Depolarizing Within – IN PERSON

Polarization can be driven by how we talk with like-minded people about those on the other side. Too often, we stereotype, dismiss, or ridicule our fellow citizens who support the other political party, its leaders, and its policies.

This free 3 hour workshop teaches participants:

• How to be more aware of their own “inner polarizer”
• How to be critical without demonizing, dismissing or stereotyping large swaths of the population
• How to constructively intervene in polarizing social conversations with like-minded people.

Specifics for this event

Join Rumi Forum and the Braver Angels D.C. Project for a special America’s Public Forum event on interfaith alignments, intrafaith divisions, and the experiences of religious communities in American polarization in our time!

Rich Tafel is the Minister of the Church of the Holy City in downtown Washington, D.C., and Ibrahim Anli is Executive Director of Rumi Forum. Between their interfaith and pastoral and intellectual work, they bring decades’ worth of experience to questions of the place of religion in American public life amid all the divides of the recent past.

Luke Nathan Phillips of Braver Angels will host a conversation with them examining the ongoing divides in and between religious communities, the lasting common ground and prospects for new bridges among them, and the ways religious communities’ navigation of these divisions might inform approaches to American polarization as a whole.

On Thursday, March 30th, join as from 5pm to 7pm for the conversation, which will include audience Q&A, and stick around for a free Iftar Dinner courtesy the Rumi Forum starting at 7:30pm! The event will take place at the Friends Meeting of Washington D.C., at 2111 Decatur Pl. NW. The event will be filmed and made available on Braver Angels’ and Rumi Forum’s YouTube channels a few days afterward.

For questions on the logistics of the event, please contact Luke at lphillips@braverangels.org and Ibrahim at i.anli@rumiforum.org.

Who can come? Anyone interested in examining their own inner polarization and learning strategies to disagree without condemning or ridiculing others.