Jennifer Webb (D) and Kurt Kelly (R): The Politics of Proximity and Peace

What does it actually take to cool down American politics without compromising your convictions? In this episode, former Florida state representatives Jennifer Webb (D) and Kurt Kelly (R) join Faithful Politics to share how their unlikely partnership is helping Floridians rebuild trust and truth through Sunshine 100—a cross-partisan network supported by The Carter Center.

They unpack what “truth in politics” really means, why facts alone aren’t enough, and how small acts of proximity—like serving at a food pantry or walking a neighbor to an immigration hearing—can do more to prevent political violence than any debate ever will. This conversation isn’t about kumbaya civility; it’s about hard, disciplined empathy and courage in the public square.

Whether you’re a pastor, teacher, or just someone tired of shouting matches, this episode gives you a practical blueprint for reclaiming democracy from the ground up.

Guests Bio:
Jennifer Webb
Jennifer Webb is a former Florida state representative who made history as the first out lesbian elected to the Florida legislature. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she has spent her career bridging divides between faith, politics, and community life. Webb now co-leads Sunshine 100, a Carter Center–supported, cross-partisan network that helps Floridians strengthen truth in politics and prevent political violence. Her work focuses on fostering dialogue, civic education, and practical collaboration across ideological lines.

Kurt Kelly
Kurt Kelly is a former Florida state representative and CEO of the Florida Coalition for Children. A lifelong Republican and ordained minister, Kelly has dedicated decades to public service, education, and child advocacy. As co-leader of Sunshine 100, he partners with Democrats, independents, and faith leaders to lower the temperature of political discourse and promote evidence-based, nonviolent engagement. His approach combines conviction, compassion, and a deep belief in the redemptive power of community service.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching our YouTube channel, we are very, very glad to have you. I'm your political host, um Will Wright, and I'm joined by my favorite work wife, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? And joining us today is Kurt Kelly. He's a Republican and former Florida state rep and Jennifer Webb, who is a Democrat and a first out lesbian elected to Florida's legislature. and this duo isn't the pair you expect to team up in today's political climate, but they've worked together on a few important issues like the Voter Confidence Tour and their work with the Sunshine 100 Network, which we're going to learn a lot more about today, and built a partnership rooted in civility, truth, and the hard work of democracy, very similar to what Josh and I are doing. We're just so glad to have them here with us today. Welcome to the show, you both. Well, thank you. We appreciate we're looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I think. so I probably did a very poor job giving each of your bios and CVs. So I want to give you both a little bit of opportunity to talk about your history, your politics, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about how you guys actually met each other. So why don't we go first with you, Kurt? Who is Kurt Kelly? Well, thank you for asking and guys, I'll put my best foot forward. hope uh I am. uh I'm born and raised in Florida. uh I uh was a member of the Florida House of Representatives before Jennifer came and joined the House of Representatives. I was there first for probably about four years and I ran for Congress. Didn't win that. I want to say thank God. But uh as it worked out, I'm involved. run one of the largest, well, the largest organization that deals with abused, abandoned, neglected children in Florida. I run the Florida Coalition for Children. That's my day job. But I've been very active in politics. uh I'm graduate of Florida State University. Got a master's degree from the University of South Florida in adult education administration. And I also went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm an ordained pastor, although I don't pastor today, but I'm always in the ministry. And that's kind of the terminology that I use when I do this. This is a day-to-day ministry involved in community. I'm very active in my local community, but community is all over the state of Florida. And my engagement... uh... which is something that i am really excited about will talk more about this one out there for not starting getting involved in this even before i met jennifer and we started talking about how we're going to engage this war that we're doing i was involved in believing that it's important to have a civilized society that understands how we can live together even when we have major differences in our philosophies whether it be religious philosophies, whether it be our beliefs in uh politics, I don't know, college football, whatever, we can learn to live together and still have a caring, compassionate understanding. That's what our founding fathers wanted. That's what the Bible teaches. And so it's pretty comfortable for me to say, I'm going to try to live out my life like that. And then when I got to meet Jennifer, uh we got to practically begin to engage this together. So I'll turn it over. So I hope that gives you enough a little bit. By the way, I have a beautiful wife. I have two great kids. Both of them are married. I have grandkids. It's just what life is good right now. That's awesome. Hitting on something that Jennifer said before we start recording, I'm glad you mentioned the family part because sometimes we do forget to uh acknowledge the most important people. So yeah, Jennifer, uh what's your story? So I was born and raised in Louisiana. grew up with wonderful family, strong presence of family. I had my city family, I had my country family, and then my mom remarried when I was 10. My dad died a week before my second birthday. My mom was still pregnant with my brother. uh And then she remarried. And so the man that, the only man that I've ever known as uh my father, then we got his family and um we have city folks and country folks and there's natural divisions there. We have Democrats and Republicans. We have Catholics, Baptists and Methodists. And um I grew up reaping the benefit of all of these traditions and of all of my family's kind of engagement and um political life and a thoughtful life and a faith-based life. And I mean, because my family, they weren't just Democrats. My uncle was the commissioner of agriculture. My um cousin married the Republican governor's son. You know, like we have very strong kind of passions in these areas. And yet, family is always the most important thing. And so... I brought that with me up to Massachusetts where I lived for about a decade with uh my sweetheart who became my wife up there. And then we moved down to Florida. I'm an anthropologist by training. I got recruited to the University of South Florida. I think when you grow up at the intersection of so many different traditions, you don't take anyone for granted and you become a of a researcher of what makes people of how people come together across difference and how people distance themselves based on their own position. And so that led me into anthropology. I am a cultural anthropologist. actually study how the state and policy and funding impacts our day-to-day experience of the worlds that we live in. And now I run an organization where What I do is if there's a problem that's like really sticky that people are anxious about, whether it be reducing the number of opioid overdose deaths in a region or making sure our elections don't evolve into partisan violence, I'm somebody that you pull in to try and answer the, to try and