Editor’s Note

“We are each other’s business; we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” When the poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote those words, she captured something essential about what it means to be human – and what it means to be American. But if you’ve been following the news lately, you might worry we’ve forgotten that wisdom.

In a country where 80% of Republicans and Democrats report that they believe the other party “poses a threat that if not stopped will destroy America as we know it,” and where nearly half of them think members of the opposing party are “downright evil,” it’s easy to conclude that our differences have become unbridgeable.

Yet 87% of Americans also tell pollsters that they are tired of division and want the country to be more united. So how do we make it happen?

The answer lies in pluralism – not as some abstract ideal, but as a practical tool that can help Americans live and work together in the world’s most diverse democracy. That’s why, for this issue of The Catalyst, we decided to explore what pluralism looks like in practice by showcasing Americans who are working every day to apply it to their work. What follows are portraits of people and organizations who understand that our differences don’t have to divide us – that they can, in fact, make us stronger.

The issue opens with Pearce Godwin, whose Listen First Coalition includes more than 500 organizations working to bridge divides. In “Understanding the Other,” Godwin argues that one big source of our problem today is that Democrats and Republicans imagine the other side to be much more extreme than it actually is. His advice? Start working together on common problems at the local level, where “cable news and social media caricatures of other people are much more likely to ring hollow.”

Nicole Bibbins Sedaca provides some much-needed historical perspective. In “The Right Way to Think About Diversity,” she reminds us that pluralism has been central to the American experiment from the beginning. Drawing on the writings of James Madison, she reminds us that strong institutions can allow different groups to compete fairly while preventing any one from dominating the others. And she calls for more “McCain moments,” after the late Sen. John McCain – instances in which U.S. leaders courageously put democratic values over partisan gain.

Chris Walsh makes this idea practical in “Pluralism Isn’t Purple.” Challenging today’s prevalent but unrealistic feel-good version of pluralism, in which both sides of the aisle are supposed to unite in a kumbaya moment, he argues that what we need instead is what he calls “separate-movie pluralism” – instances where opposing groups cooperate while maintaining their distinct beliefs. Anne Wicks also takes down the romantic version of pluralism in her essay, “Sparring for Success.” Wicks argues that pluralism is the “messy, sometimes bruising, central tenet of U.S. democracy” and provides the kind of friction our best leaders use to sharpen their decision-making.

In their interview with William McKenzie, Pastor Bob Roberts and Imam Mohammed Magid provide plenty of examples of pluralism in action. The two clerics, who cofounded the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network, base their work and their friendship on several practical essentials: respect, listening, curiosity, and humility. Their efforts to help Afghan refugees – a project during which “mosques, churches, and synagogues opened their doors” to work together – shows how faith can bring us together, even when we believe different things.

In “Unity in the Trenches,” Jason Galui takes us inside America’s most successful pluralistic institution: the U.S. military. Galui, an Army veteran, argues that our Armed Forces are so strong precisely because they do such a good job of incorporating the diverse perspectives of every service member – a lived example of “out of many, one.”

While the U.S. military does problem-solving on a giant scale, Lawrence E. Adjah shows how pluralistic pragmatism can work on a much more personal level, fighting loneliness and polarization at the same time. In “Building Bridges in the Divided States of America,” he describes how his Family Dinner Foundation, which brings lonely people together for shared meals, has proven that “when you commit to showing up for someone’s crisis or celebration, political affiliation becomes secondary to human connection.”

The journalist and academic Mark Oppenheimer, in his conversation with William McKenzie, highlights another domain – houses of worship – where personal or spiritual connections can be more important than what we think about politics. Indeed, he argues, we don’t need to spend so much time thinking about our differences. “The strength of a pluralistic society,” he says, “is that those conversations don’t have to happen all the time.”

But sometimes they should, and Eboo Patel argues that college campuses are the best place to train Americans on how to talk about difference effectively and respectfully. Calling for universities to become “laboratories and launching pads for pluralism,” he lays out a vision for how they can do so. Finally, Knox Thames highlights another place where people can learn the tools of peaceful coexistence: sacred spaces, especially those where different faiths have shared the same ground for generations.

The people highlighted in this issue aren’t abstract theorists; they’re Americans who have figured out how to work across our deep divides – not by pretending those divides don’t matter, but by finding ways to make them productive. They understand that pluralism doesn’t require everyone to think the same thing; what we should strive for, instead, is to create the conditions where we can disagree without demonizing one other.

The stakes of this project couldn’t be higher. Democracy depends on our ability to navigate difference constructively. But Americans have been doing so successfully for nearly 250 years. We have the tools already; indeed, millions of us are living pluralism in our daily work every day.