Christians who happen to be Democrats or Republicans. And so in that church environment where it's more homogenous, what is a practice that you can build into the rhythm of church life that might start to just challenge a little bit? Maybe it's even just a regular reminder that Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Maybe that's all, but maybe there's a lot more that you can do. And I think there's different ways that that could play out. But I think in the next couple of months, starting small is probably the best.
Angela Weszely:
I think that's great. It feels so doable. And in full disclosure, I actually had this happen to me just this last week. I go to the first type of church.
Andrew Hanauer:
Okay.
Angela Weszely:
And I am in a brand new women's group. We're just meeting casually every other week for community because again, I think we're all feeling this need for community and it's a bigger group. And a couple of my friends that I brought into the group, I know they're more like me politically, but they weren't there. It was just three of us. And I started to realize that the two people that were there were different than me politically. And so I actually had this experience, Andrew, with all the work I do, I got nervous.
I found myself wanting to state my belief, and thankfully the Holy Spirit checked me and I started asking questions. And I'm actually surprisingly want to continue this conversation with them because I like who they are and me hearing them didn't change how I viewed them, even though I disagree with where they're at. So I just want to say, you actually are confirming and helping me see what happened. I went through all these steps, and so I just want to encourage people. I've been trying to do common ground conversations for over 15 years, and then when it becomes personal-
Andrew Hanauer:
Oh, yeah,
Angela Weszely:
Right? Do you too? I still get that feeling. So that doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong, but we pushing through that. And I think I will say what saved me was the question asking and genuinely wanting to know how did this person, who I actually wouldn't think have this political belief, how did they get there? I actually found that curiosity growing inside of me, and that's part of connection. More important than my beliefs was finding out why do you think that? So I don't know if you can speak to that, but I literally did that hopefully didn't botch it up too much. I think I stopped and asked questions soon enough.
Andrew Hanauer:
I love that. And congrats. And yeah, first of all, it's so much harder when it's your own family or it's your own... So please know that that's true. Even for those of us who do this for a living, there's a concept in the science called metaperceptions, which is what do I think you think of me? So any first date, you're not just sitting there thinking, do I like this person? You're also thinking, does this person like me? Job interviews, same thing. Turns out that Americans have insanely incorrect beliefs about what the other side thinks of them.
Angela Weszely:
Interesting.
Andrew Hanauer:
And one of the easiest ways to reduce division is simply to say to someone, I don't hate you. And so even just in that conversation, even saying something like, so just so you know, I actually don't agree with that, I think we're probably on the opposite sides of politics, but I want you to know, I really think it's important that we as Christians can be in a relationship together even if we don't agree about politics. I feel like most of the time you're going to get a much better reaction to that than you might think, because I think most people, once they realize the other side doesn't hate them as much as they thought, they reciprocate. That's what the science says.
Angela Weszely:
That's so good. That's so good to just come out and say that because I think I danced around that and I think we all eventually came to that understanding. But that's what made me nervous is the dancing around. And I don't want them to think I don't like them because of this. So you're right, that would just take down the temperature on our side and on the other person's side, I am going to use that. I'll report back to you when I see you again.
Andrew Hanauer:
I hope it works.
Angela Weszely:
And I hope other people use it and let us know. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much, Andrew. And we will have resources from One America Movement in the show notes. We're working on building a partnership with you guys because I love what you're doing. In closing, actually, you said something to me before we started. Can you speak to this idea that we really are less divided than we think? Can you leave us with that piece of hope and what you're seeing and just to encourage us to take the next step this fall?
Andrew Hanauer:
Yeah, absolutely. So one of our awesome partners is this group called More In Common, and they do these surveys. And what they find consistently is that Americans think the other side is much more extreme in their beliefs than they actually are. That Americans think they're more divided on these issues than they actually are. They ask questions to Democrats and Republicans, what percentage of you believe that we should teach this in the schools? Or what percentage of you believe that we should prevent all immigrants from entering the country? Or any question. And then they line up the actual answer with what the other side thinks the answer is going to be, and it's 50% off.
Angela Weszely:
Wow.
Andrew Hanauer:
So my favorite one is there's this graph of Democrats and Republicans position on immigration, and you see this complicated overlap where some Democrats are more actually against immigration than some Republicans, and there's a lot of people in the middle. And then you ask them, what do you think the other side's position is? And it's like this.
Angela Weszely:
Just clear, stark. They want open borders, they want closed borders, no new ones.
Andrew Hanauer:
Hundred percent, hundred percent. So if we're like this, what's the point? What's the point of having a conversation? But the reality is much more like this, and that means that there's so much that we could work on together if we stopped screaming at each other.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. Well, thank you, Andrew. I've had a couple epiphanies. You'll show up in the book a couple times, and I just really appreciate the hope and the action you've given us that there are things that we can do this fall. So thanks for being with us.
Andrew Hanauer:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Angela Weszely:
We're so grateful for you and are here to support you, to provide a community where you feel understood and safe and in which you're not alone in wanting more from the Christian response to abortion, unintended pregnancy, and other divisive issues. How can we help you have better conversations? We would love to hear from you about anything that's on your mind. Email us at info at prograce.org to let us know how we can support you. Thank you.
