As I was growing up among the fundies, the youth group would occasionally be led out to do door-to-door evangelism. It's like cold-calling for Jesus. As Annie Dillard said, this sort of thing makes sense given its premises, but it was excruciating for all involved.
I came to realize that such conversations were appropriate only within the context of relationship. Outside of that context, there's little possibility for give and take, for listening as well as talking, and what happens isn't really a conversation at all, but a well-intentioned form of verbal assault.
(The door-to-door event I remember most painfully was Campus Crusade's "Evangelism Explosion." Two of those four words are revealing.)
A danger of this kind of guerrilla evangelism was that it encouraged us to treat people as means, not as ends. Not only did these conversations not take place within the context of relationship, but they weren't intended to create such a context unless it occurred entirely on our terms.
This history as a recovering fundie is part of what makes me leery about the kind of door-to-door GOTV efforts I'm now engaged in. What I like about the approach of this effort is that it's not just cold-calling. I'm only knocking on doors within my precinct, talking to my neighbors (I've got 18 names in my own building), and mainly to those who are already registered with my party.
I wrote below, in a post titled "Secretive Ballots," about the need for a "civic conversation" and for "getting together to decide how we are going to live together as a country." This is the sort of thing one writes after rewatching Mr. Smith over the weekend, followed by Bravo's West Wing marathon Mondays. (I'd just seen the one where Ainsley Hayes convinces Sam to change his position on some piece of regulation. The look on Emily Procter's face at the end of that episode is priceless.)
But this conversation needn't be anything grandiose or Capraesque, with a Snuffy Walden score swelling in the background. All it really means is that in a healthy democracy we — as neighbors, friends, citizens, coworkers — need to be able to hash out our opinions and our differences. We need to be able to discuss with one another where we stand and why. The notion that discussing politics is improper in polite conversation can undermine the health of our democracy just as the notion that it's impolite to discuss religion or money (or pretty much anything else of consequence) cheapens the rest of our lives together and apart.
Admittedly, door-to-door canvassing isn't really a forum for this kind of conversation. (Its worthy goal is something else.)
I ran into my old flatmates on Tuesday night. Rich is an unlikely entrepreneur. He started his business, in part, because of a book: The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, by Ray Oldenburg. Here's the Amazon description: "The Great Good Place argues that 'third places' — where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation — are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy."
Rich's Gryphon Cafe is just such a third place. In a sense, the blogosphere can be as well (although without the yummy pastries and live music).
Door-to-door, I appreciate and respect people's reluctance about sharing with me, a stranger, how they intend to vote. But I do hope that in other contexts — in the relationships afforded by the "hangouts at the heart of a community" — this reticence gives way to the kind of conversation that is necessary not just for democracy, but for life.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In