From Awkward Silence to Hard Hope

Philosopher and interfaith scholar at the University of Denver, Sarah Pessin, has written quite a bit about common ground, shared humanity, and what she calls "hard hope." And, she keeps returning to a poignant yet awkward moment she had on a bus as she thinks about the possibilities of connection in a polarized world. The bus driver that day gave an unexpected sermon to his captive audience of passengers. moment from her graduate days at , when her bus driver unexpectedly preached to a silent, captive audience. She reflects on how that experience shaped her thinking about sharing one's faith, public space, attention, and respectful disagreement. Our conversation covers the ethics of listening in a divided culture. Together, when wrestle with when attention builds understanding and when it crosses a boundary. The episode reveals how discomfort, humility, and empathy can open the door to deeper civic and interfaith connection.

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Martin Luther King Jr. Said, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards Justice. King wasn't alone in his optimism. Deep down, many of us think the world is fair, that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, and that all of us in the end get what we deserve.

This is the just world hypothesis identified by the researcher Melvin Lerner, and it helps us feel really safe in an unpredictable universe, but it also makes us blame victims and justify inequalities in disagreements. The just world hypothesis turns discussions about problems into arguments about who deserves what the just world hypothesis shapes, how we respond to others'.

Misfortunes. When someone loses their job, we look for what they did wrong. When relationships fail, we search for who's to blame. [00:01:00] When people struggle with money, we assume poor choices create poor people. This isn't just a lack of empathy, it's psychological self-protection. If bad things happen randomly, we're all vulnerable.

If they happen for reasons, we can protect ourselves by being good enough and smart enough and careful enough, in political debates, the just world hypothesis undermines compassion. Poverty becomes evidence of laziness rather than a system. Illness becomes a consequence of lifestyle rather than biology or environment.

And success becomes proof of virtue rather than privilege or luck. The world must be fair. Therefore, those who suffer must have earned it. Personal relationships can also strain under just world thinking. When your friend faces hardship, you subtly distance yourself afraid to catch their bad luck.

Understanding the just world hypothesis can help us become more compassionate and perhaps even more realistic. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, and honestly, few of us are in any [00:02:00] moral position to judge good and bad in the first place. Even more. The just world theory is enticing to many of us because it helps us reduce the chaos of the world to something predictable in disagreements about fairness, opportunity, or assistance.

Recognizing our just world bias can help us see beyond they brought it on themselves. I'm Michael Lee, director of the Civility Initiative and Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Sarah Pessin. Sarah is a professor of philosophy and Jewish thought at the University of Denver, where she also serves as the director of spiritual life.

Her research and teaching cover, interfaith civics and the philosophy of religion. Sarah, tell us an argument story. 

Sarah Pessin : All right, so this is a bit of a sort of maybe call it embodied disagreement. I hope that category fits into the category sufficiently well. I'm thinking a lot about interfaith civics these days.

So this story has been sitting with [00:03:00] me in general. So I was a graduate student at the Ohio State University, and I took the bus to school probably three times a week, and my bus station was the first on the route. So it wasn't a bus depot, but it still had that sort of bus depot feel. I was pretty much generally the only person on the bus at that stop and occasionally up to three of us, rode that bus from the first stop.

You get to the bus and the bus driver is filling up his coffee mug kind of thing. It's the first stop. We're we usually there for 10 or 15 minutes before we get going? Okay, so one day I get on the bus as normal. My bus driver, whom I never say, I say hello to, I don't know him by name, but he's my bus driver.

It's the same route every week and a few times a week. And I'm in the back of the bus, like where I like to sit. For some reason on this day perhaps he had too much coffee, not enough coffee. Don't know what happened, but he [00:04:00] rose up out of his seat. And I, this story sounds made up even as I remember, but it's true.

He rose up out of his seat. Starts walking down the bus aisle and starts preaching Christian Gospel. Now there's me and two other people on the bus. We're a little bit of a captive audience. Little bit. Little bit because we're not, there's nothing to, we're there. And this is prior to the days of smartphones.

