Discourse Across the Divide, Rev. Josh Pawelek, October 19, 2025

Part I: “What a Free Faith Invites”

          I began my October newsletter column with this question: “How do I engage in constructive dialogue with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than I do?” I’ve been encountering various versions of this question throughout my career; and as our nation’s cultural, political, economic and religious polarization continues to deepen, I seem to encounter it multiple times every day. So many unrelated conversations about so many unrelated topics eventually land on some version of “How do I engage in constructive dialogue with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than I do?” It feels like an essential question. It also feels more and more like an impossible undertaking.

          I want to address this question, but a little housekeeping first. The Coleman family purchased this sermon at our 2023 goods and services auction. It’s long overdue. Originally, one of the kids suggested I should preach about pangolins, which are a type of anteater.  I was really looking forward to that—and may still preach that sermon. But then she handed the project over to her grandfather, Bill. Eventually he landed on this question about how we engage with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than we do. It’s an important question to address from the pulpit just about any time of year; but our ministry theme for October is “cultivating compassion,” and it certainly fits with that theme. Engaging constructively with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from ourselves requires that we find in ourselves some degree of compassion for the person with whom we are engaging, and for ourselves. This is a tall order, especially when our compassion for the other is not returned in kind. More on that later.

           I want to share my thinking on this question in three, short reflections. The first I call “What a Free Faith Invites.” Our Unitarian Universalist faith—our free faith, our creedless faith, our liberal faith—invites us to engage with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than we do. I won’t say it requires us to engage. Nobody has to engage, and there are often good reasons not to engage. But our faith is invitational in this way. If I commit to our first principle, “respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” that commitment doesn’t disappear when I encounter someone who holds opposing political, cultural or religious views. If anything, that commitment makes me curious about who this someone is, what experiences have led them to hold their views.

If I commit to our second principle, “justice, equity and compassion in human relations,” that commitment doesn’t disappear when I encounter someone on the opposite side of the nation’s culture war from me. We typically and appropriately follow that second principle into a position of solidarity with society’s most vulnerable people and groups. Yet the principle is universal. Everyone deserves to live in a just and equitable society. Everyone deserves compassion, including people with whom we disagree.

          If I commit to our fourth principle, “The free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” and our fifth principle regarding the “right of conscience,” neither disappears when I encounter someone who abides by a radically different theology or worships a radically different God than me. In fact, if we remain in our social, cultural, political and religious bubbles, all we have is an echo chamber. This inevitably stunts our capacity for growth. At least that’s the risk. I believe this: As we engage with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than we do, our understanding of what is true and meaningful grows, develops, evolves, is honed, is strengthened, is deepened.

          If I hold dear the Unitarian Universalist value of generosity, that holding ought to create in me a spacious openness towards people who hold contrary views. If I hold dear the Unitarian Universalist value of pluralism, that holding ought to create in me a spacious openness toward people who hold contrary views. If I hold dear the Unitarian Universalist value and seventh Unitarian Universalist principle of interdependence, that holding ought to create awareness in me that I am spiritually, physically and cosmically connected to all there is—we are all star stuff—and that includes people who think, feel, believe, and act radically differently from me.

Of course, this kind of engagement in the midst of deepening polarization is extremely difficult. But our free faith invites us to engage. Our free faith affirms that this engagement ought to be possible.

Part II

“On Love and Hate”

          During my summer study leave I read Liberated to the Bone by the Minneapolis-based writer, healer and cultural worker, Susan Raffo. I was struck by her chapter on the similarities between love and hate—how they can feel very much the same. Referring to scans of a structure in the brain called the putamen, she says “when we feel hate, there is a part of us that lights up. It expands, glows. It’s the same part of us that lights up when we feel love.” It’s not exactly the same, but very similar, “and that matters.”[1]

          She says, “It feels good to hate. It actually feels good. It has its own kind of energy, its own sense of connection, of purpose, of story. It can unite people around a common enemy. It can take away the uncomfortable awfulness of having to look at myself and how I have created or co-created this horrible situation we are in. It’s all tied up with the pleasure drug [oxytocin], because usually, hate goes along with something wonderful and visionary that we want to protect.”[2]

          Here’s the lesson I take from her analysis. When we are threatened—and make no mistake, there are people in this room whose very right to exist is threatened; or when the people we love are threatened; or when the neighbor we care about, or immigrants, or trans people, or poor people, or the black and brown federal employees losing their jobs are threatened; or when free speech, due process, the justice system and democracy itself are threatened, we are rightfully and appropriately angry. And when we wish to engage in dialogue with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from us, but we hear these same threats echoing through their words, even threats of violence, yes: we are rightfully and appropriately angry. Our putamen lights up, big feelings rise up from our bellies. Our bodies tense up. We’re ready to respond. Do we respond with hate? Or do we respond with love? And because they can feel so similarly in the moment, do we even know the difference? Or are they both welling up simultaneously, both churning in that space Raffo describes behind our eyes halfway between our forehead and the back of our skull?[3] Can we tease them apart, so that even if we’re feeling hate, we can still recognize and respond with love? In that moment, can we give energy to and articulate not what we hate, but what we love; and can we invite the person with whom we’re engaging to give energy to and articulate not what they hate, but what they love? That’s a very different conversation than the one we anticipate having.

