I was on my high school debate team. My teammates and I received instructions on how to win a debate: Find the weakness in your opponent’s arguments, prepare your rebuttal while they are speaking, cut them off whenever possible, and use wit to make them feel small. The singular goal, according to the debate coach, was to win. While we were trained to quickly take a “for” or “against” position on any given topic, the exercise seemed divorced from reality. It didn’t matter what I thought, as long as I could articulate the position assigned to me. The win was what mattered. I quickly found that while I enjoyed the challenge of thinking on my feet, debating was not how we were going to address or solve some of the challenging issues posed to us.
If you are like me, you are probably struggling with how divided our society feels. The divisions spill out from the public arena to the private. As a former college dean, I found that many of my students dreaded going home for Thanksgiving. The reason was clear: drunk uncle. If you are not sure what I mean by that, please look up Bobby Moynihan’s recurring “Drunk Uncle” sketches on “Saturday Night Live.” There is a reason that the comedy show tapped into this phenomenon. Debates at the dinner table lead to name calling, accusations, and usually some form of meltdown. If debate is not the answer, could dialogues save us?
The principles of dialogues stand in contrast to debate. They call us to listen deeply, to find strengths in other people’s arguments, to ask genuinely curious questions, and to seek commonalities amongst differences. The goal is not to win the argument, but to seek common ground. Could you imagine what the presidential “debates” might look like if they actually engaged in dialogue instead? Let me be clear — I am not saying that debates are bad or fruitless. Debates have their place. But, debates will likely not leave us with concrete understandings of differing viewpoints. They will just leave us deeply rooted in defending our own.
Many folks might believe that they are skilled in dialogue. Unfortunately, we are not, and we rarely get opportunities to practice that skill. I urge all Chautauquans to attend any one of the 14 Chautauqua Dialogues held on a weekly basis during the Summer Assembly Season (see chq.org/dialogue for details). Our facilitators are skilled and trained volunteers who guide the conversations.
Some Chautauquans have expressed curiosity about the Dialogues, but they are unsure about the format. Allow me to provide some additional information: First and foremost, the dialogue topics are not predetermined, but are selected by the gathered group based on the ideas they heard from Chautauqua stages that week that resonated the most for them. Each participant gets the opportunity to offer their top idea that they would like to discuss, and the most-often mentioned topic starts off the dialogue process. Once the conversation has had fruitful discussion, the facilitators will move to the second-most mentioned topic.
There is also some confusion that participants might need to be affiliated with a faith tradition to attend the Dialogues. Chautauqua’s denominational houses graciously provide space for the discussions as part of a community effort to promote civil discourse — however, there is no religious connection between Chautauqua Dialogues and the venues in which they are held. People of all faiths or no faiths are welcome to attend any of the Chautauqua Dialogues sessions. Additionally, there is no sign up required.
Chautauqua Dialogues provide space where people of diverse backgrounds can bring their political, religious, cultural and social beliefs, experiences and knowledge to conversations that matter. The vision for the Dialogues builds on the idea that Chautauqua can be a resource to a larger world seeking to embrace the reality of a pluralistic society. We foster the idea that the manner in which we articulate our ideas is just as important as the ideas themselves — that how we say something is just as important as what we have to say.
I am grateful to the denominational houses who provide us space for these important conversations, and to the Chautauqua Dialogues leadership team: Roger Doebke, Lynn Stahl, Robin Harbage, Cathy Digel and Hal Sparks. The program — supported by the IDEA Office and the Department of Religion — continues to grow year after year. I want to extend a special invitation to our property owners and season passholders to attend these sessions. You may find wonderful opportunities to be in conversation with one another, and with one-week passholders. Dialogues might not solve all of our problems, but they might provide a good start.
