Krista Tippett & The Civil Conversations Project

If you’re not familiar with Krista Tippett and her podcast On Being (formerly called Speaking of Faith), you should be.  The weekly radio program, produced by American Public Media, started in 2001 and focuses on “religion, meaning, ethics and ideas.”  One of the new projects that On Being has been focusing on recently has been of particular importance to the work of JustPeace and the life of the United Methodist Church.

In January, Krista Tippett began a new project called the Civil Conversation Project - an ongoing series of radio shows and website that yearns for new and better way “to speak and listen to each other, to live forward together, even while holding passionate disagreements.”

In a blog post about the series, Tippett quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer about people’s desperate search for someone who will listen and Christian’s inability to do so.  And, Bonhoeffer provides some relational theology in this quote that is very similar to the story of Dorotheos of Gaza (that inspired the logo of JustPeace).

“Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life … One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”

Tippet points out that in the contemporary American context, Christians aren’t even listening and talking with one another.

The Civil Conversations Project website is chock-full of great resources and wisdom about the importance and practice of civility and dialogue.   On the site you will find podcast interviews with Frances Kissling, Richard Mouw, Dwame Anthony Appiah, Vincent Harding, Elizabeth Alexander, Sherry Turkle, and Terry Tempest Williams.  There are also in-depth essays, poetry, and coming soon, a small-group study guide about Civil Dialogue.