get a coalition together to move towards a shared common goal. And that's what I bring to this work. actually threw. One of my clients in the behavioral health space, I met Kurt's sister and have worked closely. Well, actually I met Natalie when we were, when I was a legislator, but we worked really, I knew her for a long time. I actually didn't meet Kurt through his sister. I met him through a mutual friend who I reached out to, who's the head of, the now retired head of Florida Tax Watch, who when I said, Dominic, need a good Republican to partner with me on this project and somebody who's actually recognized as a Republican by his own, like by other Republicans and he said, you need to reach out to Kurt, I'll connect you. And it's been a blessing ever since that Kurt said yes, because of those connections that keep us on a path of mutual respect and love and wanting genuinely what's best. for one another and celebrating in each other's, you know, arrival of grandchildren. And then also, you um know, holding space for when things aren't going well or when there is stuff going on in our personal life. So I feel really grateful to serve with Kurt and Kurt and I serve uh on this project with a third um co-lead, Lisa Lorenzo. who Kurt found and she's a Republican community leader, a beautiful person um from down in South Florida. I love that. um Just real fast, um Kurt, I did mute you because there was like a fan or something like that going in the background. ah Just so you know, you can just unmute yourself when you want to speak. Are you Charlie Christing this interview? Yeah. Charlie Christie, what is that? oh Charlie Chris, one thing is that he always has to have a fan under, he's the one who runs for everything. And he's also been a Democrat, a Republican, an independent, and he constantly has a fan going under when he's on stage or whatever. I hear the fan. I'm sorry. It's my it's my but but I'll let me I'll mute myself. I kind of heard that. Thank you. Good job. You're smart. I do all the post editing and generally like I can edit out background noises at a certain frequency and I just have a sense and I'm just thinking but anyways I don't need to get too wonky or get too much in the weeds on the troubles and trials and tribulations of editing podcasts but yeah, appreciate that. Anyways. Going back to the interview, what I love about your story, Jennifer, your and Kurt's story is it mirrors our story a lot and in a lot of different ways. I'll give you just kind of the reader's digest version. I had this idea to do a podcast called Faithful Politics. I am a Democrat. I follow politics really closely. but I wanted somebody that was a conservative and I wanted somebody that was a person of faith. So I had met Josh. What was that? That was weird. Was that any of you guys' mics? Oh, OK, got it. Did it rub against the microphone or something like that? OK. It's fine. No worries. um So I met Josh because he preached at a church that we were attending. And then I saw him later at a friend's house and just asked him, like, hey, do you want to be my co-host for this podcast? And mind you, like, I had only known the guy for, I don't know, maybe a few hours and just had a sense. And then we launched this thing and five years later, here we are. And it sounds like similarly, that was kind of like your guys' experience. I'm curious, like when you all first... started working together. Like, what was kind of going in the back of your heads? And I'll go to you, Curtis. Like, man, here's this person I don't even know. They come to me with a completely new set of political ideas and ways that they feel the country can be better. Like, what was that like? I'm just curious. Yeah, it's interesting. Jennifer mentioned that the CEO and president of Tax Watch, a conservative organization, but they're very much in the economic world, all of that type of stuff in state of Florida. And I've known this gentleman for 40 years. So, I mean, I've known him a long time. And frankly, he and I have had multiple conversations about making sure that the securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves in our next in our posterity, that the next generation understands what it means to engage government the right way, even at Tax Watch, and they established a program there, and I was involved with that a little bit, and he and I would have lot of conversations. I wouldn't even say that we philosophically agree on everything all the time. In fact, that's the beautiful thing I've learned is that you can't agree with somebody 100% of the time, anyone. And we tend to try to pigeonhole ourselves into, everyone believes like I believe. Well, no, they don't. And so the reality is I... I trusted him. He called me and said, I'm going to have a young lady call you, former state representative Jennifer Webb. And I said, yeah, I remember her. I didn't really work with you, Jennifer, when you were in the legislature much, but I knew who you were. And she called me and we began to talk about this. Our focus initially was around free, fair, safe, and secure elections. But it was dealing with the semi, you take a semicolon and say, and the violence that could be around that. And I knew that we watch our television shows, depending on your philosophy, and you get kind of caught into that. And we began to talk about what we could do to begin to message and to work together, not just verbally, but message with people who have different perspectives and bringing them together and at least begin to start conversations. I believe the word conversations are important. We've got to learn how to talk to one another. Even when we're, by the way, that does not mean I put my belief systems aside. It says that I hold to my belief systems, but I'm prepared to listen to others to hear them. oh Let's go to the biblical perspective of this. What was Jesus primarily accused of initially? Well, he was friends of sinners. He hung out with those dad gum tax collectors. I probably wouldn't like that a whole lot today now anyhow. He hung a, you know, the publicans, the downcast, who is this guy? And you begin to see that he is, it wasn't that he was advocating a lifestyle, he was advocating that we have that conversation with him and he gets to show and demonstrate his love toward them. And I think that's an area that I, as I've grown older, I can be stronger in my positions, but I can be, I have to always have a conversation about what does the rhetoric mean? How can I turn people to begin to change their ideas of what I believe? Okay, just hear me. Let me explain to you why I hold to what I hold to. Jennifer and I actually had an opportunity to drive up to Atlanta for a meeting. And in that five hour drive, we just got to talk to one another. Our philosophies are very different. Now, a lot of areas were quite the same, okay? There's some areas that we're very much in lockstep for. But our philosophical ways of looking at things would be very different. And yet, I told her, said, I just want to understand, I want you to understand me. And we can then accept the differences without hating one another, actually. And I think we've used the word There has been a, the Greek word, phile, there's been a brotherly love, a compassion, or even somewhat of a family love, where you stoige, a coming in and working together because we've decided that we're going to have conversations and we're going to go into our spheres that may not want to hear this and say, you need to come alongside, you need to start having these conversations. So that's been the part that I've... I've uh really enjoyed. I must tell you it's a challenge. you know the worst thing in a Republican world, Josh you probably know this, is to be called a rhino. Okay? Republican in name only. No. I'm not just a Republican, I'm a conservative, but more importantly, I'm in Christ. I know who Jesus Christ is. I allow