So literally we are just sitting there. I didn't have on headphones, nothing. And I'm just sitting there thinking, uhoh, this is not really a great idea. Not sure what to do. And we're captive audience for whatever it was, probably six minutes. I was looking down at my shoes mostly. He didn't know what to do and then he just got back into the bus seat and we commenced on our journey.

It sits with me always as a kind of, I didn't say anything but it was definitely an embodied disagreement in the sense, [00:05:00] but comes complex for me and actually serves as a beginning to a many years arc that I'm still working through on what Interfaith Civics is all about. 

Michael Lee: How long was his speech?

Sarah Pessin : I would say, it feels like it was 12 hours, but it was probably. I'm thinking it was like, five to six minutes is my guess. It wasn't like 10 seconds, that's for sure. 

Michael Lee: That's a pretty long speech. Do you remember any of the content or were you just shutting it out and dissociating?

Sarah Pessin : It was a bit dissociating. I was really struck by this happening, so I know it was. I know it was a a preaching of of Christian Gospel, but I did not take down what it was, although that would've been interesting had I done that. Sure. But no, I don't remember. 

Michael Lee: And tonally, was it Fire and Brimstone or Kingdom of Heaven and the good news of the Bible, do you remember anything about the tone?

Sarah Pessin : That's an interesting distinction. I think it was. It was definitely passionate and it was very much [00:06:00] passionate for God. I don't think it was fire and brimstone. 

Michael Lee: Okay. Let's talk briefly about how you remembered it in the immediate aftermath and maybe the weeks and months to come, and then we'll get into the long-term impact in your future.

So how did it sit with you? 

Sarah Pessin : As it was happening it was not sitting well with me. First of all, it was a shock. 'cause this is my bus driver and we've, I've been here all the time and I am, this is not the first time I've been on this route, and he knows that there's only a handful of people.

And so I just, it was very shocking. But it was also. Even as it was shocking, I was really reflecting on what about this is completely unacceptable versus what about this is, Hey, you know what? He's sharing his ideas and what do I, that's very nice. He trusts me enough to, so again, maybe that way of framing it is already influenced by decades of thinking about interfaith spaces.

But I guess, the initial thought was, okay. First of all, you're a city bus [00:07:00] driver. Probably you shouldn't be using the bus as a pulpit, which Ps next time you're on a bus now you're gonna see it as a pulpit. It's a very good pulpit, actually. I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but you probably shouldn't be using it.

Nevermind about religion. You probably also shouldn't be trying out your next comedy routine or telling me about your favorite cookies like. The bus driver. It's an unspoken idea. We wanna say hello. We wanna say thank you very much when we get off the bus, but maybe it's an unspoken rule that if you're the bus driver, you shouldn't be using the bus as a classroom.

So that was my first, maybe one thing as a takeaway that probably from an inter, from a civics perspective, maybe we can all agree upon. And as a teacher by training, I'm always very tickled that, I'm in an industry where I do get to hold people captive as an audience twice a week.

But probably being a bus driver shouldn't be that a city bus driver. But so I was thinking about the sort of civic aspect of it. [00:08:00] And then from the interfaith aspect of it, as a Jewish person, I wasn't necessarily prepared to have even a six minute sort of sharing of Christian ideas with me on the morning.

And then that's where it becomes more complicated to me. Over many years of reflecting on it afterwards, I've probably become more expansive about not being annoyed at that part. 

Michael Lee: The next time I'm on a bus or a subway or an airplane, I'm definitely gonna tell people about a really wonderful podcast about disagreements I'm familiar with, but 

Sarah Pessin : that's great.