          I would be remiss if I did not mention a critical piece of Raffo’s analysis. Hate is easy. It rises up, rushes up, hits all the pleasure centers, pushes everything else aside. But know this: it’s a defense mechanism. It’s a shield. It’s protective. It’s a mask. Do you know what it protects us from? Hate masks and protects us from sorrow, sadness, grief. Sorrow, sadness and grief for all that we’re losing, for all that we’ve lost. Raffo says “the farthest back root for the word hate that we can find is the word for sorrow. That sentence is almost enough on its own.”[4] Imagine if this engagement we’re so anxious about—this dialogue with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from us—imagine if it were about all that brings us sorrow. We might find that at least we don’t feel as radically differently from each other as we assume we do.

Part III

“No Harm”

          I endeavor to approach people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from me with compassion. I try to convey my compassion through my curiosity about who they are, where they’re from, what they think and why, and what they believe and why. I hope they don’t think I’m nosey. But my free, creedless, liberal, Unitarian Universalist, dignity-respecting, truth-seeking, interdependence-affirming faith invites me to approach in this way. I know I have something to learn. As I approach, I am mindful of two realities:

          First, however I convey my compassion, I realize it may not be reciprocated. Related to that, I am mindful that the person with whom I am engaging may intend to treat me with compassion, and may anticipate that I will not reciprocate. So maybe we dance awkwardly until something that feels like trust emerges. Either way, my most common experience of engaging with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from me is with people from conservative faith traditions. I am curious. I ask a lot of questions. I learn a lot about the person. But I rarely experience curiosity in return. I rarely get questions in return. I typically don’t feel that the person is learning who I am. Maybe that’s as far as the conversation can go in that moment. I typically leave the conversation knowing more about their faith. I don’t have the impression they’ve learned anything about Unitarian Universalism.

          Second, I am a straight, cis-gendered, white, middle-aged, upper middle-class, mostly able-bodied, professional man with a masters degree from Harvard Divinity School, practicing ministry in a faith tradition that, though it may on the surface appear fringy, is actually deeply rooted in American colonial, revolutionary, literary and spiritual history with all the challenging contradictions that entails. I’ve got a lot of privilege, which makes me relatively safe in conversations with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently from me.

But I am keenly aware this is not how it works for many people, including many people in this room. When this person who sits on the other side of the political, religious, cultural, social divide expresses thoughts, feelings, beliefs or takes actions that are harmful; when they dismiss, discount, deny and either imply or threaten violence toward vulnerable communities—immigrants, LGBTQIA people, people with disabilities, people of color, women, poor people, people on public assistance, religious minorities, atheists, pagans, low-income working people—even if they don’t realize what they’re expressing or doing is harmful, I see no reason why anyone who holds any of these vulnerable identities should feel obligated to continue engaging. There is no reason to stay in a dialogue or engagement that causes you harm. Exiting that dialogue, or refusing to have it in the first place, is an act of self care, and the absence of engagement is not on you. It’s on them for not recognizing you as the full, whole, perfectly imperfect, beautiful, holy, sacred, made-in-the-divine-image, interconnected, beloved human being that you are.

I feel strongly that all of us, especially those of us with more privilege and safety, must do everything in our power to be in those dialogues where we can say clearly and without apology that this country and, frankly, this planet, and truly our sorrowful, grieving, threatened, hating but also loving human brains, bodies and spirits are big enough and spacious enough and ultimately interdependent enough for all of us to embrace all of it, the full range of human being, the full diversity, nuance and layers of human identity and the natural world. We can embrace it all with the vast reservoirs of love, compassion and respect that are actually available to us. This is one of the great insights of our free faith. There is enough love to go around. There is enough compassion to go around. There is enough respect to go around.

This is the invitation our faith lays before us each and every day. Let us each respond to this invitation as best we can.

Amen and blessed be.

[1] Raffo, Susan, Liberated to the Bone: Histories, Bodies, Futures ( Chico, CA: AK Press, 2022) p. 49.

[2] Raffo, Liberated to the Bone, p, 52.

[3] Raffo, Liberated to the Bone, p. 49.

[4] Raffo, Liberated to the Bone, p. 50.