Author's introduction - The Creed Room
In the narrowest possible sense, the “creed room” is a chamber on the second floor of an old Victorian in Garrett Park, Maryland. There, a group of people, who for the most part are strangers to one another, meet once a week from September 1999 through May 2000 and discuss the questions of ultimate significance for humankind -- questions of philosophy, religion, politics, culture, you name it. In the broadest sense, the creed room represents an antidote to the poisons of official Washington: the polarization, the hypocrisy, the lack of courage, the conformity, the pandering, and the willingness to strawman any point of view that you don't agree with. I like to call this antidote the devotion to the dialogue.
In the creed room, everyone arrives as an individual, not a representative of some group. Nobody has a pre-conceived role to play -- you're not a boss, an employee, or an "expert." You're just one peer among many. And everyone is charged to think and feel independently of everyone else. The characters in this book learn not to analyze at other people's perspectives in the stupidest possible terms. Instead, the presumption is that every perspective has value, and the job of the truth seeker is to find golden nuggets whenever they may appear.
Those who entered the creed room argued a lot, but never forgot their common mission: to identify a creed that people on all sides of the political and religious spectrums can rally around -- some coherent set of ideas that appeal to political liberals and conservatives, and to atheists as well as theists. Is it possible to find such a creed? Or at least possible to identify fundamental principles with which all thoughtful, open-minded people can agree? Those are among the questions this book tries to answer.
The Creed Room is a tribute to the power and beauty of open conversation. Inside the room itself, the participants engage in a dialogue with each other that strives to find common ground but doesn't pull punches either. Outside the room, the characters are often engaged in another type of dialogue -- with each other, with ideas, with historical figures, and yes, with the readers of this book. As an author, I'm trying to converse with each of my readers. I found it very rewarding when a friend of mine said that she doesn't often have opportunities to discuss philosophical issues with people, and she felt herself entering into a dialogue with the book's characters such that not only did they speak to her, but she was speaking to them as well. I can't hope for a better reaction than that from any reader.
In the creed room, everyone arrives as an individual, not a representative of some group. Nobody has a pre-conceived role to play -- you're not a boss, an employee, or an "expert." You're just one peer among many. And everyone is charged to think and feel independently of everyone else. The characters in this book learn not to analyze at other people's perspectives in the stupidest possible terms. Instead, the presumption is that every perspective has value, and the job of the truth seeker is to find golden nuggets whenever they may appear.
Those who entered the creed room argued a lot, but never forgot their common mission: to identify a creed that people on all sides of the political and religious spectrums can rally around -- some coherent set of ideas that appeal to political liberals and conservatives, and to atheists as well as theists. Is it possible to find such a creed? Or at least possible to identify fundamental principles with which all thoughtful, open-minded people can agree? Those are among the questions this book tries to answer.
The Creed Room is a tribute to the power and beauty of open conversation. Inside the room itself, the participants engage in a dialogue with each other that strives to find common ground but doesn't pull punches either. Outside the room, the characters are often engaged in another type of dialogue -- with each other, with ideas, with historical figures, and yes, with the readers of this book. As an author, I'm trying to converse with each of my readers. I found it very rewarding when a friend of mine said that she doesn't often have opportunities to discuss philosophical issues with people, and she felt herself entering into a dialogue with the book's characters such that not only did they speak to her, but she was speaking to them as well. I can't hope for a better reaction than that from any reader.