Personalism, Conversion, and Change

“I try to solve inequality by day while contributing to it by night.” Many a professional do-gooder would have to acknowledge this paradox if forced to be honest. But not David and Amber Lapp, who, years ago, went to a working-class town in Ohio as researchers on love and marriage, only to stay as residents and neighbours. In this episode, they reflect on the past decade of living among people whose gifts, resentments, aches, and longings are so often mischaracterized (if not ignored) by the coastal lens. As the Lapps have sought to shine a light on the erosion of trust and covenant-making in the white working class, they’ve discovered their own humanity. A discovery, it turns out, that lies—necessarily—at the inception of any social change that will endure.