“What does your part of the country think about what’s happening in Washington, D.C. right now?” a man in his mid sixties read aloud from a sheet of paper to the group of six Republicans and six Democrats. I had just arrived at the small, split-level home in a wooded neighborhood in Bloomington, Indiana—miffed by the uncommon, light-to-medium traffic that had delayed my arrival from Indianapolis—and hurriedly joined a group of twelve seated in a circle. This was a Better Angels workshop, one of hundreds of such gatherings happening in communities across the country, which aims to unify a deeply divided nation. The organization’s name derives from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural address, delivered while our country was on the precipice of a civil war, where he implored Americans to prevent difference from “break[ing] our bonds of affection,” and to appeal to “the better angels of our nature.” Like Lincoln, Better Angels seeks to heal a broken America by improving our public discourse. The volunteer-led workshops teach skills of human connection— paraphrasing, listening, asking questions of …
