CHURN: Life in a Diverse World and How to Make It Work

How should we live in an increasingly diverse society? To what values, understandings and standards ought we hold ourselves accountable? Most answers to these questions focus on mitigating personal prejudice. Churn joins that call. But it identifies a more fundamental challenge: the unstable trust that our history imposes on us and the churn it causes when we are in each other’s midst. It is a formidable challenge, but Churn sees a new path to making diversity work: trust-building. This approach is a more manageable way for our society to become the integrated, enabling society we need it to be. This hope, as I have stressed, is based on a simple fact: trust-building is a game played largely on the ground, in the immediate circumstances of our lives. It doesn’t depend on first changing individual hearts and minds. Rather, in the important settings of our lives–our schools, businesses, colleges, churches, etc.—it focuses on building the skills and conditions that enable trust. Churn offers a blueprint for how to do this: across the divides of difference, see full humanity and full potential; listen in a learning mindset; be prepared to give trust first; and then show up with concrete support that enables full participation. It’s a scalable blueprint. It can be hard work. But it’s not magic. And all of us can do it.