Pandemic Migrations Bring New Neighbors

MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. No one has to tell you that Americans have faced a torrent of challenges and changes in recent years. Well, both our culture and our geography have been somewhat reshaped. Not only are Americans shifting politics, but many of us are physically moving to new locations.

North Carolina is one of the states that has experienced unprecedented growth, including a lot of new people moving from cities into small towns. All of this brings a host of both challenges and opportunities for communities and individuals. Well, Dr. Brad Littlejohn joins us today to talk about this and his recent article, Loving New Neighbors. He is the president of the Davenant Institute and a fellow in the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Evangelicals in Civic Life program. Dr. Brad Littlejohn, welcome back to Family Policy Matters.

Thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. Start off by telling us what do we know about the population trends of Americans over the last few years as far as where they are choosing to live and work? Well, the data is really interesting. I mean, we all have kind of this anecdotal sense of knowing people who have moved from big urban metropolitan areas to smaller towns or been moving from perhaps blue states to red states during or after the pandemic. And it's not just anecdotal, you know, the numbers really do show that, for instance, California and New York actually saw declines in population. And if you drill down and look at some of the big urban centers like San Francisco or New York City, the declines are really quite substantial. And on the other hand, we do see, you know, people are moving, you know, the kind of stereotypical people moving to California to Florida or California to Texas or New York to Florida.

You know, that's real. More often, though, what's happening, so there is a movement to some of these Southern states, particularly, you know, states that perhaps had less pandemic restrictions, immigrants at the expense of states that had stricter pandemic restrictions. But more often, it's people moving within the state or within at least within a couple hundred mile radius from expensive urban core to less expensive suburbs or indeed just rural areas. In fact, the charts fascinates, basically, the more densely populated a zip code was, the more population it lost percentage wise, and the less densely populated zip code was, the more percentage gain it was.

So really, it's moved from more dense places to less dense places. Well, we can make some guesses as to why Americans are doing that. But are there some statistics that tell us why the dramatic lifestyle changes? There's the obvious factor of during period of stricter lockdown in urban areas, you didn't agree with those policies, or even, you know, even if you agreed with the policies, but you'd rather not be living in an apartment building where you're locked up in your apartment to be social distancing.

Anyway, you might as well do it out in the country where you can spread out a bit, right. So there was a natural movement from urban cores with strict pandemic restrictions and higher rates of virus transmission to rural areas. Part of that is a political reaction to those conservatives who perhaps opposed some of those restrictions. But of course, right on the heels of that, you also have the protests and the riots, which are again, concentrated in many of these same more liberal urban cores. And so people just they don't want to live in a neighborhood that's being looted, for one thing, or they might particularly be frustrated with the fact that maybe the Democratic mayors seem to be encouraging the riots. So you've got these urban centers, who are more liberal to begin with, but even those conservatives that were still there, are more likely to move out, right.

So that's a big factor. But of course, another thing we're dealing with is simply economics, right? It's more expensive to live in urban cores. It's more expensive to live in New York and California. And previously, you may have had to do that for your job. But with the move to remote work, all of a sudden, lots of people could work from anywhere. And if you can work from anywhere, why not have a house twice the size for the same price, right? So a big part of the factor is just people moving from more expensive areas to less expensive areas, because they now can. And I think that is going to be something that's going to reverse, you know, in the near term. But I think in many industries, there's been a shift to remote work that isn't going to change. And a lot of people are going to continue moving to those lower cost areas where they can work remotely.

Interesting. Do you think it's also possible that people are seeking a different kind of community? Have we changed at the root of who we are?

That is true to some extent. What the pandemic did is it made us realize being separated from physical community made us realize the importance of physical community. And while I talk about, you know, people moving from more densely populated areas to less densely populated areas, the truth is less densely populated areas are, you're more likely to actually have real community often, right? I mean, if you live in a high rise apartment block in Manhattan, you don't actually have the same kind of community life that you do in a small town, right? So I think people are valuing those face to face relationships and saying, how can I choose a lifestyle that actually enables me to invest in those more?

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We'd also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We can just imagine the challenges that there would be for people who are moving from high density areas like New York City, San Francisco, into some of our small towns across America. It can be a culture shock for the people who live in those small towns too, to have these women and men come in from the city. So talk a little bit about that. What's going on with those two communities? Are they clashing?

Do you have some tips for how we can have maybe productive conversations over some of our differences? Yeah. Well, as I mentioned in my article, there's really two distinct trends that can kind of point opposite directions. It sort of depends on which community you're in, which trend is more dominant. So the one I call the sort of political refugee trend, right? So this is the person who is, say, leaving San Francisco or leaving California altogether because they're tired of lockdowns and they're tired of the lack of policing and so on. They want to go to a red state that shares their more conservative values.