that to permeate who I am and I allow that to infect and effect the belief system as a conservative, a belief system as a Republican. And when I see things that are inconsistent with that, I call it out. And so I think that's the area that we're, I'm actually challenged in working. I appreciate the, oh, what oh was I, I like the focus on family love, because I think that's accurate. And I think that that is the kind of... Especially today, that's what holds people together when there's strong factions trying to pull and separate. It's really easy to just demonize the other side. It's, it is. And you get, and in politics, you get like a bunch of uh accolades online for doing that. You get media coverage for being pithy and mean and calling out whoever it is. think, yeah, not to mention votes. Yes, not to mention votes and donations, Josh. I appreciate you saying that. And so I think that for me, I mean, it's funny. I also think that like love the sinner, hate the sin sounds a lot like my Baptist family. I know who I am in that equation. uh Kurt. But also for me, I think it's more of uh my uncle Joe, who's actually Methodist. They were going through that. um the vote that all of the Methodist Church went through last year. And he and my great, he is my great uncle and all of my great aunts and my grandmother. So these are 90 years old, 80 and 90 year old individuals living in a super red county, which is called a parish in Louisiana. And they advocated for coming together and not excluding people from their church. because community was the most important thing to them and they said, job is to carry the word of Christ. Christ's job is to judge at the end of time. And I don't know everything about an individual. So I am never to be in the position of judging someone. So I think that kind of love, so for me, the shorthand is meeting people with love. And if I wouldn't say it to Kurt, if I wouldn't say it to a family member, I'm not gonna put it online. And that was even true before we ended up in this hyper-partisan environment because it's too, because I wouldn't, I don't seek to hurt people in that kind of way. And so I'm very specific if I'm frustrated about something and I own my frustration. Or I try to, I'm imperfect. And I think to answer your question, well, when... um When Kurt and I first started working together, I think my big question was, because was shortly after, well it was the same year as the January 6th insurrection or riots, and I was really curious, like how do we hold, like what are the parameters? What do we all have to agree on in order to move this thing forward? How wide can we make it without having it? without having the tent fall apart, because we really do need everyone. And that, think, for me, I don't want to get into the specifics of January 6th, but it was a moment where people were really wanting to choose sides and wanting everybody around them to choose sides. And so, and I think for my Republican colleagues, they felt similarly during the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests. And so it's like, okay, how do we... How do we frame what we're doing in a way that we can pull together people who feel, who have maybe opposing views on these things, but still want our democracy to be in, or our representative democracy to be intact and for us to move forward as a nation so that we have something to pass on to our children and grandchildren. And I think that was really at the forefront of my mind when I was introduced to Kurt and I think that luckily Kurt has a top-notch intellect in addition to being a man of faith. So we could work together to fashion something that worked for very, very different constituencies. I really, I really like that. you know, as you're talking, I was thinking about how difficult it is to really connect with people once you found out the level of disagreement. And then the question then becomes like, for instance, like someone can believe something, two people can believe the same thing that should happen, say about, let's say, because... like same-sex marriage uh or abortion or gun control or immigration laws, whatever it may be, we might have a certain agreement about that or have a certain view of that. And we even have the same view. And yet the policy... m questions are very different as to how something should something be made illegal, should people be forced, should people be prevented, should people, what is the actual policy that's gonna be enacted? when someone, it's almost as if sometimes people will look at you and your view and they will think it's not just a view, it's the policy. I think that the way that you want this to be taken, like lived out is going to harm me or is going to, and this makes you, how could you em think this way or how could you want something like this to happen to me when normally people aren't even thinking about policy. Many of us were not even thinking about how this would actually be lived out, worked out. at day to day laws, regulations, fines, fees, jail, whatever legal system, we're not even in that place. And it's like, can create this confusion and this a lot of fear when people have no idea what this other person is actually willing to allow or willing to put up with. And I think that's what's being tested right now. Personally, I think the many Christians, many evangelical Christians, they're being tested on. What did you mean when your policy about immigration or same-sex marriage or LGBTQ issues or abortion? What exactly does that mean when it's actually lived out and your neighbors are affected? It's not just a pie-in-the-sky ideal, but there's something more. And that's something that I have been like really convicted of and wrestling with and trying to work through on any of these issues that I come across. And you know, There's a point to this, by the way, and it's one of the things that you, one of your founding principles, right, in the Sunshine 100, which I'll give you guys a chance to kind of just say, you've already kind of talked about it little bit, but to give more clarification as you want. one of your, well, your three public principles, truth and politics, peaceful engagement, support for electoral democracy. I would love to start with truth in politics. Is there truth in politics? Because I kind of feel like there isn't. I kind of feel like that's a little bit of a pie in the sky. Hey, there's truth in politics. We need to, it's like, are those words that we throw out there? Hope, change. You know, we just love throwing these things out and they're essentially vacuous and meaningless because of the way that they're actually getting implemented. What do you guys mean by truth in politics? And do we have any hope? getting there. I'll let you go first. I get to always start first. I'll let you go ahead and start. But I do want to respond to that because I think it's a question. Well, I think that for us, um truth in politics, you can have different opinions, policy positions, those kinds of things. That is truly your opinion, your platform, your um stance. But what you can't do is dehumanize the other side in the process. So if your language moves from... um you know, from the specific to overgeneralizations that dehumanize the other side, you'll probably get a call from Curt and I, because that is language that adds to the problem. For me, that's what we mean. And there is hope, because people generally just need to be poked and reminded like, hey, you know, society needs people to help them heal right now. You could say this without going, without demonizing the other side, let's try to do that. And they tend to respond. The other thing is putting out rumors instead of facts. So during elections, uh especially the election season, and I spend a lot of time playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon with elected officials who are like saying, like calling