Fall 2024 | A Listening Heart: Can We Temper Polarization?
What would a healthier spiritual politics look like? How to resist feelings of mutual suspicion and overload—a polarization monetized by algorithms and metabolized by human nervous systems? In such conditions, “a listening heart” (from 1 Kings 3) is hardly fashionable. It never was. These Reflections writers nevertheless summon a spirit akin to that heartfelt plea. They describe the grace of face-to-face encounters with supposed enemies, or unearth lessons from the nation’s agonized moral history, or through faith find liberation from the brutalities of all status quos, whether old or new. “Let us,” writes Andrea Barton Reeves ‘26 M.A.R., “be courageous enough to assert our vision of peace over discord, of faith over fear.”
Cover image by Jean-Luc Benazet/Unsplash
Reflections
From the Dean's Desk
The recent presidential election made glaring what we all knew: We are polarized as a society. The polarization exists across our society and within most American families. In quiet conversations, a good number of people have said to me regretfully that they can no longer have a political conversation with members of their own families. The polarization is real and painful.
Contents
Reflections is a publication of Yale Divinity School