Redrawing the Battle Lines
January/February 2025Disagreement is inevitable, but distain is optional. An interview with John Inazu.
While attending a conference in Los Angeles, law professor John Inazu realized that he was just a few hours’ drive away from the Manzanar National Historic Site—one of the camps in which more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. He made the drive and found the site of the barracks where his grandparents had lived with their in-laws and four children (including John’s father) in a 20- by 25-foot space during a time when America’s commitment to civil liberties was tested and found wanting.
Inazu shares the story of his grandparents’ internment and its aftermath in his recently published book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024) in a chapter entitled: “Is Forgiveness Possible?” What toll, asks Inazu, does a habit of rage and scorekeeping take on both personal relationships and society at large? What could a more redemptive approach offer?
This is a book that seems tailor-made for the political and cultural challenges of 2025. Filled with personal anecdotes and deep insights, Inazu has produced an eloquent yet practical guide to the art of productive disagreement; how to talk about divisive issues with empathy and kindness, without compromising integrity.
Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He writes and speaks about pluralism, assembly, free speech, and religious freedom. As well as authoring three other books, he has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and CNN.
Liberty editor Bettina Krause recently talked with Professor Inazu about the challenges of learning to disagree with grace.
Bettina Krause: For a book about navigating conflict, it seems counterintuitive to structure it around a law school academic year as you teach students who’ll be joining a profession most people think of as highly combative. Why did you choose this structure?
John Inazu: We may think of lawyers as people who stubbornly argue and resist compromise, but I want to make the case that the best kind of lawyering is the kind that fully understands the other side of an argument. Sometimes that’s only because we want to defeat the other side, but in doing so, we must make arguments that are nuanced and empathetic. As lawyers, we don’t go into the courtroom and say, “The other side is stupid, and we’re right.” We have to say something like “This is a complex issue. They have a good argument, and we have a better one.” And that’s how we can more productively engage across differences in other contexts as well. Situating the book in the law school setting allows me to take the reader in and out of some of these learning experiences in which I teach these ideas and concepts to my students.
Krause: We’re having this conversation at a time when political divisions within America are certainly on full display. It seems that the ability to look at the other side of any argument is a lost art these days. What’s driving this?
Inazu: Social media is a big influence, in particular the way it sorts us into our own media echo chambers. I think we’re also moving into a world in which we very quickly label the other side not simply as wrong but as evil, and that exacerbates the tensions between us. And then related to that, there’s this pressure toward the “purification of teams.” So if you’re not fully 100 percent on board with everything I believe on a certain issue or ideology, then you’re suddenly the enemy. And that’s really not how most people live in the world. Most people have complex views about a lot of different issues, and to demand purity on any one side is going to be short-sighted.
Krause: There also seems to be a growing willingness on both the left and the right to label certain ideas as simply “beyond the pale”—ideas that can’t be tolerated and shouldn’t be on the table for discussion. So how do we define the boundary between ideas or beliefs that are acceptable to consider and those that aren’t?
Inazu: Well, your question implies the important premise that every society has to set limits, so there’s no such thing as a fully tolerant or fully pluralistic society. Every society will say there are certain beliefs and actions that are just out of bounds. We’re not going to allow the religion of human sacrifice to exist in this country, for example.
But then the hard question is “What else belongs in this category of ‘beyond the pale’”? And part of the way we answer that question affects how we view our broader social relationships. Once someone or something is beyond the pale, you’re no longer trying to partner with that person or that perspective. When you think someone’s evil, you don’t sit down to dinner with them, you don’t work on a shared enterprise, and you don’t invite them to your workplace. But when you think they’re wrong, you can still be alongside them and try to persuade them. You can even think they’re deeply wrong and backing harmful policies, but they’re still within the boundaries of your society. But the more we push people outside of our theoretical boundaries, the harder it is for us to work toward workable consensus at even a basic, practical level.
Krause: One of the themes of your book is that we should see people as more than just a walking manifestation of their ideas or ideological commitments. What are some practical ways we can do that?