into question the... ability of our electoral system to like accurately elect people and so You know if you say I'm unhappy that with the result fine that it yes, I get that if you call into question um The professionalism of the supervisor of elections In your county, which is how Florida is organized and and how we administer elections? Is who? Administers elections. We're gonna be calling you because we have real information and we know how our elections are going in Florida and our elections are really solid. I mean, in terms of every ballots counted and counted once, like that happens if there's error. It's not large enough to impact any elections and there are people that is a knowable thing. That is a knowable thing that and so and so Kurt and I are here to remind people of that and they know that. That's what's sometimes frustrating is people know better, but we are here to encourage them to do better. And I'll turn it over to you, Kurt. Yeah, so as you were saying this, saying, you know, it's kind of like, the truth is... All right, then you put, all right, what are we talking about here? A lot of times I have to say the evidence is. We can look at what we believe and then we try to, we try to look at it and say, here's the evidence that your assertion is either relatively validated, it has value, but it's not 100 % accurate. And so we do it. We talked about election cycles. There was questions about whether things were being done here right in Florida. Now the reality is Florida was, we've gone through our fights, okay, from way back in 2000 and all of that stuff. But the legislature jumped in and said we want to try to shore up a lot of these things. Even some folks said, I don't think that's a problem. But if enough people think it is a problem, there's a confidence level. And so the legislature began to address with that. think Florida, for the most part, has it right. We're human beings, we're never going to get it 100 % right. Were there questions? In 2020, yes, is there questions? You know, even in the last election, yes, there always be that. Those are assertions. We try to address the issues through evidence. But let me back up. Can I say about the Sunshine 100 and what we're doing? So when Jennifer talked to me about this, we said, let's figure out a way to begin to communicate with different groups of folks and bring them together and have conversations. We're going to have conversations. through educational processes. So we do a lunch and learn monthly where we will bring in different perspectives and talk about different things. Some of the best and brightest minds in Florida and in the nation, we invite people to come and join and hear just like what you're doing on your podcast. then we often give them time, although we'd like to do more of this, give them time to have a conversation and be able to talk through this. And it's amazing. that people were going out there have very different perspectives. But when you bring in an expert to come in and talk about election violence or violence in America, we've got one coming up next week, we're going to be talking about violence in America and in the political realm. And it's a dangerous thing. We're in a dangerous area right now. The reason we even started this was the Carter Center under Jimmy Carter, which by the way, uh good Southern Baptist good guy from Georgia and I never voted for him. Okay, I'm a Ronald Reagan guy. But he took what he believed and went out all across the world working on emerging democracies and began to see some of the very problems, this polarization and these fighting and all of these things that could bring down the fact that we were trying to get people involved in their government so that you don't have despots and dictators. always controlling. We still have them out there all over the world. And so I really respected Jimmy Carter for that. You know what? They looked at Americans and said, uh-oh, we're beginning to have some issues here. And I think they're right, both left and right. And so that's when they said, we're going to start taking this concept and we're going to bring it to, so I think it's five, six, seven states. We might even expand that a little bit. But Florida was one of those states they said, we want to have a conversation around. and they went to Jennifer first, then they came to me, then we brought Lisa in. And this is, it's all around having conversations. Josh, as a pastor, as you are working in your field and you're talking to folks, uh you have to be able to address people where they are. You have to be able to talk with them. You don't guilt them or shame them. I mean, especially if they're coming to say, I've got a question I want to work with. We want to do the same thing. We're wanting to say, look, we have fundamental differences. I'm not going to shame you over this. I'm going to say, here's how we work together. And frankly, there are going to be times when it's like, nope, we're just going to have an election and the winner wins and we go forward and so forth. And then the next election, you can come back and take it, right? And that's what election processes are about. So I would say this, if you want to say this, there are truth in politics. uh Politics is the group the root word is polos. It's it's people. Okay, and Washington even talks about this we have a natural proclivity to divide our personalities in in our structures in other words, we have a natural proclivity to huddle up with people that believe like me and We actually do that through political worlds Washington understood that you're never you're never going to have one complete unity. The only way you have a unity is in principle of a constitutional belief system. And that's what we have. We have a constitution we believe in. From a Christian perspective, I tell people it's a biblical worldview. It's the worldview that I hold to. So I allow the Bible to inform me as to my belief structure. And the more I understand that, the better I can articulate that. underpinning all of that is where I can have strong beliefs on what the scripture says. You cannot go one iota away from the fact that it is all predicated on a responsibility to love your neighbor as yourself. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That hinges all of the laws. And therefore, in that principle, even if I vote I'm adamantly pro-life. I believe in the sanctity of human life. I find it hard that people don't understand that. And yet, I know there's a whole bunch of people that don't understand it. Therefore, I need to have a conversation with them. But at the end of the day, how can I say that I'm concerned and compassionate about life when I'm not concerned about the life sitting right in front of me that I'm talking to? And so I think that becomes the portion that drives me daily, it drives me actually in my prayer time to have a loving and forgiving and a uh compassionate thing for the people in front of me. They are people. So with that said, politics, it's always going to be divided, always. But listen, I always make a joke about this, but if you think about it, you want to see something that's silly? Think about college football, right? I we are divided. I can't stand LSU. sorry, sorry, sorry, love it. I went the farthest. We beat you the last two times. So I love you. Okay. Okay. Just think about that for a second. We divide. Have you watched people at these football games and how angry and hostile and, and, or so in your face celebratory and all that. We tend to divide around things that we're, what we have to look for in a thoughtful philosophical. and a practical way as how do we find common ground to love someone. In politics itself, in the body politic, in the Florida House example, Jennifer was a Democrat, sat in the back. That's the way we worked. We didn't have the different sides of the aisles. We had front and