The Deep Differences Project: Charrette One — Religious Identity as a Bridge Across Polarized America
In an increasingly polarized America, powerful forces in politics, media, and culture advance the notion that those with whom we disagree are the “other” and should be reviled and ridiculed. Increasingly, we interpret not just current events but our fellow citizens through the prism of what political scientist Lilliana Mason calls partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. This grand division of American society bifurcates religious and racial communities in a manner with which we are all too familiar: Christians are associated with the Republican Party and religious minorities are assumed to be Democrats; whites are presumed to be predominantly conservative and racial minorities are supposed to be predominantly liberal. Yet, we all know the inadequacies – and dangers – of such a simplistic analysis. In this opening charrette, George Yancey (Baylor University) and Asma Uddin (Aspen Institute) will explore how religious identity can sometimes transcend, and thus serve as a bridge across, these partisan divides. Drawing from their experience, they will examine 1) how the frame of “religious liberty” can unite conservative Christians and religious minorities; and 2) how shared religious commitments can provide a platform for interracial engagement and reconciliation. Charrette participants will be asked to ideate how increasing the salience of religious identity in their own contexts could expand the discursive space for bridging otherwise polarized partisan identities.
About the facilitators:
Asma T. Uddin, Inclusive America Project Fellow, the Aspen InstituteAsma T. Uddin is a religious liberty lawyer and scholar working for the protection of religious expression for people of all faiths in the U.S. and abroad. Uddin is an active lecturer to diverse religious groups in the U.S. and overseas on the importance of religious liberty, and she is widely published on the topic, including two books: When Islam Is Not a Religion (2019) and The Politics of Vulnerability (2021).
George Yancey, PhD, Professor of the Social Sciences, Baylor UniversityDr. George Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at Baylor University. He has published several research articles on the topics of institutional racial diversity, racial identity, academic bias, progressive Christians, and anti-Christian hostility. His books include Compromising Scholarship, a book that explores religious and political biases in academia; What Motivates Cultural Progressives, a book that examines activists who oppose the Christian Right; There is no God, a book that investigates atheism in the United States; and So Many Christians, So Few Lions, a book that assesses Christianophobia in the United States.