By John W. Morehead.
Can pluralism flourish among people who do not regard it as the highest good?
America’s social divisions have generated a growing ecosystem of organizations devoted to strengthening civic life, rebuilding trust, and helping people navigate deep differences. Among the most significant is New Pluralists, a philanthropic collaborative that invests in researchers, practitioners, storytellers, and community leaders seeking to strengthen America’s capacity to live well amid its growing diversity.
Its work deserves serious attention. New Pluralists has identified dehumanization, disconnection, and distrust as major threats to pluralism in American society. These are not abstract concerns. Political opponents increasingly view one another as dangers to the nation. Social isolation weakens the relationships that once connected neighborhoods and communities. Trust in institutions, leaders, and neighbors continues to decline. Together, these developments threaten democratic life and our capacity to remain free, connected, and cooperative amid deep differences.
In response, New Pluralists has invested substantial resources in strengthening what it calls the pluralism ecosystem. Through research, local initiatives, community leadership, storytelling, and practical engagement, it seeks to build a society in which people can flourish together despite their differences. Its guiding principles emphasize human dignity, responsibility for repair, a wider circle of belonging, strength in difference, and alternatives to zero-sum social life.
At the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, we find much to admire in this work. For more than two decades, FRD has brought people from different religious, political, and moral communities into what we call Heart & Mind Conversations. We share New Pluralists’ concern about distrust, social fragmentation, and dehumanization. New Pluralists has also stated directly that pluralism is not moral relativism, does not require neutrality, and does not obligate people to partner with everyone. That clarification matters, especially for religious communities that fear pluralism requires them to soften or privatize their convictions.
Our experience has nevertheless led us to press the inquiry further. What lies beneath dehumanization, disconnection, and distrust? Why do some people experience pluralism not as a civic good but as a threat to what they value most? And can pluralism remain credible among people who accept a pluralistic society while refusing to regard pluralism as their highest good?
The ability to live freely with people who hold different beliefs, values, identities, and ways of life is essential in a free society. Yet many Americans do not experience pluralism as an obvious moral aspiration. Some religious conservatives worry that it will erode moral norms and weaken institutions they regard as necessary for human flourishing. Some progressives fear that pluralism can become an excuse for tolerating harmful ideologies or social arrangements. Others worry that demographic, cultural, or political change will undermine communities, traditions, or identities they cherish.
Those fears may be justified, exaggerated, manipulated, or mistaken. Their merits must eventually be examined. But before people can examine them together, we must recognize that the fears shape how pluralism is heard. When people believe something precious is at risk, they do not primarily experience diversity as social enrichment. They experience danger. Taking that fear seriously does not mean endorsing every threat claim or excusing harmful conduct. It means bringing the perception of danger into the conversation where it can be tested rather than allowing it to harden unseen.
Threat perception can precede distrust and dehumanization. People come to believe that another group threatens their children, faith, freedoms, community, dignity, or future. Withdrawal then feels sensible. Suspicion appears prudent, and stories portraying rivals as dangerous become easier to accept. Fear often comes first, distrust follows, and dehumanization becomes possible. If so, the pluralism field must address not only the visible breakdown in relationships but also the fears that help produce it.
This changes where we locate the problem and how we imagine solutions. Distrust is a major civic challenge, but it raises a prior question: Why do people distrust? Sometimes the answer is prejudice or misinformation. Sometimes people have experienced real harm. Often distrust grows when people believe others may harm what they value most. A serious practice of pluralism must be able to distinguish among these possibilities without dismissing fear or treating it as self-validating.
This pattern has appeared repeatedly in FRD’s work. We have spent decades bringing together religious rivals whose disagreements concern matters of ultimate importance. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Latter-day Saints, atheists, secular humanists, and others do not merely disagree about policy preferences. They often disagree about truth, morality, salvation, justice, authority, and the nature of the good life. Those disagreements touch identity, belonging, meaning, and purpose. They can therefore feel existential rather than merely intellectual.
Disagreement itself, however, does not always destroy relationships. Families, communities, and democracies live with disagreement every day. Relationships become more fragile when disagreement is interpreted as evidence that the other person is dangerous, dishonest, or bent on domination. Many Americans no longer think their opponents are simply mistaken; they think their opponents must be stopped before they cause irreversible harm. Under those conditions, mutual persuasion gives way to strategic defeat, and public life becomes a struggle for protection from one another.
This leads to a difficult question for pluralism: What happens when pluralism itself is heard as part of the threat? Appeals to appreciate diversity, widen the circle, and find strength in difference are admirable. But among people who already perceive cultural change as dangerous, the same language can have unintended effects.
An invitation to widen the circle may be heard as a request to lower one’s defenses. An appeal to embrace diversity may sound like a demand to approve changes one finds alarming. An emphasis on belonging may appear to minimize legitimate concerns about values, norms, safety, or institutions. This may not be what pluralists intend, but communication is shaped by reception as well as intention.