Inazu: I think part of it is accepting the complexity and uniqueness of every human being we encounter. There is no person who represents fully an entire demographic. We tend to go online, and we think, Ah, I am engaging with a Republican or a Democrat. And so we assume we know everything about that person. In reality people are so complex that we start to understand them only when we take the time to engage with them as an individual; when we convey to them, “I actually do care about you as a human being, and I respect your intelligence, and I want to hear what you think, not just preach to you or yell at you.”
So that’s a very practical way to situate ourselves in front of other people. But then it also points out a practical limitation, which is we can’t do that with everyone. None of us is called to be the person conveying political views or arguments to every single person we encounter. That’s just not possible, and it’s somewhat prideful of us to believe it is. So pick a few people in your life with whom you have relationships, and work on discussions and disagreements within those contexts.
Krause: What about when we bring religion into the equation? I often hear people say, “It’s religion that’s a problem because religion is dealing with absolutes, and moral certainty makes people inflexible.”
Inazu: There are certainly examples of where religion contributes to animosity and tension. But in some ways, I think religion ought to be our best-case study for how it’s possible to coexist across differences. When you look at existing interfaith efforts in this country, people are living, working, and partnering side by side with other people they think are wrong about some of the most important questions in the world: What happens when you die? How do you be a good person? What is evil? And people disagree fundamentally about those cosmic, transcendent religious questions and still figure out how to do life together. If we can do it in that context, we should be able to do it in other contexts as well.
Krause: In your book you say that you advise students at the beginning of each school year not to be “First Amendment heroes.” So there’s this idea of exercising restraint in what we express to others. But when it comes to talking about ultimate things, restraint can feel like moral cowardice. Is displaying restraint a form of moral compromise?
Inazu: That’s an important question. I don’t want to be mistaken as suggesting any kind of relativism or passivity. Whatever religious convictions we hold, many of us hold them with confidence and with particularity, and this is one of the reasons that earlier interfaith efforts went down the wrong path. In the 1990s a lot of interfaith work was about holding hands and pretending that we had no actual differences. Nobody actually believed that, because it wasn’t true.
And so I think we need to start by recognizing the reality, the starkness, and the significance of our differences, and then we try to find common ground once those differences are actually named. Those differences can be deep and painful and real. For Christians, at least, we think those differences matter and have eternal consequences, not just for us, but for every single person in the world. There’s no option to suggest that we can all just go do our own thing. Part of the call of many faith traditions is to share their good news with other people. So the question is not whether you do it, but how you do it. Do you use persuasion and relationships, or do you try to use coercion, manipulation, and power?
Krause: You also talk in your book about the illusion of neutrality; that when we engage in argument we’re often bringing normative arguments under the guise of objective truth. It seems to me that that’s a pretty hard thing to recognize in yourself!
Inazu: I think we all need to work diligently at making these distinctions, particularly in a world in which many of our fellow citizens are going down a path of alternate reality. For whatever reason, some of us are mixing up simple facts about the world and denying basic factual arguments. And that means the rest of us need to do a much better job of preserving the difference between facts, on the one hand, and norms and values on the other. I think a lot of us are tempted to overclaim our view of things to our advantage. And when we mix up facts with norms and values, we’re really playing into the hands of people who just want to deny facts.
Krause: What happens when there must be a winner and a loser in society—when rights and values seem to be locked in zero-sum conflict. In your book you discuss the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop, which brought religious freedom up against LGBTQ antidiscrimination. Did the Court do a good job of dealing with those two competing legal rights?
Inazu: Masterpiece is a case from a few years ago involving a conservative Christian baker who didn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding. He said he was willing to bake cakes for the gay couple in other circumstances, just not for their wedding. One of the reasons I wrote about that case was that there was such a lack of empathy displayed by both sides as the case was going through the courts. People had strong normative priors about how this case should come out either in favor of the baker or in favor of the gay couple. There was no grace extended or imagination exercised allowing people to consider that the other side might actually be genuine in their commitments and values.
