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Can you achieve compromise without compromising your principles?
It certainly can be hard to imagine how that’s possible.
The word “compromise” involves some degree of making concessions in order to arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. It implies giving up something you wouldn’t otherwise choose to give up. But beyond inconvenience, the term also carries a moral dimension — to be “compromised” could mean abandoning or diluting what you believe.
Last week, the Wheatley Institute hosted a series of conversations about the rights of conscience and the Constitution, which culminated in the keynote by President Dallin H. Oaks at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. You can read my report from the evening.
Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Cross Purposes,” started his column about President Oaks’ address published in the Deseret News like this:
“Consider it official: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has exited the culture war, repudiated Christian nationalism, and embraced a wiser alternative: Christian constitutionalism.”
While the message of “nondomination, negotiation, coalition” was not new, he said, it was presented to a wider, possibly more secular audience in moral terms. “President Oaks treats them not just as politically desirable but as morally virtuous,” Rauch wrote.
Last week, during the Wheatley symposium, Rauch and Tim Shriver wrestled with the possibilities and limits of compromise and how exactly to reach agreement without compromising one’s principles. Rauch noted that compromise is sometimes associated with “violating your moral scruples.”
But then he described James Madison’s view of the compromise as a “creative, dynamic engine that balances stability with adaptation.” When helping design the Constitution, Madison faced the problem of reconciling different factions and creating the system that allowed for both flexibility and strong convictions.
His solution was to force these various groups to be in constant negotiation with each other.
This process can contribute to the “expansion of social harmony” as the competing parties feel heard and included, Rauch said.
The way of “compromise” — which Rauch called “the most misunderstood concept” in modern American civic and political life — also allows for candid self-examination and can shape how people view and treat one another.
Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics and co-founder of the Dignity Index, said disagreement can bring out some of our less admirable impulses: the desire for power and control or the temptation to humiliate the other person.
We all contribute to that culture, he said, by what we stream and click on social media. “All of us are complicit in advancing a culture of dehumanizing contempt,” he said.
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The Dignity Index helps bring this dynamic to light. The index evaluates the language by scoring it based on whether it elevates the dignity of others or diminishes it. “The minute people see that, it awakens conscience,” he said. “You see yourself and your own conscience says, ‘I want to do better.’ Because most of the time … contempt operates in disguise.”
So what is the cost of compromise?
First, it’s no fun, both speakers agreed. Their framing differs slightly on just how agile we may need to be.
Shriver’s argument is that dignity does not require compromising your principles. “Our view is that you shouldn’t compromise your principles at all,” he said. You can strongly oppose an idea or movement while still treating the person who holds that belief with dignity. He gave the example of musician Daryl Davis, who became known for deradicalizing nearly 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan by listening to them.
For Rauch, the search for compromise involves self-reflection. “I learn about my principles and where my principles may need adjusting in the course of negotiations, talking, listening,” he said.
We are bound by the Constitution to seek agreement with others, he said, and while defending our principles, “we learn in those conversations.” What we learn can mean that a course correction is needed. “And we may discover that we were wrong,” he said.
President Oaks also pointed to “core values” as an anchor in navigating disagreement. “We need to work for a better way forward — a way to resolve differences without compromising core values.”
Regardless of the outcome, the process of trying to find compromise has inherent value in itself. It can sharpen our understanding of our own principles and values. It can also help us identify which beliefs and convictions are truly nonnegotiable and even nudge us to adjust the ones that are wrong.
Fresh off the press
- What the Constitution requires of us, according to President Oaks at the National Cathedral.
- Latter-day Saint leaders join other faiths to oppose Idaho abortion vote.
- Dads don’t see themselves as key to their kids’ faith. The data says otherwise.
- More internet is associated with less faith, according to a new analysis of 81 countries.
In other faith news
- A police officer was shot as a result of a shooting at an Ontario synagogue on Yom Kippur, the faith’s most important holiday. “Jewish people must be able to worship safely. To live free, open, proud Jewish lives,” Mark Carney, Canadian prime minister, said on X. — CNN
- On Sept. 16, Pope Leo XIV marked the 60th anniversary of the Vatican II declaration titled “Nostra aetate,” which had transformed Catholic-Jewish and broader Catholic interfaith relations.
- The Vatican document said the Middle East conflicts have strained Jewish-Christian dialogue while also condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia and called for religious freedom and cooperation across faiths. — Vatican News
- Last week, the Future of Life Institute convened prominent political and religious leaders in Washington, D.C., for conversations about AI. The diverse group included Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, right-wing political strategist Steve Bannon and Elder Gerrit W. Gong of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who joined via video message. — RNS
- President Donald Trump appointed Cissie Graham Lynch, granddaughter of evangelist Billy Graham, to become the next U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, a position that has been vacant since the beginning of Trump’s second term. Her nomination now goes to the Senate.
End note
A Minneapolis Catholic priest, Brent Bowman, had a spiritual experience after saying a consecration prayer over wine. Thanks to livestream technology and social media, the entire world became a witness of this moment.
The video of Father Bowman weeping, his hands shaking as he holds the chalice, went viral. In a statement, he clarified that what he experienced was not a Eucharistic miracle.
“I had a private spiritual experience while praying the Eucharistic prayer over the bread and wine and I want to humbly share and clarify what I experienced all for God’s glory and praise,” he wrote. He said he received “sensory knowledge of the weight of God’s power” and felt “the heaviness of Jesus’s substantial presence” while he was holding the chalice.
I felt mesmerized watching this vulnerable scene, but it also felt like intruding on an experience that was meant to be private and sacred but somehow ended up on public display.
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