By John W. Morehead
I served in the Air Force in the early 1980s and lived just off base in Northern California. I drove in each morning and Fridays were the most interesting as the organization Grandmothers for Peace held their weekly protest over nuclear weapons they assumed were housed on base. A handful of sincere, elderly would-be peacemakers tried their best as they held up signs protesting nuclear war.
I have no doubt that these women were sincere, and that they felt their efforts contributed toward a nuclear war-free world. However, as I reflect on that many years later, given my own research into the causes of human conflict and my work in religious diplomacy, I can’t help but think that their efforts made no impact on the weapons they opposed. Similarly, I have a great appreciation for the work of interfaith dialogue and peacemaking, but I feel that it largely misses the mark and only appeals to those already open to such conversations. In this post I will discuss two recent examples and how these fail to address what really drives conflict.
Although I will be offering a critique of common interfaith approaches and setting forth my perspective on an alternative, I don’t believe I have all the answers. Nor do I think my approach is the only one. I humbly suggest that we try to step back from the common assumptions that drive our efforts and acknowledge that these might need to be reassessed if we want to have greater impact in addressing world conflicts in religion and politics.
The first example came in an email from Interfaith America, with the headline “Trust is Broken. Pluralism is a Solution.” This email rightly begins by drawing attention to a 2023-2024 poll by the Pew Research Center which “showed that only 34% of respondents said that most people could be trusted, down from 46% in 2018.” Trust is tremendously important for human beings, and our declining trust in our institutions, from politics to religion, represents one of the greatest challenges of our time. Trust is in short supply, and we need to take steps to build trust. But I disagree with their understanding of why trust is eroding and what steps should be taken to remedy this.
The email goes on to say that for Interfaith America, “trust can be built and fostered through acts of pluralism.” Specifically, their Pluralism Framework includes three actions and their hoped-for results:
- Respect: fosters mutual understanding
- Relate: builds personal convictions across differences
- Cooperate: enhances problem-solving and pursuit of shared goals
While the reader might find this course of action appealing and wonder how anyone could disagree with it, let’s set Interfaith America’s suggestions aside for a moment and consider another example before moving to critical analysis.
The second example comes from an online seminar provided by Shoulder to Shoulder and Religions for Peace, where Becca Tyvoll, an evangelical, presented on the topic of “Loving Our Muslim Neighbors: A Resource for Evangelical Christians.” Tyvoll detailed her years of work in putting this resource together. Contextualized for evangelicals, it includes a reflection on various Scriptural passages on love of neighbor, information on bigotry against Muslims, and suggestions on practical steps that can be taken to move forward.
Again, the reader might find this effort appealing, but in my view both examples fail to address the real issues involved in interreligious and political conflict. In the case of Interfaith America, the suggested way forward is to engage in acts of pluralism: respect, relate and cooperate. This sounds like a modification of the Nike slogan “Just do it!” For Shoulder to Shoulder and Religions for Peace the assumption is that looking at Bible verses and getting more information about bigotry will help address evangelical concerns about Muslims.
But are these assumptions about the challenges and suggested courses of actions ones that get at the underlying issues? I think they miss the mark. Years ago, I too thought that what my fellow evangelicals needed was a reminder about various Bible passages about loving neighbors and enemy, and new information about Muslims to counter misunderstandings. My research into social psychology showed me that there were other issues that needed to be addressed.
I began my interactions with social psychology during some research for a grant from the Louisville Institute as I sought to understand the reasons why some evangelicals have more positive relationships with those in other religions, while perhaps the majority have more defensive and negative ones. I eventually encountered the work of Kurt Gray of Ohio State University and who holds the Weary Foundation Chair in the Social Psychology of Polarization and Misinformation. His academic research is presented in an accessible form in his book Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics (Pantheon Books, 2025).
The thrust of Gray’s research is that human beings have developed for survival by coming together in groups to form strong social bonds. This involves trust of those in our ingroups, but distrust of those in outgroups. This distrust is connected to a strong sense of fear because the outgroup is viewed as a source of moral harm through their competing values, beliefs, and worldview. Some of Gray’s research has tested specific examples of perceptions of this moral harm that are especially relevant to evangelicals, including fear of sacrilegious ideas. In my original research I thought that the emotion of disgust was the driving force for evangelicals in relation to other religions, but Gray’s research demonstrates that disgust is only the mediator and that the driver is fear of harm.
In other words, research in social psychology reveals that groups have a strong moral sense of what is right and how things should be. Ingroup members share this sense in their values and the way they see the world. Those outgroup members who not only don’t share ingroup beliefs, but who also hold a dramatically different set of values and beliefs, are seen as threatening. Their beliefs are viewed as a source of moral harm that can contaminate not only an ingroup’s way of life, but our children and society as well. With this insight, is it any wonder we fight so passionately about religion and politics?
Let’s return to the two examples I started with: Interfaith America’s suggestion that in the face of our trust deficit we should engage in acts of pluralism, and Shoulder to Shoulder’s presentation where evangelicals are encouraged to consider Bible passages and alternative information about bigotry. Since the challenge is fear of moral harm by a dangerous “other,” I think these suggestions, while well meaning, miss the mark. The average evangelical, or conservative member of many other religious traditions (not to mention political parties) who think their beliefs are the best, true and only right ways of seeing the world, aren’t going to want to engage in acts of pluralism, which they see as dangerous, not something noble to be embraced. Neither are they likely to be persuaded by various Bible verses, because for every text that says love your neighbor, they will focus instead on texts that warn of false prophets and teachers.
I still think the efforts of these two organizations have value and a place, but only as a second order of engagement after initial trust-building has taken place through a methodology that accounts for fear of moral harm. At the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, we utilize a methodology called Heart & Mind Conversations™ that are informed by social psychology and other disciplines, as well as The Way of Openness™ as an agreement among partners as to how difficult conversations will proceed. The goal is not consensus but instead building trust across deep differences that will likely persist, as well as efforts of mutual persuasion, not only of ideas but also that each conversation partner is worthy of trust.
After years of working in interreligious conflict I fear that much of our efforts in the peacemaking and interfaith dialogue arenas are like those of Grandmothers for Peace: Our work makes us feel good but does little to address the real causes underlying our lack of trust. My hope is that we can have a critical dialogue about how to have more effective dialogue so that we can make a greater difference.
John W. Morehead is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, and the Director of its Evangelical Chapter (Multifaith Matters). You may contact him at johnwmorehead@msn.com .