Michael Lee: That aside, I am interested in the, not just the interfaith aspect of this, although that's also fascinating, but also the ethics of lis of listening. The ethics of attention, and on the one hand I'm struck by an argument that we're all dealing with now, which is as the culture pulls apart from each other and we retreat into our information silos, there is a pro social interest in listening to points of view that [00:09:00] you don't agree with, even in captive spaces.

In other words, lending your attention to that which is not an automatic reflection of yourself does have a kind of democratic. Angle of how we all coexist, hopefully peacefully and can find our common humanity. And we can't find a common humanity if we're not at least willing to listen to one another.

But then second, most of the modern world is about haranguing us and harassing us and capturing our attention. Most of the modern world is imperialistic and how much more of our attention it can possibly get. And so there is a kind of protection of self and protection of my time, maybe even a protection of my identity.

From everybody constantly seeking more and more of me. How do you wrestle with those kind of twin impulses? It feels like a real rock and a hard place. 

Sarah Pessin : Yeah, again, this particular story does have the aspect of it being the city bus driver. That's 

Michael Lee: fair. 

Sarah Pessin : I like to think of it as what if it was just, again, [00:10:00] it was generally me and up to two other people who wrote this part of the bus ride.

So I over the years have thought about it in relationship to what you're saying now. Okay let's leave out the bus driver part. What if it was just one of the other two passengers who happened to do this? Would, how would that change my feeling of it and in relationship to you know, some of the points he just raised?

I will be honest, I am someone who, my Judaism is a very big part of who I am, and interfaith work is a very big part of who I am. And civic engagement is a very big part of who I am. So if I put all of that together, I'm definitely somebody who is less. Frustrated with or angry?

Certainly not angry. If somebody, and this has also happened multiple times in less dramatic stories than the bus driver, but yes, I have had multiple occasions where people have shared the gospel with me sometimes in like slightly, not [00:11:00] quite as inappropriate as this one, but, in, in context, which maybe it was like maybe this isn't the time or place, but the truth is it doesn't bother me.

And in fact. To the point that you're saying it doesn't impact my identity in a negative way. And in fact, I've really come to recognize that for a person for whom their religious and spiritual identity involves. Sharing in that way. I've really come to feel it that way. So again, on the other few occasions where somebody either in a maybe a little bit more slightly inappropriate time and place, or even just in a coffee where it was unexpected.

I I don't, I find it as a sign of Interhuman Exchange almost as a sign of just a brief moment of real connection with a stranger. I don't view it in a negative way if somebody tries to share a gospel with me. In fact, I probably nowadays view it as very comforting. Not because I'm converting, but because it's something, there's something.[00:12:00] 

About it. I realize that might sound odd to people, but something about it, if it's not done in a terrible way, it's just done. I think for me, that's can be uplifting as an interchange between humans. 

Michael Lee: When you mentioned the tweaking of the story, to imagine it as another passenger has brought a bunch of other tweaks to mind about how you might conceptualize the story a in your interfaith philosophy.

Your kind of common human experience, but also in the felt sense, distinguishing between how we're making sense of this thing and what we should be doing as people versus how it felt right in the moment, which could be very different. So let's a few tweaks just to throw into the mix and see how you react.

So one, what if the bus driver was not talking about religion, but was just talking about how much he loves the New York Yankees. He was like, I just wanna tell you about the Yankees and all the off season moves they made, and they're making lineup changes, and who is this new manager? And then just sat down.

Second. What if it was another passenger giving exactly the same [00:13:00] speech, but the bus was moving? Third, what if the bus driver was Jewish? And fourth, what if the bus driver was saying something that was deeply offensive? 

Sarah Pessin : Of course, I wanna jump to the one, what are the bus drivers? Jewish, I'm sure I hope I'm not alone.

Where everybody, when somebody does something inappropriate that shares an identity of theirs, that's of course mortifying to a level that goes beyond oh no. No. So yeah. And yeah. So obviously that would've been, the worst case scenario of all the ones that you just laid out, because I, again, I hope other people have the same experience.