back, okay? Republicans sat up front, the Democrats sat in the back. And they all huddled up. You'd see them back there huddling up on an issue. and we had our folks huddling up on issues and all of that stuff. The thing I always enjoyed doing was just going back there talking to the folks in the back. I'd sit back there and talk with them, we'd laugh, we'd have, why? Because I want to know their philosophy, not so I can beat them. I want the philosophy so we can say, is there an error we can come together on common ground? That is going to have to be what America has to do. um If we're going to get past this, the thing that is the next outcropping of this and that's the violence that comes out of this if we don't. And so I do believe that's the area that the Sunshine 100 is focused on. I'm thankful for Jimmy Carter. I'm thankful for the Carter Center. I'm thankful that they saw the vision to say, even though I don't agree with them a lot of times when they talk about stuff, but I'm thankful that they say, we're going to turn and focus it. And by the way, guess what? They wanted to go get a guy like me that doesn't agree with them. And they want to put us in a position where we are working to bring people together. truth in politics? Maybe. uh Truth in the fact that we should be loving one another. If you are a Christian and you're listening to this podcast, I want to share with you, if you're not spending more time on your knees, praying for forgiveness of folks that you do not agree with, then you need to check yourself real quickly, because the scripture does. And so it does for me as well. I really love that. And, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about, um like, areas of differences and how people can, like, actually better understand each other. So, like, in Josh and I's example, um we also disagree on a variety of different issues. And I would probably say if there's one area that we probably disagree on the most, it'd probably be on abortion. And it's something I think Josh and I both recognize, but we also recognize that ah there's a lot of opportunity to have revelation if you focus on the nuance. And I think the nuance in the abortion debate is really kind of predicated on, we just don't agree where life begins. Like, I don't want to kill babies, you know, I'm very pro-life too. ah You know, my pro-lifeness is also colored by I don't necessarily agree, you know, where life begins in the same way that Josh does. And that's something that probably won't change. It could change, you know, but it's like, we agree killing babies is bad, but when do you call a baby a baby is the disagreement. And uh I don't know if that will ever be settled. But, you know, we can work towards helping kids, helping moms, helping you know, both abortion centers and uh like crisis pregnancy centers, you know, like, and we can see the value in both of those, both of those areas. So I'm, I'm, I'm curious, like for, for you, and this question is for you, Jennifer, like where, where are some areas uh of common ground you found uh you could agree with and or work with, uh in an area that may, may surprise you or may have surprised you. Well, that's a great question. We were actually having this conversation, Kurt, Lisa and I, yesterday, maybe two days ago, on immigration and deportation. Because, so when we started, as Kurt said, we were really focused on free, fair, safe and secure elections because that's... because we had people who were getting to know each other and we needed to bring them together in a very narrow focus so that they kept showing up. Because what happens is if you feel uncomfortable, you'll just not show up, you know? Or if you don't like the way somebody's talking about something, you just opt out. It's the easiest way. You just don't press the start button on your Zoom meeting link. And so how do we make sure that people keep coming back who are Republican? and Democrats, because there's lots of spaces that try to do this that only attract one side or the other. And that's not the point, right? Like we can't have conversation across difference if everybody in the room agrees with you. we started very narrow. We started bringing in experts so we could share. create a shared understanding of a body of knowledge. um And I love it. mean, sometimes we'll bring in someone who I think is gonna be, have a more progressive understanding of something like direct democracy, totally gave us a conservative. Well, like what was his analysis ended up being far stronger for the conservative argument against direct democracy. I couldn't believe it. It blew my mind. But I was happy to have that because it's like, this is a guy who has studied this topic for 30 years. Like that's what he does. He just pays it. It's not political for him. It is science for him. And so I respect that. I respect experts. And so we bring these folks in. Recently, we've started also creating space for people to have conversations and for people to spin off. And so, um One of the areas was immigration. Somebody said, you know, we want to start having structured conversations around issues that are politicized, but finding where the parts are that aren't politicized and moving together on that. And so we had a pastor come to me and say, I just want, you know, the members of our congregations throughout the Tampa Bay region and maybe throughout Florida to simply... accompany people to their immigration hearings, not taking a stance in favor of or in opposition to just simply saying, are a human going through something that if I went through would be incredibly stressful, I will walk alongside you. And that when I brought it to Lisa and Kurt, because we don't take any action, we would never take our network in a direction that would that would leave each other behind. And so I said, what do y'all think about that? And so now they're gonna have a conversation with this pastor and see what that looks like. Is that doable? What's the real intention? we're not, and the cool thing is after having done this for so many years, we now have a network that's able to kind of, like, create little committees, kind of spin-off committees where they're doing stuff themselves. So whether it's our colleague down in South Florida and her business or um Christian, like she has a Christian um Chamber of Commerce down there that she works with. Like whether it's her work down there on the faith side or the business side or our work in our areas with our. with our different groups. Like we're able to let people, to have people segment and move forward and we have that trust now I think as a network. Let's frame this issue too as she's saying. So this was brought up to us, a church came to us and said we would like to be able to go in and have a conversation and maybe just accompany folks that are being determined to be deported, all right? So here's the divide, ready? Let's lay it out. On the one side, somebody is in America illegally. They shouldn't be here. They weren't invited to come in. They came in of their own volition. They violated all of the protocol to become an American citizen, to get the benefits of All right, fair? That's the argument. All right, and we had a porous border and we let everybody through and now ICE has been charged by the Constitution, by law, to go out there and remove people. Okay, the other side says, yeah, but you got to do it. Well, there's some people say, no, they should stay here. That one argument is we're not going to get into none of that because that's not legal. That's not the rule of law. But where's the rule of human dignity and compassion? And I think that's what pastor is saying. So we can have on the right people saying, boot them out, get them out of here. I don't care. I don't know how you do it. You know what was interesting? When the conversation had Lisa, who is a staunch conservative, a strong