Overcoming Hate - Christians learning to Love

Every year when I teach about the Shoah (the Holocaust) and on issues of Genocide, I start every class session with my encouragement that this course will change the lives every person.

I encourage every person to become an advocate for peace who will engage in actions of care & concern among the diverse matrix of human persons around the world.

I tell persons to be peacemakers, to be upstanders, and to be rescuers.

I was enlivened to view this 15 minute Ted Talk by a former member of the bigoted Westboro Baptist Church.  A daughter of the church's leader.

Megan Phelps-Roper shares details of life inside America's most controversial church and describes how conversations on Twitter were key to her decision to leave it. In this extraordinary talk, she shares her personal experience of extreme polarization, along with some sharp ways we can learn to successfully engage across ideological lines.

The last lines of her powerful talk end with this:

. . . .we're all just human beings . . . . we should be guided by that most basic fact, and approach one another with generosity and compassion. Each one of us contributes to the communities and the cultures and the societies that we make up. The end of this spiral of rage and blame begins with one person who refuses to indulge these destructive, seductive impulses. We just have to decide that it's going to start with us.  (emphasis mine)





Toward eupan ~

~ marty alan michelson, ph.d. 

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