Episode 14: How Religion Shapes the Way Americans Listen - Listening Across Religious Divides

One of the reasons why it's so important for us to be talking about religion is that this podcast has as a central focal point the question of how can we learn to solve hard problems together? And to solve hard problems together, we need to work together.

We need to have better ways of cooperating.

Historically, virtually every human civilization has been founded on religion or has religious identity as a central component of its origin.

Religion is among the most powerful connecting forces in humanity.

But at the same time, as your own work illustrates, it has also often been among the most divisive forces in history.

What accounts for these two contrasting elements of religion, its capacity both to connect people in profound ways and its capacity to divide?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, I wish I could say that, yes, it's obviously just been a connecting force.

But as you have astutely mentioned, it's actually been horrific in terms of wars and its creation of conflict as well.

A lot lies in here, and it's the same force.

So the same force that brings people together in a sense of identity, religious identity, that they then may be tied to national identity or ethnic identity.

It's drawing people together.

And then what happens is you have a group of people that also encompasses some people who believe that their concept of the truth and their concept of the universe and God and the spiritual world is the correct one and it is the only correct one.

And when we find that particular thought process and we then intersect it with the fact that there may be a territory next door who doesn't agree, that is when we find the same connecting force becoming a divisive force.

It is when you have a group of religious individuals who believe that their way is the only way and that others must follow the same way.

That urge to convert, that urge to take over with your worldview, with your religious worldview, is what causes the divisiveness and something that needs to be avoided.

And yet, so many religions... have both factions.

It's not that the entirety of the religion feels that.

In fact, usually I would say the majority, maybe even the vast majority of people who believe in a certain religion are absolutely fine with other people of other religions doing their own thing and following on with their own beliefs.

But there is the minority, there is the faction in most religions that says no.

I fundamentally am not okay with the fact that other people are believing something different than myself.

And I must change that.

And that thought process is the one that I would say actually leads very much towards extremism.