Maybe I certainly do as a Jewish person. If anybody who is Jewish does anything that's slightly even discussable, I'm in a panic because whatever, we understand that's how society works, and it could actually lead to some serious issues. So that would be the worst one for me. Yeah I guess the other examples.

They all, if the bus driver was talking about the Yankees or if another passenger was talking while the bus was moving and I, [00:14:00] again, I forgot what the last one was. 

Michael Lee: If it was deeply offensive. 

Sarah Pessin : If it was deeply offensive. Yeah, I mean it is interesting. On the bus example, it's an example of a public space.

Where the city bus driver is not supposed to be engaging in. Lectures to the bus. So I don't know where it says that exactly in the thing, but that's, I think, expected. But maybe there's some unre. So I think there's some written rules about that one as maybe there should be for various reasons, regardless of the content.

That said if it's somebody on the bus who's a passenger, there's definitely signs that say no, no spinning, no sure, whatever. It doesn't say no discussion of your ideas while everyone else is in the bus who doesn't want to hear your ideas. Although nowadays, most people are listening on their headphones, so it doesn't really matter.

You have to like. To get people's attention, you'd have to do a lot. I don't know how you'd get people's attention, but I suppose it's a bit of an unwritten [00:15:00] rule that in certain public spaces. But a public bus is a very interesting case 'cause it's a public space. But, now I feel like looking up the civic details about what, what actual rules are on the bus, but if somebody does something like that, it seems to me like it breaks certain rules of.

Civic engagement especially if it's something offensive, but of course one doesn't know what one would find offensive. And even the content of religion, certainly not myself, but I know firsthand a number of people, and I work with students and people all the time. There would certainly be some people who would find the content that I experienced to be highly offensive.

I, I didn't find it offensive. But I guess. These are great questions to like tweak how it works and the interfaith and the civics of the bus is truly fascinating. And I guess the main thing, he's talking about the feeling. Yeah. Even at the time, but certainly in my years after, in the work I do with interfaith, I, the feeling itself to me is [00:16:00] this complex space of, I don't know, a call that we need to feel a little bit uncomfortable in our interfaith civic service to one another. Not to the level of being abused or I'm not trying to say anything outrageous, but in saying, sure, being around other people is going to feel uncomfortable.

And I think that's always been something I've been very keen on or interested in. 

Michael Lee: What do you make of some part of our culture Who thinks that the things we lend our attention to then validate those very things? And so to listen to somebody with whom I disagree or to share a space with them is to validate and tacitly affirm what they're saying.

Which is then to say that listening can negate who I am. So if you as a Jewish person listen to something Christian or perhaps explicitly antisemitic, then you're not showing up as your [00:17:00] authentic self and thereby negating your own heritage. 

Sarah Pessin : Yeah, probably if somebody's spouting antisemitism I still might not agree with, and you're not framing it this way, but you're saying, what about those who frame it this way?

Yeah, maybe I still wouldn't agree with that way of framing it, but yes, if somebody's spouting antisemitism, I right. Authentically, I'm not gonna stay there for that. Even if it's this is a disagreement opportunity. Have, if it's gonna hit me at a certain level. I'm not gonna show up for anti-Semitic stuff.

And then we go to this example, and again, in, in recent days even, I've had wonderful meetings with some new Christian friends and we did get into spaces where Christian ideas were my invitation being openly shared with me in the spirit of friendship. I don't know, I don't find, especially with interfaith.

I find it to, and again, we're not talking about, hate speech or even just random civic stuff, with all kinds. Yeah. We're talking about interfaith exchange. Even if it's [00:18:00] somebody praying for me with me. IF with from another tradition. To be honest, I had that just in the last few days happen in relationship to the Jewish New Year.

And actually I'll share, it's a source of deep uplift to me. I can't explain it further. That two new Christian friends. Prayed with me in a certain context related to my Jewish celebration of the new year through a variety of twists and turns. It was quite uplifting to me, not again because I am changing religions, but because there's something I don't know, there's something very deep.