evangelical, and Lisa said, look, we have situations where I identify somebody that's not here. They go and they do their job, they will arrest them, they will take them, and they don't contact anybody. And for four or five days, their family members who may be here legally, and she's down in the eclectic world of South Florida that has all these different immigrants in that world, You know, big Cuban population, Puerto Rican population, Haitian population, Venezuelan population, I mean, there's all these populations. And so these folks get pulled out of their home and they don't know anything what's going on. How would you like to have your family member just gone and you don't know what happened to him? So there's a legitimacy of saying, wait a second, maybe there's a better way of dignifying that. And no one's saying not to follow the rule of law, but what they are saying is we ought to show a compassion and an understanding. Is that something that the left and the right both should agree on? Yes, they really should. The church should absolutely agree on showing compassion and love. Doesn't mean you go before the court and say, no, no, court, you're wrong, or I'm going to protest you to say you can't do your job. But I am going to show that that, again, back to the person in front of me, I need to love my neighbor. That's my neighbor in front of me, as I love myself. I am to show them love and compassion. So how are we going to address this? I don't know. I mean, it's going to be a challenge. I have connections in conservative Christian circles. By the way, anybody thinks that the faith community is one unified group of folks? Hardly. I used to say in my church where there's 10 deacons, there's 30 opinions. So, I mean, it's one of those things that we have to constantly work through. But I think what Jennifer brought to the table was this is a contemporary issue that's real. How do we address it or not? But how do we at least come together and say, is there a way to bring communities together around this. The more we do this, the more we see that we are alike in the ultimate outcome of America is to continue to have this to live in a free society. I keep hearing people say this, I don't want to over talk this. Well, we're, I people think we're gonna have a revolution, we're gonna have a civil war. You better stop and think about that. You better. You better check yourself the minute you say that. There are things worth fighting for. And I think freedom and liberty and democracy is uh something worth fighting for. But you better understand what civil war means. The destruction, everything that you see in your way of life is all gone. It's not a good thing. And so the only alternative to a civil war is that we become civil individuals working with each other. and start caring about one another and willing to let somebody say, I vehemently disagree with you, you're wrong about this and sit right there with them and say, okay, fine, I'm gonna talk with you about it. And then begin to look at what I think are alternative solutions. And so that's what we're doing. This is, by the way, I wish I could say this is easy, it is not. Because there are times when your emotions get right here and you wanna say something, I've learned to try to just stop. Keep it down in here if you have to. And I think that's the part that I'm really excited about. if there's areas that we can't get together on, we step aside. say, okay, we won't talk about this. To Kurt's point about the emotions getting heated when you have conversations, especially Josh, ticking off of what you were talking about earlier about people seeing you as a perpetrator of the policy, not just an opinion. so we actually do a lot of teaching people how to kind of like de-stress and have more difficult conversations. And it's funny, because I say difficult conversations and somebody was like, and our network said, stop framing it as difficult conversations, it's self-fulfilling. And I'm like. Talk to any person today. If you're having a political conversation, you're probably anxious. I mean, there's very few people who can have political conversations and not feel like, uh-oh. And so it's like, oh, here's what you do. Take a breath. If you want to react quickly, pause. Take a breath. count to three, then tell, I mean, really, we say this at the beginning of our meetings because you can't unsay things that are said, but you can choose to say something later that you didn't say. And so it's like really retraining people on how to have these conversations, how to relax a little bit, um how to... understand that just because you're relaxed doesn't mean that you think it's a joke or that it's not important. It means that you don't wanna have a heart attack over this stuff that you actually value your own life and your community. So how do we like have these conversations? How do we talk about immigration? I mean, how do we, how do we even, you know, we, one of our network members is, or, of our network members is now Secretary of State Rubio. So like people feel very strongly one way or another now about him. He was our state senator, or he was our senator before that, congressman. And so it's like, how do we, you know, I wanna still acknowledge the... his role in promoting peace in the Middle East, but I also need to acknowledge people's feelings about things. So how do I do that? We spend a lot of time talking through this stuff so that it articulates with the right, because anytime people put down their guns, we celebrate. That is a point for celebration. You are not taking life, taking it about to the for life conversation. But then, How do we frame it in a way that doesn't, that acknowledges that other people, that some people see more than just the current action, but a lot of other actions that he's taken. Okay, like we make sure that we frame it in a way that we're presenting it to our network members, and in a way that all of them can digest. And that takes a lot of care. It really does. It takes a lot of care. It's a lot of go slow process. It's not quick instant put something on social media. And I think our network is stronger because of it. I really love this conversation. It's so good. It's exactly what we're trying to do. And of course, we want to continue to partner with you guys because the question in my mind is how do we scale this? Because when people are getting together and they'll actually talk, then you will find that... if there is an environment where they feel like they can be heard, where they feel like they're not going to be dismissed, where they feel like they can actually be understood, and essentially write a higher trust environment, the low trust environments don't work at all. They create more issues when trust is low. And if they don't, there's not a trust that whoever is facilitating the conversation or whatever it is, is going to be fair, is going to be, you know, once trust is gone, they're gone, right, even if they're still present. So how do we increase this trust and how do we scale this? You guys have been doing it in Florida, help us understand here on Faithful Politics and then anyone who's listening who might be like, my gosh, I want to do this. How do we scale this so that it's more effective? Because we have a huge problem right now, it seems to me, on our hands in our country with the division that's here and... Voices like this need to be made prominent, they're not. So how can we scale this, do you think? Kurt, do you want to start? let me say, so the scaling portion is probably the greatest challenge because there is a level of maturity and uh acceptance that has to start. have to start from that. alright, let's go into the church world for a second. Let's go into uh wanting to sit down with somebody that you may realize is in an area that they shouldn't be involved or you philosophically disagree on something, know, some