Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks

In his book, Love Your Enemies best-selling author, thought leader, and professor Arthur Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research and ancient wisdom to offer a better way to bridge divides and mend relationships.

In March of 2022, The Trinity Forum hosted an Evening Conversation with Brooks to help us explore just how to love those we disagree with and be agents of redemption and reconciliation amidst a divisive time. Arthur unpacked several of the strategies necessary to overcome such cleavages and restore harmony, and the moral courage required:

“We often hear today, in our culture of activism and anger, that real courage is standing up to the people with whom you disagree, sticking it to the people with whom you disagree publicly. That's moral courage.

That's wrong. That is maybe a perfectly fine thing to do. You should stand up and say the things that you believe. But that's not moral courage.

You know what moral courage is? My father taught me this as a kid. Moral courage is standing up for the people with whom you disagree. Standing up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree. That's moral courage”.- Arthur Brooks

We hope this conversation kindles in you a deeper affection for your neighbors, and a greater desire to see the divisions in our communities and our nation be healed.

This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Arthur Brooks.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Love your Enemies, by Arthur Brooks

Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, by Arthur Brooks

Arthur Schopenhauer

John and Julie Gottman

Dalai Lama

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Related Conversations:
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The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.