The following is a summary of the first meeting of the Respectful Conversations Project with the purpose of bringing people from different socio-political perspectives together in a mutually respectful environment. Rather than argue over different political positions or social values, we intend to reach for understanding and areas of agreement, perhaps as a prelude for conversations in which we explore the best ways to promote the welfare of the community we share.

At the risk of describing ourselves with overly-charged political labels, we had four conservative-leaning and four liberal-leaning participants, one note-taker, and one conservative-leaning and one liberal-leaning co-facilitators. We asked participants to sit next to at least one person they didn’t know.

All participants had agreed to a few general conversational guidelines, the essence of which were not to interrupt each other, do not challenge or argue with another participant, and look for areas of common belief. 

The one and one-half hour meeting proceeded as the organizers had hoped: Everyone had time to speak to each issue as well as give follow-up responses to each issue addressed. The co-facilitators never had to caution any of the speakers, who also followed the general guideline of responding to the topics rather than launching into speeches. 

The co-facilitators asked each person to introduce themselves as well as respond to a blog post in which Harvey Yoder had theorized away of deconstructing the normal oppositional political labels people use to identify themselves: e.g., liberal/conservative; democrat/republican. We suggested that in describing themselves, they might use more personal, non-dichotomous labels. 

People introduced a variety of labels, including one person who described himself as homeless—moving from a time from when he was without a home to a more general description of his metaphorical homeless situation now. People described themselves by their family roles, their religions and the communities in which they grew up. After these descriptions, we spent about fifteen minutes in which participants could respond to how others as a group or as individuals had described themselves. 

The co-facilitators then asked participants to describe their personal beliefs and community values. We wanted to know what they thought was important for our community. We suggested they might bring in personal experiences that may have helped to shape their beliefs and values. 

There was some divergence in thinking, but most of the value systems clearly overlapped: education, humility, caring for others, general orientation toward the values of Jesus, importance of small businesses, accountability, community, orientation toward peace with some who were pacifists, justice. There was some divergence, for example, people who valued transnationalism marked in some sense against the importance in borders. The latter divergent values might be an example of how the group could address that particular issue in a more focused but equally respectful conversation.

Again, we gave participants time, after each had spoken, to respond to either the whole group or individuals. By the time we finished this conversation, were nearly at the end of our one and one-half hour time limit. 

We could have used more time to identify the clearly common values among all participants. 

We closed by thanking everyone and asking participants to complete an online survey asking for both specific and general responses to the conversation and ideas on how we could productively more forward. We also had a brief conversation on how we might expand this project, once we were comfortable with our process.