When people in their faiths. Especially not to people who are not of any faith. That might be a different dynamic, but I don't know, like with a certain invitation. So again, I was invited, I wasn't told, so it wasn't like the city bus situation. I find that to be very moving as a human. And I feel like the idea that you are going to be present with other people in their connection to their religion in an that's authentic to them I would find it very not my, it doesn't make [00:19:00] sense to me to be offended by that.

If anything. Like I said, I just found it very deeply meaningful to me. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. It seems like at least two different variables are coming up with the original example with no tweaks, which is. The captivity of the audience. And so you had no ability to really consent to hearing the message and then perhaps some exploitation of the person's job, which is they have the benefit of having a captive audience and be paid by the city to have that captive audience and then are doing things outside of their professional purview and making people hear stuff that they wouldn't have otherwise presumably chosen to hear.

And so those are really important variables, but it does lead us into this. Broader kind of listening ethics, which is what duty, for lack of a better word, or what charity should you extend to others when you choose to listen to messages that A, you don't agree with, and B, might even deny or negate who you are, how you show up in the world.

And once again, as I frequently am [00:20:00] on this show, peculiarly, I'm reminded of the line from the classic movie Roadhouse. I think it won 10 or 15 Oscars with Patrick Swayze. That's a joke. Which is, be nice until it's time to not be nice, which is to say we are seeking out these kinds of pro-social interfaith connections with one another, but there is a line whether that line is when it's offensive, but that offensiveness is very much in the eye.

Of the beholder and so we are nice until it's time to not be nice, but we don't really know collectively when it's time to not be nice. 

Sarah Pessin : Yeah, and that's all true. Again, the distinctions that you made between the cases, I think, we can see the differences and then we can get into certain gray areas about what if this and that, et cetera.

I think that and this might be I just I feel. When I do as director of spiritual life and when I work with different students, but also different people of all backgrounds and in different religious traditions and also different spiritual expressions that aren't necessarily identified as religious.

Yeah. I'm [00:21:00] obviously in a position where also personally and professionally I sit in spaces where I am gifted with opportunities for that kind of uplift in between religions Also, just in my research and interfaith civics over many years so I, and I realize a lot of people, the whole idea of even being connected or hearing about a particular religion might have a very different set of implications.

And I wanna honor that and I totally get that. And. One of the other things that, that story served as a, I don't wanna say a bookend, because a bookend makes it seem like this next thing is the end where I feel like all of it together has been a beginning for me in recent years later now, a few years ago, I found myself as I frequently am in an interfaith setting where different religious leaders are talking and coming together in a shared prayer, et cetera.

And on that particular day we had it, it's generally a liberal group of different deni, different religions who might have certain other views. But when we come together in those interfaith spaces, it tends to be [00:22:00] people who have a certain liberal approach to at least talking about all of us or, different paths to the same spiritual reality or stuff like that.

And it's not common for, let's say, a conservative evangelical pastor to join in that particular group that I was a part of an interfaith conversation group for many years. And one day, and I don't exactly remember how I knew this, I think I asked the person in charge because it was a new person and I didn't know who they were.

And something about what they said led me to wonder who it was. And I learned within, 15 minutes of their arrival. That this was a conservative evangelical pastor came to the group that day and all I thought throughout the entire time was Uhoh we're bus driver ring him. Because what I realized that in a liberal interfaith setting.

Multiple paths to God and whatever we were all, in a circle doing and saying things that were very uplifting. But I kept then experiencing it from his perspective. [00:23:00] Obviously he was there by choice and obviously he could leave at any time. So again, very different in many ways. But I still was very struck.

So I have to thank the bus driver because it sits with me as an, as a way of thinking, as a framework. I thought, oh no, with all of this very liberal talk, we are bus driving him. He can't possibly be enjoying this the same way the rest of us are. 'cause we're making assumptions about his lived experience of religion.

