Secular Grace: Just Another Construct or a Catalyst for Everyday Political Talk?

Abstract: Everyday political talk plays a crucial role in democratic engagement, fostering political knowledge, discussion participation, and action. Yet, despite its benefits, many Americans avoid political conversations due to increasing polarization and the emotional toll of engaging in such exchanges. This research posits that giving and receiving secular grace can be a tool for mitigating the barriers to everyday political talk. Though grace has been heavily studied in religious and theological contexts, its application in psychology and conflict resolution remains underexplored. Thus, this series of three studies aims to develop a lay definition of grace, create a measurement scale for its role in political talk, and evaluate its impact on openness to political engagement. The results from this research agenda seek to fill a gap in grace-related research and offer a potential antidote to the growing polarization in public discourse, highlighting human grace as a catalyst for more constructive conversations on socio-political issues.

Keywords: human grace, political polarization, everyday political talk