For my father and me, baseball is our great unifier. Every summer, we set out on our quest to visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums. Baseball has taken us across the country to cities we might never have visited and to people we might never have met.
Last summer on a stadium tour, we sat near the same couple for days, talking between innings about our families, work and baseball. By the end of our trip, they no longer felt like strangers. One afternoon, boarding the bus to our next stop, they shared a political opinion far from my own. I braced for the tension I expected in today’s political climate, but it never came. I still saw them as the kind, die-hard fans I’d come to know. The disagreement didn’t erase the connection we built. When we get to know someone as a person first, our differences don’t seem quite as threatening. It made me realize how powerful shared spaces can be.
Yet today, these shared spaces are shrinking, and the data proves it. Americans are not only divided in their views but also increasingly distrustful of one another. Pew reports that 83% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans view the other party as more closed-minded than other Americans. Majorities in each party also describe the other side as more immoral, dishonest and unintelligent than the average citizen.
At the same time, our sense of community belonging is weakening, especially among younger Americans. A Harvard Kennedy School study found that only 17% of young adults feel deeply connected to at least one community, while nearly 1 in 5 feel no strong sense of community anywhere.
One institution that has historically brought individuals together across age, class and politics is church. Aside from being places of worship, congregations function as centers of civic engagement where individuals often commit to lives of service. A 2016 Pew study found that highly religious Americans volunteer and give at higher rates, with 45% volunteering weekly and 65% donating to the poor, compared to 28% and 41% of less religious adults.
Churches create space for individuals to serve and engage with those of opposing viewpoints. The commitment to serve, grow and strengthen a shared community fosters common purpose and unity even amid deep differences.
I’ve seen this in my own congregation. While serving in a volunteer role, I worked with a leader whose political views were strong and different from my own. Yet, those differences never created hostility. After a tragic and politically charged event in our community, he invited a small group of us to help shape a message he was delivering.
Another volunteer offered a perspective that directly contradicted what I knew the leader believed. Rather than debate, he listened, acknowledged the comment and reflected part of it in his message. What could have divided us became unifying. Through consistently gathering with our shared values of peace, we created the connection necessary to overcome our differences.
If gathering bonds communities, investing in it matters. In Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott paired violence prevention with investments in summer camps, literacy programs and extended recreation hours. This approach helped the city see its lowest homicide rate in 50 years. Local governments pairing with churches to perform days of service — like we see around 9/11 — recognize that churches are indeed community hubs that strengthen the fabric of American society.
Seeing each other’s faces and learning others’ stories makes it harder to reduce someone to a stereotype.
There’s a moment in every baseball game when the stadium stands for the seventh-inning stretch and sings “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” It doesn’t matter which team you root for — you sing. For a few minutes, thousands of strangers stand together.
Baseball doesn’t solve our problems. Going to church doesn’t erase disagreement. But when we show up in stadiums, in holy places and in community centers and choose to stand next to people instead of shouting at them online, something shifts. Seeing each other’s faces and learning others’ stories makes it harder to reduce someone to a stereotype.
Unity doesn’t start with agreement. It may start with proximity: showing up, singing the same song and realizing we’re not as divided as we thought.