So I call this political refugees, people seeking a more like-minded cultural and political environment. And so what's going to happen with that is that connection tends to increase polarization, right? You have a conservative small town community, and then you have people coming in from out of state who are coming there because they want to live near people who share their values and politics. And of course, that brings with it one set of dangers, right? It brings the sort of danger that, you know, we're already very polarized. And if people are sorting out geographically more on those political lines, that's going to increase that polarization. That's going to make us less able to, you know, the fact of the matter is we do still have to share a country and, you know, and with people of the other political persuasion. So if neighbors are sorting themselves out to only live near neighbors who agree with them, there are some advantages to that, but there's some disadvantages in terms of our ability to kind of work through our differences on a national scale.

So we can talk more about that. But the other trend is the economic refugee trend, as I call it, right, which is people who are mainly moving just because they'd rather live somewhere less expensive. And I think this is really the more significant trend, because the fact is, if we're thinking about, you know, we have this kind of idea of the conservative family trying to raise kids in a liberal city, and they're just like, they've had it, right, they're going to go to Texas or something, it's actually a lot harder to move if your family has a bunch of kids, and if you're just, you know, single in your 20s. And what we've seen is the dominant demographic that's been making these moves are like single individuals in their 20s, who are going to tend to be more politically liberal.

So that trend actually tends to take liberal people and dump them into conservative communities where they're just moving there, not because they want to, you know, they want more guns, but because they just want a cheaper housing. And so that's going to create a culture shock is to be the opposite phenomenon, right, we're going to have conservative communities that are suddenly having to grapple with, you know, somebody from Manhattan, you know, has totally different values in their backyard. And so that's going to force upon us, you know, conversations that we might not otherwise have had.

Okay, so do you have some suggestions or places that we can go when we're confronted with this as far as how to have those kind of conversations? Yeah, I think although it can be disorienting for many, you know, smaller town rural communities suddenly faced with, you know, these outsiders who think quite differently, I think it is a valuable opportunity for us to learn to have conversations around political and cultural issues that again, we have to deal with these as a nation, we have these differences in the national level. And we might as well learn how to deal with them in our local communities. And a lot of it is just about learning the art of real conversation around disagreements, which most of us aren't good at. I think there's a small sliver of us that if we encounter somebody who seems to have totally different political views, we're going to just like weigh into them and, you know, just argue with them right off the bat.

Most of us, actually, we might do that online, you know, online, but face to face, we shy away from confrontation. And we might just kind of just sort of sit there and let them say their thing and, you know, not say a word. And what we what we don't know how to do is to disagree constructively and politely. And I would say the way to do that, you know, it begins with listening, you don't just barge in and just start contradicting someone who has different views say about the recent Dobbs Supreme Court decision.

What you do is you listen, let them talk, let them share. And what's going to happen is very often people just assume that the people they're talking to agree with them, right? So they'll just go on and they'll just like, because they're accustomed to talking to people who agree with them.

And so what you have to do is find a way of disagreeing obliquely, right? And so what do you do is you say, Well, why do you think that, right? They'll just say they'll make assertions, they'll just assume that you agree with them.

But then you say, Why do you think that maybe someone might not have asked that before, right? They actually have to give a reason for their views besides the fact that, well, of course, everybody thinks that's right. And so then they'll say, Oh, well, because such and such, such, such. And then and then you can say, Well, what would you say to somebody who doesn't agree with those reasons you just gave, right?

And you don't have to signal right away that you are that person, but they know that there are people in the country who don't share those beliefs, right? And then you give them an opportunity to say, Well, I mean, what I would say, you know, what I would say to a pro life person is such and such, right? And so then you get them give them an opportunity to voice on their own, perhaps, why someone might disagree with their position. And then you can say, Well, yeah, I actually have some of those disagreements, right? And so then you can kind of, you can have a constructive conversation, but you've given them space to articulate their views rather than simply contradicting them. Do you think as as believers, as Christians, these cultural differences and these kinds of conversations can actually be a good thing as far as us having opportunities to share why we think the way we do and share our faith?

Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, if to the extent that what we're seeing is, you know, yuppies from Manhattan moving into Bible Belt communities just because it's cheaper housing, then it's an opportunity for those of us in Bible Belt communities to share the gospel, but not just share the gospel, but share the fact that whatever they may have heard on MSNBC, or whatever, we're not a bunch of three headed monsters, right? And so I think, partly by just being hospitable, entering into relationships with new neighbors, and showing them that we love and respect them as human beings, even if we have political differences, that's what creates the opening to share the gospel and to model what it means to be a Christian, right? And I think so many people are conditioned to think that conservative Christians are, you know, just intolerant, have no use for them. But if you can show them that you respect them and are happy to have a real conversation around disagreements, that can be really disarming, right?

They just don't expect that. Unfortunately, we're just about out of time. But where can people go if they are listening, and they would like to get more information about your work and also read your article, Loving New Neighbors? I write a column every week or so at World Opinions, wng.org slash opinions. And you'll find this column of mine a few weeks ago there. I also do a lot of work through the Davenant Institute, d-a-v-e-n-a-n-t, institute.org.

And then of course, at eppc.org, Ethics and Public Policy Center, I have a page where everything I've written over the last year shows up there. All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Brad Littlejohn. Thanks for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you.

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