Gabe Lyons and Jim Daly Dialogue Our Way Forward

by Q Ideas

Most of us — wherever we are along the spectrum of liberal or conservative — feel alienated and unrepresented by the hyper-partisan deadlock that distorts and strangles our common deliberation of the truly pressing issues before us. Ironically, in a season in which we are electing a leader to guide us, it becomes even more impossible to have the real discussions we need to have.

But there are bridge people who are doing that in their own spheres of influence, transcending the vitriol and deadlock even as they continue to represent their own place on the spectrum. They have vocabularies and perspectives and experiences that could help re-frame our common thinking, and revitalize our capacity for civil society and moral imagination. And even on the lightning rod issues that touch on reproduction and family — at once intimate and difficult to think about collectively, much less talk about — there are seeds of cross-partisan moral dialogue. But these are rarely articulated, much less taken as the starting point for public conversations.

The Civil Conversations Project is a series of public events and media experiences of politically counter-cultural relationship at work. Krista Tippett leads the dynamics that epitomize present chasms in American civil life: budgetary and economic crisis, social values clashes around abortion and same-sex marriage, and politically-engaged Christian action. Taken together, these conversations will collect diverse wisdom on the state of American democracy and civil society in divided times.

Last night, Jim Daly and Gabe Lyons represented the diversity within American Evangelicalism that is lost in the coverage of Christian voters and candidates, and the way this significant swath of American religiosity continues to evolve. Gabe Lyons is a voice for a new generation of evangelical: alienated by the strident public Christianity of recent decades, and committed to finding ways for Christian conviction to have a robust and constructive place in the pluralistic culture of the 21st century. Jim Daly shares this concern, even as he represents the legacy of Focus on the Family, one of the most publicly influential conservative “moral values” organizations of recent decades.

They answered questions like:

Instead of looking at what we don't like about the other party, what values do you see in them that you appreciate and what what other values do you wish your own party embraced and acted on?

Do you believe that Jesus, who preached the coming of a distinct kind of earthly, social order (the Kingdom of God, not just personal piety), expected his followers to demand -- and to press for -- social justice -- a just system, for social and political arrangements under which all people could live with dignity?

At one time some Christians were confident that the Bible justified owning slaves. What will you do when and if a majority of Christians become to believe that gay marriage is OK?