position. And if you go on your internet and you begin to voice your opinion about that person or you start making snarky responses and so forth. You're exactly throwing gasoline on the fire. We've got to learn how... you know the old saying is and this is one thing we will... I'm entitled to my opinion. Well you sure are and you're also entitled to not have to tell everybody. You might want to learn how to hold on to it first and hear somebody carefully. So if we start with the desire to listen and and if you start by saying I'm going to care for this person I know I'm not going agree with them I'm going to care for them that changes the dynamic then I think there's a proximity I think one of the beautiful things pastors that are listening to this is that we do have a lot of small groups nowadays who do things I think there's a way of and infusing in conversation you know they they they say the one thing and you do in business or you don't talk about politics and you don't want to talk about religion, right? um Those areas just get you in trouble. You know why? Because they're belief systems. And what you want to do is you don't want to win the argument, you want to have the conversation. And if you start with that, so how do we scale this thing? We scale it. And I think Jennifer mentioned this, this is why we decided to go educational as part of the educational process. is that we would, by the uh way, it wasn't my fan. It's the fan of my old computer, sorry. I mean, can't turn it down. But we start with educating people of how to deal with inner conversations. We've got to learn how to talk to one another. Again, whether you like Charlie Kirk or not, you, mean, he had some confrontational aspects of going in the universities. That's environment that's set up to do those types of things. They're supposed to have those conversations like that. But at least he was talking about let's have a conversation. What we have today is we have somebody present something on the news, and then we have a panel of four people to tell us what we just heard from a philosophical argument that's just exacerbating it. And they're always one upping each other. We're trying to make even more sense. And you sit there all night long here. I don't even like to watch that stuff anymore. I don't care what side you're on. I think what we have to do is begin to say we start with it. I think the church and especially for those people who are wanting to come and try to find answers, I think that's a great place to have it. And I think it's going to take pastors a lot of courage to say, contemporarily, we want to say the Bible says this, but here's how it practically is lived out. And listening and caring and loving becomes the key. So how do we scale it up? We begin to educate in small groups like we're doing here with Sunshine 100. I should call Sunshine 1000 because we're going to grow this thing to a much larger and it's going to happen all over the United States and it has to. But the vehicle where we have the faith community is a great place to start this. So the way we scale it is, is start encouraging pastors and that's not easy. If you're a pastor, you understand that you start talking about. couple of these issues and all the next thing you know, I mean, it's kind of like eschatological issues. You start talking about eschatology and you're get all the people firing up at you. Reality is, I think we have to have those conversations. But it's not gonna be something that's just gonna kinda happen. It is gonna have to be dedicated to say, I want us to encourage it. So let me say this to the Sunshine 100 in Florida, or anybody frankly, we're nationwide, you can watch us. Come join us. Come on our lunch and learn. We'll invite you to be a part of it. We will set the parameters on which we want you to engage. We're not gonna let somebody come in here and start screaming at somebody. That's not what this forum is about. But we would encourage people to start having these conversations regularly. I that's great. I think the other way of scale for me, think. You're right about low trust environments, Josh. So like, where do we have trusting environments? I live in a small town. um There are 14,000 people and two square miles. So uh it's a small but dense town. And my neighbors two doors down in either direction have, you know, like Make America Great Again flags or, you know, um one has a van of President Trump's head on like a real muscly dude, like just painted on the side of the van, like real passionate people, right? you know, and then we have rainbow flags two doors down from that in either direction. we're dense and diverse. And what we all have in common is that we love our city and we love our neighborhood and our neighbors. And so I really, I think of this training that Kurt and I had. early in our tenure with the Carter Center, which by over zero, where they talked about this one town in Bosnia that was not affected by all of those wars. And they basically said, we don't do political violence here. We don't do that here. They created a cultural norm. I get chills thinking about this because it's like, can it really be that simple? Like they just made a commitment neighbor to neighbor. to say, no, we don't do that. We don't do that. Right? But I think that if you know people as one another, and if Lisa was on, she beautifully articulates the need for more spaces in which people are connecting outside of politics as volunteers, as helpers, as poll watch. mean, like things that are just good civic engagement, good community engagement. And what we do know from all of our, from the census, the census does like community engagement survey um every, I think, two years, is that community engagement has dropped very low. And so perhaps the answer isn't how do we keep people from being triggered in political spaces to how do we refocus people's attention back to community. And I really, and we're playing around with that right now by creating more spaces in which people can show up as all of them. You know, I'm not just Jennifer, a former elected official who is now the Democratic co-lead for the Carter Center. I am a wife. I am a granddaughter. I am a child. I am an anthropologist. I am a person in long-term recovery. I have all of these additional parts of myself that I need to bring into this space if I'm serious. Because we're not, I don't think the answer to our political woes is political. I think it's actually balancing that with other parts of ourselves. So how, as organizers, can we create those opportunities in those spaces? and Kurt mentioned education. think that's a, Kurt and I both have a rich life of the mind. And so we do, I mean, I, you know, I agree with Kurt. think that getting in people who are, you know, from the, from the universities to share about something they've studied for 20 years and then breaking people out once we have a shared understanding of the facts, because now we have a politicized media. outlets that it's hard to get accurate information. So bring them in before so we have shared facts so that then we can have discussions based on it. Our colleague Lisa would say, actually, why don't we create spaces where people can connect in service first and then have conversations out of that. So the first thing that you find out about something isn't what their someone isn't what their political affiliation is or what their opinion on. abortion or deportation is, how do you contribute to your community? And I think that those are, we need more opportunities there. Because even the literature on peace building and political violence state that if somebody, so let's say that through my work with Kurt, I understand that people with very different um political ideology for me aren't terrible people. You know, there's someone that I can get along with, there's somebody who I would want to spend time with, but