Last week during a convening of faith-inspired community organizations in Southwest Michigan, one of the participants brought up the upcoming election and the stress and heartache of the deep polarization in their community. This person asked if anyone had tools to share for building community and conversation.
I got so excited to share what I know I almost jumped out of my chair!
The short list of resources for bridging, depolarization, and broad-based advocacy work we offer below grew out of that conversation and is an extended version of what I shared in real time and in the follow-up. We share it now with the generous permission of our client, The Fetzer Institute, the convener of that gathering.
Many of the resources come directly from a faith community. While others do not, they can all be applied to many intra- and inter-faith settings. These are resources that can help you get started on bridging work or improve work you are already doing.
Before we get to it, we want to note that this is a small selection of the many hundreds of tools and organizations in the space. We offer these as those most primed for faith communities and for beginners. That said, it is a live list, so if you have a resource that should be added, please reach out and let me know!
There are many purposes of bridging work, and different tools are available for a variety of situations and goals. Bridging work – sometimes also called dialogue, contact, or depolarization work – may be seeking end goals of:
Increasing knowledge of the other – in the faith context, “Religious Literacy”
Reducing bias and bias-related violence,
Depolarizing or building social cohesion and social trust, and/or
Organizing diverse communities for advocacy.
My belief is that there are roles for all of these approaches and goals in a thriving and diverse democracy, and that it’s important to understand your own goals and situation to choose the right process. In some cases, it is necessary to begin with bias reduction/relationship-building work, while in others, it may be more effective to begin with broadly shared goals as the glue to relationship-work.
There are many overlaps between these approaches. Please feel free to reach out to me at allison@cohesionstrategy.com if you want more information or support.
Religious Literacy
In an extremely polarizing, emotional conflict, which has spawned intense social divides in the U.S., finding information about the conflict is a big piece of the puzzle. The Hotline for Israel/Palestine was developed by a Harvard grad student after conflict erupted in 2023 and aims to provide information anonymously to anyone who reaches out for it.
The Religion and Public Life Project out of Harvard’s Divinity School provides a comprehensive and helpful definition of religious literacy that relies less on knowing key facts about traditions and more on tools for critical engagement.
The Sikh Coalition provides a resource for employers to ensure they are being equitable and inclusive to their Sikh colleagues.
Tanenbaum’s focus on religious literacy in health care is important, and their online simulations are great tools for all to take part in.
Bias Reduction and Relationship building
“Dialogue that Enlarges: Bridging Ideological Divides through a Faith Lens” was a collaboration between the Religion & Society Program and the Better Arguments Project, both housed at Aspen Institute, and Interfaith America (then branded as IFYC). It’s a workbook format with a dialogue process and ground rules to give you a template for tough discussions.
The Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding provides a number of resources around faith, including religious literacy resources. Their program and resources are unique in the space in that they center on conflict resolution and conflict transformation.
Interfaith America’s Bridgebuilder Basics is a set of skill-building resources for bridging any kind of difference through dialogue, and their Foundations of Interfaith Leadership is a course meant for those who want to develop ongoing interfaith/multifaith organizations or coalitions. After taking the Foundations of Interfaith Leadership course, you are also able to join their Emerging Leaders Network. With the Network, you will be connected with other leaders and receive opportunities to apply for funding.
The Othering and Belonging Institute out of UC Berkely has publicly available curricula with the goal of bringing together researchers, organizers, stakeholders, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society to create transformative change.
Political Depolarization
“The Rebuilding Democracy Project: A Case Study in Polarization, Faith, and the Common Good” is a case study, which describes the work done by a Rabbi and his synagogue to (re)develop a culture of listening and trust in their increasingly broken, politically purple, Synagogue outside DC. This project draws on the spiritual resources of the Jewish tradition but can be adapted to other faith contexts. This is not a tool or process so much as a template to be replicated.
The Colossian Forum is a program developed for and in Evangelical and other theologically conservative churches to reduce polarization within Christian communities. There are workbooks, tools, and community to plug into.
The One America Movement partners with faith communities across religious, political, and racial divides to confront toxic polarization in our society. Get involved by accessing their resources or joining a public workshop.
The Jewish Partnership for Democracy: A More Perfect Union has several great resources on topics from media literacy and vetting news sources to trans-partisanship and the Jewish Imperative to Protect and Strengthen American Democracy.
Organizing and Advocacy
The Faith in Elections Playbook is a collaboration between Protect Democracy and Interfaith America, this is a toolkit providing a variety of resources from skill-building to how to support local elections including how to recruit poll workers or offer polling locations.
Industrial Areas Foundation is a national organizing body that does broad-based community organizing, often working with houses of worship as a main part of their networks. They specifically focus on broad issues where agreement is centered across partisan divides and pointedly avoid contentious issues such as abortion and police reform. They provide training to local affiliates.
Social Trust Map from Weave: The Social Fabric Project allows you to see the strength of trusting behaviors, intentions, and spaces in your neighborhood based on annual data from the US Census, surveys, and social media. It is an interactive story aimed at inspiring and helping people leverage their trust traits to bridge divides, build relationships, and weave a new, inclusive social fabric.
Further Reading
Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World’s authors argue that building institutions, cultivating practices, and orienting ourselves toward a shared future is crucial to our communities and planet.
I Never Thought of it That Way explores how to bring curiosity and courage to our most difficult conversations.
The Belonging Barometer introduces a new tool for measuring belonging.
High Conflict asks how we can get out of destructive conflicts.
From Conflict to Convergence discusses collaborative problem solving.
Confident Pluralism insists on constitutional commitments that honor and protect difference.
The Righteous Mind asks why good people become and remain divided over religion and politics.
Out of Many Faiths explores America’s promise of religious diversity, written by Interfaith America’s founder and President. Also check out Eboo’s 2022 book, We Need to Build.
Sustaining Democracy evaluates the impact of polarization on our rivals, and alliances.
Don’t Label Me invites us into a conversation around diversity, bigotry, and our common humanity.
Is there a resource we are missing? Send me a message at allison@cohesionstrategy.com, and we’ll get it added!
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