Organizations committed to pluralism often find that their language resonates most strongly with people already inclined toward pluralist values. Reaching skeptics is harder. This is partly a communication challenge, but it may also reflect a question of sequence. People who perceive pluralism as threatening are unlikely to be persuaded by praise of diversity until their fears can be voiced, examined, and answered. For them, pluralism may not be the first step. Trust may be.
Many religious conservatives do not object to living in a pluralistic society. They object to treating pluralism as the highest social ideal. For them, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and political liberty are primary goods. Pluralism is a consequence of protecting those freedoms, not the goal that justifies them.
A Christian who believes Christianity is true may strongly support the right of others to practice different faiths while still hoping to persuade more people to embrace Christianity. The same is true of Muslims, atheists, and others who hold life-orienting convictions. They may defend freedom because human beings should be free to seek, affirm, and respond to truth, not because the resulting diversity is itself the highest good.
Pluralism becomes suspect when it appears to require people to abandon the hope of persuasion. If participation demands that citizens treat rival truth claims as equally valid, keep ultimate commitments private, or refrain from asking one another to change, many religious communities will see pluralism as a competing vision of the good. A more durable pluralism must distinguish coercion from persuasion. It must protect people against domination while leaving them free to offer reasons, bear witness, resist one another’s claims, and remain open to being changed in return.
This distinction offers a way to engage citizens who remain skeptical of pluralism as an ideal but support the liberties that make a diverse society possible. Beginning with liberty, conscience, and mutual respect can create space for a deeper question: Can people who seek to influence one another become trustworthy enough to remain in relationship while doing so?
At FRD, we have come to believe that healthy societies require more than general social trust. They require trust between rivals. Modern democracies contain competing visions of the good life. Religious communities disagree about ultimate truth. Political movements advance incompatible priorities. Many of these differences are not temporary misunderstandings. They are enduring features of a free society.
We call the needed relationship rivaltrust: trust amid rival visions of the good. Rivaltrust does not require surrendering convictions, minimizing disagreement, or promising consensus. It asks whether moral rivals can become trustworthy enough to speak honestly, listen under pressure, resist without demeaning, and remain open to mutual influence. The aim is not the end of disagreement. It is a relationship strong enough to sustain respectful, mutually persuasive contestation.
Many bridge-building efforts emphasize shared identities, common ground, or empathy. Each can help. But greater understanding does not always resolve disputes over moral authority, justice, or the good life. Sometimes people understand each other accurately and still oppose one another’s aims. FRD is particularly concerned with what happens at that point: whether rivals can practice cooperative co-resistance, standing against claims they believe harmful while cooperating to preserve one another’s dignity, freedom, and opportunity to persuade.
The relationship between pluralism and rivaltrust may therefore involve sequence and depth. Pluralism describes and supports a society in which difference can belong. Rivaltrust addresses the relational capacity needed when those differences remain consequential and contested. By addressing fear and testing threat perceptions, trustworthy engagement can make dehumanization less attractive, connection more possible, and pluralism more sustainable.
A person who fears that another group threatens their community is unlikely to begin by celebrating diversity. They may, however, be willing to examine how that perception formed, hear a rival’s Personal Formation Story, and test whether the rival can be trusted despite continuing disagreement. This is why FRD’s Heart & Mind Conversations do more than exchange viewpoints. Participants disclose motives, explore the experiences and loyalties that shaped them, ask difficult questions, and invite one another to reconsider. Trust-building becomes preparation for honest persuasion rather than a substitute for it.
These reflections are offered as a constructive extension of New Pluralists’ work. Its commitment to dignity, belonging, repair, and productive engagement addresses real civic needs. FRD adds a question arising from sustained encounters among religious and moral rivals: What practices are needed when common ground does not appear and when the parties still believe they should try to influence one another?
That question is especially important when engaging communities that do not naturally embrace pluralist language. Many are not rejecting life in a diverse society. They fear that participation will require surrendering convictions, accepting harm, or yielding the freedom to persuade. A pluralism capable of addressing those fears without ratifying every accusation or relaxing protections against harm will be more credible and more inclusive.
New Pluralists and FRD are therefore addressing related parts of the same civic problem. New Pluralists strengthens the cultural and civic conditions in which diversity can belong and communities can flourish. FRD concentrates on the trust and practices needed when rivals continue to contest ultimate commitments and competing visions of the good. Each perspective can sharpen the other.
If pluralism is to flourish, it must speak to people who prize diversity and to people who fear what diversity may bring. If trust is to flourish, it must become sturdy enough to survive honest attempts at mutual persuasion. The challenge is not simply to live alongside our differences. It is to become trustworthy rivals while those differences remain consequential, emotionally charged, and unresolved.
That is difficult work. It may also be necessary if pluralism is to become more than the shared language of people who already believe in it.
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 at johnwmorehead@msn.com.