then I need to be given, so I've broken down that construct in my head, but then I need to be given an opportunity to actually come together with Kurt to take that five hour car ride, to have a dinner, to do something that's not expressly political, you know, because that is hard work. So, I mean, if everything is hard, especially in today's economy where people are having to work two and three jobs to support their family. Like then you're asking them to do something that's just constantly work. Like that's not how we're going to build this. It needs to be joyful. It needs to be Kurt and I coming together to take a drive instead of take a flight somewhere. Cause I love a road trip and so does he. Or listening to him sing. He's a great songwriter and guitar player. um I will say that, you don't have to say that. I enjoy you making up songs. um Or something fun and silly, something that fills my spirit and it makes me feel connected. so that, and the cool thing is that it's scalable because it can be done anywhere. You know what social media is not social media. It's not social and and we've allowed that to interfere with and she's right people quit coming that people are joining the Rotaries and things like that where they used to do all of those things and So you can get behind the computer screen or your cell phone and you can you can be Isolated and yet you can go out there and put all these opinions out there and all of this mess silly Let me tell you what we're doing. One of the things that I should mention is we were on a call. We were actually on a lunch and learn and we broke into some rooms and one of the most transparent statements that was made was by one of the ladies that is definitely from the left and she said, know what, I don't have any friends that are conservatives. So I never listened to them. All my friends think like I do. And um I told her, said, I tell you what's interesting is I have a gentleman that's a national, he's involved nationally, and he was involved with this with the Carver Center. We decided once a week for 30 minutes only, we would have a phone call and he and I would talk about issues. Now he's extraordinarily educated, learned, and has an unbelievable international experience. And so I have to be on my game if we're going to have a conversation. be able to this and whether we talk about what was going on in Gaza, whether we're talking about what's going on and you know with international affairs, you know military advancements, all these different things, right. Great conversations. But what happens in that, and I always liked this guy anyhow, okay, but uh we actually became very good friends. I mean I love the guy. And I was driving home from Tallahassee yesterday and we had a about a 45 minute call. He's no longer with us here doing the work at the Carter Center. He's in Minnesota working on violence there and they just had a very serious issue there. And he's doing some great work. And we have this incredible call. What hit me is that 30 minute window that we decided that we were going to listen to one another. It was dedicated, it was intentional. It's intentional to have a conversation. I believe this is an area where we should be encouraging folks in the church. One, become educated. The first thing I would tell people, become an encourager. Start to encourage, by the way go to Ephesians chapter four and see that that's what the body of Christ, we're supposed to encourage one another, we're supposed to lift one another up, we're supposed to unify around that. uh Anyhow, I won't give you a sermon. But I can say encourage, but then begin to educate. Educate yourself and how to then have a conversation and find one person that you will pray for and care about. and have a conversation with them frequently, once a week, around an issue. If we did this all over the United States, we would, if your podcast would somehow spark something where we would have this kind of conversation. so that one, and learn how to talk to one another. a, don't try to win a debate. I don't try to win a debate with Nathan when I talk with him. We're just talking. I have some pretty strong points, he has some pretty strong points, and yet we come to the point saying, well, what if we could do this? That becomes, I think, a real important aspect. You don't have to give up your belief systems. What you do is you have to say, I want to understand and care. And the best way is to start, it really is the best way to start, is a one-on-one argument. I'm not warning the conversation. I'm going to unmute with my computer freaking out again. Yeah, I think we're all a little bit concerned that your computer is going to blow up. Thank you so much, you two. This has been an amazing conversation. But we also want to make sure that our audience has at least some way to connect with you all, get involved. What are all the good links and places that people can go? You can go, Jennifer, if you want. So you can. look up the Florida Sun 100 on Facebook, even though social media isn't social, we do have a presence there. And then you can connect to our website. You can sign up for Lunch and Learns and find out about them through um that Facebook page. If you don't have Facebook, if you just Google Florida Sun 100, Kirk Kelly, Jennifer Webb, it'll pop up. So that's the easiest. I don't even give people uh addresses anymore. I just say, here's how you Google it. It's easy to remember. send you the information so that you can put it up on your screen and so forth. But yeah, we'd love to have you involved in it. And we'd love to continue this conversation on regular basis because, again, we might not need to take this much time. But the reality is, I do believe that having the conversations, spreading it across the nation and getting a larger audience to say the one-on-one conversations, the educational process is all important. It's all important. But it'll all start with this. Take a look at yourself. Go look in the mirror and say, do I really want to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and my children and my children's children? I've got children and now I have grandchildren. Do I want to continue this, this what we live in? And the answer is absolutely. Do I want to show a love and compassion to folks? Do I want people to know that I am a Christian and they can see it? They will remember the song back, well, you guys are too young. the song back then, they will know that you are Christians by your love. Will they recognize that? Yeah, you might, might, because you're probably saying it, but it was contemporary when I first heard it. So the reality is, is that what we want to do? And if you can look in the mirror and say, okay, now I'm going to, then I'm going to dedicate and find a person that doesn't agree with me and we're going to start, I'm going to love that person and I'm going begin to have that conversation. we should probably figure out a network in which to do this at some point in time. uh It's been a crazy thing for me to do. It's been important for me to do. By the way, I know how to win arguments. I'm skilled in that. And I don't want to win arguments. I want to have conversations. And anyhow, so thank you for this. It means a lot. We'll send you the information on how to get ahold of this. And we invite everyone to join our lunch and learns and be a part of what we're doing. That's so awesome. Well, thank you again so much, Kirk Kelly, Jennifer Webb. It's been such a pleasure to have you on. Yeah, definitely. We should do this again. Yeah, I just really appreciate all the work you're doing. And to our audience, appreciate all the work you're doing by making it this far in the episode. ah If you like what we're doing, make sure you like, subscribe, hack the algorithm as Josh likes to say. But regardless, make sure you keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care.