by Brett Montague and Dr. Graham Bodie
We often tell America’s story as though its defining moments settled our deepest questions. In truth, our history has always been laced with contradiction and tension. Sociologist James Davison Hunter describes two of the nation’s most important turning points as America’s first two “foundings.” The first gave us independence and constitutional self-government, even as slavery endured. The second, forged through the Civil War and Reconstruction, ended slavery but left unfinished the work of making freedom real in everyday civic life.
Hunter also argues that America may need what he calls a “Third Founding,” a phrase that might help us ask whether Americans can build the civic habits needed to make self-government possible for the next 250 years.
But those habits may need to look different from the ones required for either of the other two foundings. Our first founding required the courage to declare independence and build a constitutional republic. Our second required the country to confront the contradiction between its language of liberty and the reality of slavery. A third founding, if it comes, will require a renewal of solidarity: the capacity to recognize that, however fiercely we disagree, we still have something at stake together.
That kind of solidarity is not the same as sameness. It does not require full agreement, shared ideology, or identical beliefs. It does require a public spirit strong enough to hold disagreement without letting it devolve into contempt. The deeper crisis, then, is not simply that Americans disagree. The deeper crisis is that we are losing the civic infrastructure that helps us work through disagreement inside a shared life.
And while we may argue about national politics, we live in particular communities. We drive the same roads. We send children to the same schools. We depend on the same hospitals, utilities, small businesses, churches, nonprofits, and public institutions. We share far more ordinary life than our national media environment often suggests. Yet the loudest stories we consume tend to tell us that we are divided into enemy camps, sorted permanently into “us” and “them.”
The media can make neighbors appear as caricatures before we ever meet them. It can train us to imagine the worst about people on “the other side,” especially when we rarely sit beside them to solve problems together.
But the media can do something else, too. Stories can bring people into the same room. They can lower defenses, widen our moral imagination, and give communities a shared starting point for conversation. They can remind us that people with different experiences and convictions can still care about the same place and work toward the same future.
That is one reason the Better Together Film Festival matters. In Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippians recently gathered not simply to watch a film, but to use story as an entry point into conversation across differences. The national festival gave people in local communities ways to practice the kinds of civic habits a third founding would require: listening, reflection, curiosity, disagreement without contempt, and a renewed sense that local communities are worth building together.
What we saw at these gatherings were people still willing to show up and engage across differences, not just for themselves, but for the community. In Hattiesburg and Tupelo, we saw lawyers, bankers, college professors, financial planners, school teachers, business owners, a recently retired federal district court judge, real estate developers, a plywood mill manager, and NAACP reps.
Following the film, those attendees held discussions founded on a commitment to honest, respectful dialogue and bridging differences in the Pine Belt and Lee County areas. The majority reported (in an anonymous post event survey) that conversations were productive and that they felt they would benefit from building on their shared dialogue in the future. The day after the event, Brett got a text from a local manufacturing manager in attendance saying, “Keep me in mind as you move forward with community outreach and building the dialogue for Hattiesburg. I’d be honored to be a part of it!”
That kind of feedback was obviously welcomed news that reveals at least two truths. One, it reveals a hunger for something that has been missing for a while in community life. Two, it tells us that while rebuilding America’s civic culture through a “Third Founding” will definitely need an abundance of altruistic people like the man who texted Brett, a man who clearly sees exploring America’s tensions and contradictions as an honor. Indeed, this work will require all of us to see civic renewal as a sacred duty.
After all, a country committed to self-government cannot survive if its citizens only operate as spectators, cynics, or combatants. Democracy requires people willing to listen, deliberate, compromise, dissent, organize, serve, and build. As we’ve written before, it requires citizens who understand that freedom is not protection from, but responsibility to one another.
If America experiences a “Third Founding” through renewing its civic habits, it won’t be declared by any one document or the election of any one leader; it will be built in schools, churches, civic groups, film festivals, local journalism, public conversations, and ordinary citizens who choose responsibility over contempt. America at 250 does not need us to pretend that America’s contradictions are behind us. They are not. It asks whether we are willing to face them with more courage, humility, and civic imagination than our present culture often rewards.
Prior to a tenure from 2020–2023 as CEO of End It For Good, Inc, Brett Montague spent several years as a Training Manager at Sanderson Farms, Inc., focusing on areas of Corporate Communication, Trust, & Teamwork. He has most recently been leading a small group of community thought leaders in Hattiesburg to kickstart a cause for sowing seeds of solidarity and community across philosophical and political differences.
Dr. Graham Bodie is a Professor of Media & Communication at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. His courses and curricula are informed by over two decades of research on the role of Communication in shaping relationships, leadership, and virtuous civic living. He is also the Chief Listening Officer for Listen First Project.
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