But as you suggest, the case also illustrates a zero-sum situation. Either the baker has to provide the cake, or he doesn’t. It’s not like he can bake half a cake. The law is full of examples of when compromise isn’t possible, and there’s a tragic dimension to this reality. There are going to be winners and losers; people won’t be happy with the results all of the time. But this is the way we’ve chosen to resolve our otherwise intractable disputes, and we have this method as an alternative to street violence.
It’s important that we commit to the process, and that when we lose in the process, we go back, and we try again. We have to remind ourselves that democracy is an ongoing conversation that we pursue through politics and law rather than through violence.
Krause: For some Christians these political and legal conflicts can seem like existential threats. How does fear play into how we engage in conversations about difficult issues?
Inazu: I don’t want to be naive about some of the cultural challenges people of faith face across various dimensions, particularly as American society becomes less and less religious. But I also worry about Christian postures in the world that are led by fear and anxiety. Christians are supposed to be a people of hope, who trust that they’re part of a larger cosmic story unfolding over the fullness of time. It’s a story that’s not centered on electoral politics in the United States.
When we remind each other of that larger story and we trust that God is in control of all that happens, it leaves very little room for fear and anxiety. That doesn’t mean everything will always go swimmingly. But American Christians, especially, should start by recognizing the massive freedoms we have. In some ways protections for religious liberty have never been stronger than they are in this country today. When we look at our ability to freely worship here versus other places of the world, where Christians are being tortured and murdered for their faith, it becomes very hard to center our own experience principally in fear and anxiety.
Krause: Is there anything unique that Christianity can bring to this challenge of navigating deep differences?
Inazu: Many religious traditions have such virtues and practices as humility, charity, and compassion—we find these not just within Christianity, but in other faiths as well. It’s important to be able to tap into those shared impulses across various faiths. I do think Christianity in particular, though, brings some unique possibilities for how we engage across difference. One of these is that Christians believe that every single person is created in the image of God. We have no choice but to look for the image of God, or the imprint of God, in every single person we encounter, and that’s a very high bar. And then Jesus says, don’t love just your neighbor—love your enemy. Don’t tolerate your enemy; love your enemy. So this ethic of neighbor love is very deep for Christians.
Perhaps the other “superpower” of Christianity is the practice of forgiveness, which was modeled to us first and foremost by Jesus on the cross. And it has been modeled by many Christians throughout the ages who, in horrific circumstances of suffering and injustice, chose nevertheless to forgive. It seems to me that the unique resource of forgiveness within Christianity might be particularly helpful in the current moment. It doesn’t mean that only Christians forgive—that’s not true—but it does mean that Christians have maybe a special set of resources and responsibilities when it comes to forgiveness.
Krause: Has writing this book changed anything in the way that you approach difficult topics? Have you evolved through this process?
Inazu: That’s a great question. I’m talking publicly about all of these things, and it’s almost in the form of advice to other people, so I feel a greater responsibility to try to live it out myself, day to day. I mean, I still screw it up all the time, but I may be more aware of my own screwups.
We talked earlier about the temptation toward passivity and withdrawal, and that’s something I’ve been thinking more about lately. Part of learning to disagree well means that we actually do assert our views and positions in the first place. It’s very easy for someone like me at a place like Washington University just to sit back and not stir the pot. But sometimes I think Christians are called to speak clearly and truthfully into situations. That’s part of disagreeing as well, so I’m also trying to think through how I can engage more forthrightly in certain conversations.
Krause: At the end of your book there’s a Reflection Guide. What do you hope readers take away from your book?
Inazu: Let me focus first on the title of this book, Learning to Disagree. Learning is an ongoing activity; it’s never finished. The best we’re going to do is to make gradual improvements where we still make mistakes along the way. The only way to get better is through practice, to keep working at it while knowing that it’s a process that will never be complete.
And the second and related point is that we learn best with other human beings. So the Reflection Guide in the back of the book would be best used, I think, within a small group—a church group, or a set of people who are committed to a common institution. How do you stay committed to a common enterprise amid your disagreements? And then once you’ve named your common mission, purpose, and values, how do you partner with other people outside of that context? I hope this book might be helpful in thinking through some of those questions.