Now again, he did come to an interfaith event, so I get it. But it's made me very sensitive. After that related to like my work on that I've since called making interfaith more uncomfortable related to some work that I do that I call hard hope. It's all helped me both in interfaith settings, but then more broadly civically.

To think about what does it mean for the person who isn't a sort of liberal valued person in an interfaith setting? How do we wind up excluding them in rather harsh [00:24:00] ways? It's something that sits with me always. And when I once shared that as an opening to an interfaith event that I was leading this story about how it stopped me in my tracks when a conservative evangelical came in and I realized how is what we're saying, honoring him, the end of framing a different event that way.

Another conservative evangelical came out out of the pews. This was in a liberal church that I was giving this talk. A sort of beelined up to me. I didn't know he was conservative evangelical until he came up to me, but he said he was actually crying. And he said that God has called him and a reason that he doesn't fully understand.

Over recent years as an evangelical Christian with conservative values. To come to interfaith events and he says he always sits in the back. He realizes that a lot of what's going on doesn't connect with his theology, but he's felt called, he said by God to go to these events and not to tell people or whatever, just to sit and listen.

[00:25:00] And he was crying and I'm about to cry, he said. It was the first time he'd ever been to an interfaith event where the person in charge said something that actually was about him and I didn't know, of course, he was there, and so it just gave me a further real sense of arresting, of like.

What are we, how do we, whatever our different politics are, we have neighbors and there's spaces to recognize one another even if we don't recognize each, even if we truly don't agree with each other's values. And I'm even go so far as to say, even if we hate each other's values, that's part of my Heart Hope project, which is what does it mean to.

Face neighbors in a deep spirit of what I sometimes call a sort of odd sense of interhuman debt. And I tie that to various traditions, but it doesn't mean me. And this person became friends. And in fact, when he came up to me, that wasn't the spirit in which he came up to me, oh, you're, I could see hanging out with you.

There was an unspoken understanding that we will not be hanging out [00:26:00] together, that we probably share zero values in common. Maybe not zero, but few. The, it was a very I don't know, liturgical moment in my life, something about the way that emerged where we had a deep sense and I was honored by him lifting it up that somehow just recognizing each other as other humans, even if we deeply disagree with one another.

Again, because it was in this interfaith setting, it had a certain kind of what I'm calling a liturgical feel to it for me in my own life as a person who's involved with spiritual spaces. But it's all, it was all of a piece. My bus driver me, I then realized how often do I bus driver or other people in my liberal approach to religion?

And then when I honored that up. Here comes a person in the audience crying that there was some connection between us that I'll never forget that has impacted me deeply, even though we'll never speak again. 

Michael Lee: We are all bus drivers. Sometimes it appears. 

Sarah Pessin : There you go. 

Michael Lee: This and this audience member, to clarify it was [00:27:00] really compelled to felt called to bear witness but to bear witness to difference.

Sarah Pessin : Yeah. That's a great, I like the way you said that. He shared it to me as he didn't really even understand what the call was. But he had for the last few years, quietly taken it on himself to go, yes. I like the way you said it. That would seem like a possible way of summarizing it. He himself didn't know what it was.

Because again, it wasn't like he was coming to debate people or tell pe No, he was quietly sitting this is the first time he ever spoke to one of the speakers because he couldn't help but feel like I was part of his story because nobody had ever recognized that how left out he is in those spaces to which he felt compelled to attend.

Michael Lee: The bus driver's obviously a bus driver sometimes. And perhaps you have been a bus driver sometimes, and I certainly am. Do you still take the bus? 

Sarah Pessin : You know what? I currently live in a outskirt where that wouldn't be possible, but [00:28:00] it is making me feel like it might be time to get back on the bus.

Michael Lee: Sarah Pessin, thanks so much for being on when We Disagree. 

Sarah Pessin : Thank you so much. 

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse KZ and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.