Concerned that divisive national politics are infiltrating New Canaan, community leaders including local clergy are calling for residents to work toward a clearer, fuller understanding of each other.
On the morning of Saturday, May 16, a new effort in town—a free workshop titled ‘Let’s Talk, New Canaan: A Community Conversation Across Political Differences’—will launch at Lapham Center (participation is limited, register here).
We sat down with two representatives from The Congregational Church of New Canaan who helped spearhead the gathering—the Rev. Stephen Chapin Garner, senior minister, and Director of Spiritual Formation Marianna Kilbride—to get some background and details on ‘Let’s Talk, New Canaan’ (more info here).
Here’s a transcript of our conversation.
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New Canaanite: Where did this effort that you are calling ‘Let’s Talk New Canaan’—where did it come from?
The Rev. Chapin Garner: I think it was during the last election cycle in town, we heard from our own church members, community members, that the level of discourse was a little bit vitriolic. You had these things mailed to your home that said, ‘Vote line B only,’ ‘Vote line A.’ And we had a couple of gatherings, a men’s group at church, where guys were talking about what their fears are in the world. And what came back that night were guys saying our biggest concern is the division in the country, in the town. And a couple other things happened and we thought, what are we going do with this information?
Marianna Kilbride: Definitely, and that’s how we normally plan our programs. They happen pretty organically. Our faith has to speak into our world as we live in it. And it’s happened over a few times in our town that, when we’ve had emergency situations or tragedies where the church looks to see if there is some way that we can help in the effort of the whole town. And that’s what we were hearing here from our friends inside and outside the church, that people were just concerned and feeling helpless about the disunity in the country that they were now seeing in our town, and not wanting that.
New Canaanite: So you decided to do what about it?
The Rev. Chapin Garner: So our first call, and I’ll let you describe him, Marianna, was to Allen Hilton who runs the House United movement, because he’s at this intersection. He’s a good conversation partner. And our call was: What should we do?
Marianna Kilbride: So Allen was in parish ministry and perceived a call for himself to move into this uniting of both sides of the church—I think, originally, conservative and liberal—and now also I think just across our political divides in the country. And he does something that he calls ‘Courageous Conversations,’ where he gathers people together and facilitates them talking through their positions on things. That’s not what we’re doing here. We are trying to introduce people from opposite sides of the aisle to each other, to understand their stories, to create empathy for how they got to where they are.
The Rev. Chapin Garner: And I think in our first conversation with Allen, I think his thought was, ‘Oh, we’ll gather the church, our church, together and have this internal conversation,’ and pretty quickly we said, ‘No, we want to offer this to the town.’ It’s good for us, too, but we feel like this is a town offering that needs to be presented. And then we reached out to the clergy, who are friends, and said, ‘Hey, is this something we should be doing as a group?’
New Canaanite: The event next month is hosted by the Clergy Association. So we’ll talk about that group’s role in a second, but what would you say are your overarching goals in this effort?
Marianna Kilbride: I think we do think of it as an experiment, so we don’t have prescribed goals per se, except I would say one is creating empathy among people who might be inclined to, to not engage at all.
New Canaanite: To write each other off.
The Rev. Chapin Garner: Yes. So creating a space for conversation, right? Just doing that, just having this is a win because we’re in this polarized environment where people shut down and shut people off and don’t engage. And so part of it is, and the biggest challenge we’ve got, is really letting people know this is a safe space where we’re not trying to argue points. We’re not trying to win arguments, we’re trying to understand where people are and how they got there.
New Canaanite: What is the role of the Clergy Association?
The Rev. Chapin Garner: It felt really important to have full buy-in — as you know, we had a worship service at St. A’s a number of years ago around this same concern. So we came together and the clergy are doing a couple things. One, just affirming that this is really important for our town to do. Two, the clergy are going to work to encourage their congregants to enter into this time. There’s a small group facilitation, so the clergy or lay church leaders will help the participants come together and share their stories.
New Canaanite: So tell us what exactly is happening on the morning of May 16th, that Saturday. What happens at Lapham? Give us some broad strokes of the way this works, this three-hour workshop.
Marianna Kilbride: In the morning, we will get together. Allen Hilton will have a brief introduction to the event and we will have people paired off. We’re going to ask people to identify themselves as either leaning left or leaning right, and we will pair those people up. They will be split into probably groups of six, and then they will spend some time telling each other, in pairs, their stories, from ‘I was born in,’ ‘My parents were,’ whatever they think is important and has led them to the kind of beliefs and tenets that they now hold. Then they will switch roles. So if Chapin and I were doing it, then I would stand up in my small group and say, ‘I’m Chapin Garner. This is my story.’ And this is called a ‘Life Swap.’ And Allen has done this several times and every time he’s done it felt that it had very, very positive impact on the community.
The Rev. Chapin Garner: And one of the things that is important in that opening segment where we’ve got the whole group together is Allen is going to really set the stage for this as a safe space and set the expectations so that people understand how we’re supposed to be relating to one another. The kind of ground rules for respecting and listening and learning from others.
New Canaanite: What would you tell people who are understanding what this is or hearing about what this is, but who are maybe on the fence for whatever reasons or on the fence about attending?
The Rev. Chapin Garner: What I would say is if you care about healing—this is going to be an overstatement, but it’s how I feel—if you care about healing the rift in the country, you’ve got to be willing to engage in this process. We’re talking about an experiment in New Canaan that hopefully, if it builds empathy and understanding, can be an example for other communities. So if you’re at home lamenting the division, this is something you can practically do. It requires vulnerability, it requires taking some risks. In my mind, you can’t change a sick culture, a divisive culture, if you’re not willing to engage and be a part of a solution. And this is an experiment toward a solution. There’s nothing more at stake than the healing of our society.
Marianna Kilbride: That’s right. And I think that our country was founded and built for conversation. It’s not built for everybody to be the same, but it was built to be in dialogue. And it’s somewhere in that mix that we get to healing. And this is a step toward that.
The Rev. Chapin Garner: And it’s a Christian tenet that Mariana is mentioning. The call is to be one people—not one mind, not to share the same gift set or background—but to understand that we need each other. We’re interdependent on one another and we’re stronger when—it’s cliche, but cliche because it’s the truth—we’re stronger when our gift sets are bound together and not torn apart.
Marianna Kilbride: And frankly, we all have different gift sets, of course, but these two mindsets, the conservative and the liberal, need each other to find a balance. We can’t do everything the same way forever, and we can’t do every new idea that comes along in the extreme. It doesn’t work. We need each other.
[More details and a link to register for the free “Let’s Talk, New Canaan” gathering can be found here.]
All politics are local. Making a human connection through empathy is an important place to start.