Understanding Tribalism and Its Impact

This chapter explores the psychological underpinnings of tribalism, revealing how social connections are often based on instinct rather than reason. It highlights the dangers of political polarization and advocates for critical engagement and moral imagination to promote empathy and constructive dialogue within divided communities.

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Hope Beyond Tribalism with James Mumford

Amidst a culture of political tribalism and personal loneliness, how can we more clearly, creatively, charitably, and faithfully think and engage with our neighbors? What kinds of practices of mind, body, and spirit, might help us to see and act with greater empathy and understanding?

In his book, Vexed: Ethics Beyond Political Tribes, author James Mumford considers these questions and how often our ethical convictions get politically bundled up with others in what he calls a kind of “package deal.”

It’s in examining our own convictions, and the exercise of the moral imagination that we can begin to move beyond tribalism into a greater freedom:

“The sort of engagement relationally that I'm talking about, it's very different from the sort of combative exchange that we see on social media. And so it is a counter cultural project, I think, to disengage, to question our own assumptions, and then also to engage with other people about their own assumptions and their own convictions and how those fit together.” - James Mumford

We hope this conversation helps you to think more clearly about your own convictions, and to view your neighbors, even those with whom you disagree, with greater empathy.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in June 2020. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about James Mumford.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Vexed: Ethics Beyond Political Tribes, by James Mumford

The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt

T. S. Eliot

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Four Quartets - T.S. Eliot

Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

Babette’s Feast, by Isak Dinesen

Politics, Morality, and Civility, by Václav Havel

How to be a Patriotic Christian

Life, Death, Poetry & Peace with Philip Yancey