I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening) Quotes

“Somewhere along the way, we lost our revolutionary passion for talking about the issues that affect our country and our lives. We decided that conversational conflict is impolite at best and dangerous at worst. Unfortunately our attempts to avoid these uncomfortable moments have backfired. In our efforts to protect relationships from political tension, we have instead escalated that tension. Because the reality is that we never stopped talking politics altogether—we stopped talking politics with people who disagree with us. We changed “you shouldn’t talk about politics” to “you should talk only to people who reinforce your worldview.” Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to be molded and informed and tested by others’ opinions, we allowed our opinions and our hearts to harden.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Our prevailing philosophy is “you do you”—be who you were made to be, make your own decisions, and live your best life. We just want you to actually do you—not Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity—based on the experiences that you’re having every day and the values that you want to infuse into your life. And we want you to do you with your friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners and colleagues. Political pundits have become fond of discussing partisan politics as “tribal.” We don’t want your tribe to be your political party. We want it to be the communities in which you live, worship, and work—diverse in thought as they may be.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We don’t want to be challenged or even questioned, because we believe there is too much at stake. We have tied together our religious beliefs, our pride in our upbringings, and our policy positions until they’ve become like a tangled mess of necklaces that we shove in a drawer—still treasured but unwearable.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Paradox is disorienting at times. It is also empowering. It can be empowering to say “I don’t know.” It can be empowering to trust the testimonies and experiences of others. As people of faith, we should know that and live that experience.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Molds are for Jell-O, not for people.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“The jersey also blinds us to the humanity of the other side. This team-sport mentality has created a toxic mix of competition and confirmation bias. Our team is never wrong, and the other team is always wrong. Somewhere along the way we stopped disagreeing with each other and started hating each other. We are enemies, and our side is engaged in an existential battle for the very soul of the country. We are no longer working toward common goals. We are no longer building something together. Our sole objective is tearing the other side down. Nothing short of total victory is acceptable. Again, it’s much like how we view college basketball in Kentucky: We can’t just beat the other side. We have to annihilate them.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Practice of nuance means asking painful, difficult questions—questions that might reveal something new or bring a position into different relief or otherwise illuminate our perspectives.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“The hard truth is, too often we engage with issues only in a search for information that will prove our point. We have been as guilty of that as anyone else.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We can move to a more productive outlook when we realize that our personal values are not lost if we collectively make decisions that deviate from those values. We can hold on to our values without needing public validation of them. We can recognize that different considerations are at work in the public debate than our private lives. We can seek out expressions of our values beyond the public sphere. We can recognize that sometimes more good comes out of expressing our values through private action than through public debate.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We've decided to stop calling America "divided." Buying into this conflict-driven narrative is a choice, and it's a choice we're not going to make. We don't feel divided from each other or the people in our lives in any way. There are no perfect relationships, ideas, people, or organizations in our lives. They're all flawed, just as we are flawed. But we see past those flaws - because we are first looking for the good.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We aren't the boss of anyone else, and grace shows us that others don't have to comply with our worldview in order to be worthy of sharing our world.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“When we lead with the values that inform our faith - compassion, forgiveness, and love - we enter into even the most emotionally charged discussions with a new perspective. We might not change our minds about the outcomes, but we can change our conversations by listening with openness and receptivity to those who think differently than we do.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Learning to have healthy conflict with each other over political challenges is of utmost importance; in fact, it is a spiritual imperative.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“participating in the political process is a spiritual imperative, but we should participate as an expression of our faith, not as a fulfillment of our faith. In other words, faith or values should inform rather than define our votes, opinions, and ways of talking with our neighbors about the future of the country. When we’re participating, as Michael says, with our feet grounded in our values, there is no room for bitter partisanship.22”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“If you never engage with the world, the world—full of people you love and people who get on your nerves—never has a chance to push and pull you in new directions.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“There is a way to engage with respect and empathy. There is a way to give grace and be vulnerable when discussing the issues that affect your family, your church, and your country. There is a way to stop treating politics like a team sport and get to work solving the real problems that plague our world.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Legislation is not the answer to every private concern, every religious debate, every problem within the family, our minds, our heads, or our hearts.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“This hardened response to those on the “other team” is not an invention of modern American politics. It seems to be hardwired into the circuitry of our brains. The Old Testament is filled with stories of sometimes deadly tribalism, and scientific data gives us insight into why that happens. In 1968, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott conducted a famous experiment with her students in the days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She divided the class by eye color. The brown-eyed children were told they were better. They were the “in-group.” The blue-eyed children were told they were less than the brown-eyed children—hence becoming the “out-group.” Suddenly, former classmates who had once played happily side by side were taunting and torturing one another on the playground. Lest we assign greater morality to the “out-group,” the blue-eyed children were just as quick to attack the brown-eyed children once the roles were reversed.6”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“A BUILDER OR A WRECKER As I watched them tear a building down A gang of men in a busy town With a ho-heave-ho, and a lusty yell They swung a beam and the side wall fell I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled, And the men you’d hire if you wanted to build?” He gave a laugh and said, “No, indeed, Just common labor is all I need. I can easily wreck in a day or two, What builders have taken years to do.” And I thought to myself, as I went my way Which of these roles have I tried to play Am I a builder who works with care, Measuring life by rule and square? Am I shaping my work to a well-made plan Patiently doing the best I can Or am I a wrecker who walks to town Content with the labor of tearing down? “O Lord let my life and my labors be That which will build for eternity!”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“When we stop trying to win, we are able to think, experiment, learn, and innovate.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We have to stop fearing difficult discussions and start seeing them as opportunities for growth.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Jesus was fully human and the divine Son of God. We are asked to believe that Mary was both a virgin and a mother.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“The inescapable conclusion of curious, openhearted dialogue on politics is that conflicting opinions and data can and do exist simultaneously”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“when we begin with offering grace, the ways in which we orient our conversations fundamentally change. We begin by offering each other the benefit of the doubt instead of being ready to pounce on the first weakness or illustration of conflict. We begin by prioritizing our shared connection to one another instead of our conflicts. We move forward instead of shutting down.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“the end, what we realized is that debates aren’t problem-solving. They are dramatized events filled with manufactured conflict. We weren’t trying to find a solution that would make both sides happy. We were arguing that we were a better choice to solve the problem. And conflict prevents the giving of grace and the prioritizing of connection. We didn’t need to reinvent debates or do them right. There is no real way to give grace while trying to score points.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“The polarization manifesting in nearly every aspect of our political culture results from a grace deficiency.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea—we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“We have to let go of the idea that there is too much at stake or that one issue is too important to honestly and realistically question our positions on other issues.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“When we don’t understand our “why”—the values behind our positions—we are too easily tempted to follow our confirmation bias down an amoral or immoral black hole of support for politicians who simply don’t deserve it.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

“Our driving force shouldn’t be ensuring that a particular party controls a particular wing of government. Our driving force should be the values that are most important to us in living in community with other people.”
― Sarah Stewart Holland, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations