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One friendship won’t cure a group’s fear. Here’s what will.
From a farm accident to a decade of interfaith gatherings, a lesson in why relationships between groups — not just individuals — are the infrastructure that holds communities together
By Rev. Terry Kyllo | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
Years ago, my brother-in-law — a farmer — was badly injured in an accident just before harvest. What happened next is the reason I believe what I believe.
More than 30 farming families showed up with combines, trucks and food. They finished in one day what would have taken one farmer weeks. Nobody was paid. Nobody was ordered around. But notice something easy to miss: the help was spontaneous in spirit and organized in its doing. Someone made the first call. And it worked because those families, churches, granges and co-ops had been connected for generations. The relationships were already there, like roads and pipes — an invisible infrastructure.
Now, here is the discovery that changed how I work.
Why one good friend isn’t enough
When a group of people fears another group, one wonderful friendship cannot cure the fear. I have watched it happen again and again: A person meets someone from “the other side,” likes them — and files them as an exception. “Well, she’s one of the good ones.” The friend is real. The fear survives.
That is because the fear is not about a person. It is about a group. And evidence about groups has to come from experience with groups.
Ten years ago, a well-funded campaign taught my region to fear its American Muslim neighbors. It followed a recipe I have since seen aimed at nearly every community in America: amplify the worst examples, blame the whole group, claim their tradition opposes our shared life. Meanwhile the actual pediatricians, engineers and grandmothers who were our neighbors remained invisible.
Crossed arms, uncrossing
We did not answer with counter-messaging alone. Along with clergy, lay leaders and Muslim community leaders, we held more than 90 public gatherings where our Muslim neighbors told their own stories and took any question — any question at all. From my seat on the stage, I watched the same sequence play out night after night: crossed arms slowly uncrossing, accusations softening into curiosity, fear dissolving into recognition as people met the neighbors they had only heard stories about. My friend and partner Aneelah Afzali would tell of singing “America the Beautiful” as a schoolchild, and you could feel a room full of strangers become a room full of neighbors.
Afterward came the part we never planned. A retired schoolteacher would go home and say to her network, “Well, I’ve actually met them.” Firsthand testimony, carried by trusted voices into places no press release could ever reach.
This is why the practice at the heart of my book, “The Society We Deserve”, is group-to-group: congregations, clubs, businesses and tribes sending trusted delegations to shared meals, shared service and public celebration.
When the mosque’s leadership and the Baptist church’s leadership stand together at the county fair — when a partnership is announced from both pulpits — the institution itself testifies: We, as a people, still keep faith with you, as a people. That is evidence a lone friendship can never provide. Individual friendships are precious. Group relationships are infrastructure.
“The Society We Deserve” is the field guide to building that infrastructure, in any town, starting from zero. Next week, the last post in this series — about who actually starts this work. Spoiler: It is not who you think.
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