Setting the Table in Texas
An invitation to carry the work of civic renewal into your own community. Applications close tonight.
Gracious reader,
This week, an invitation went out to every legislator in Texas, all 180 members of the House and Senate, to read my book, The Soul of Civility.
This is an important moment for these ideas, because they are leaving the page and entering public life and serving leaders during a challenging time.
Last year, while on book tour, I met a member of the Texas Legislature. She read the book and said it gave her language she had been missing, a serious way to think about how to flourish across difference. Months later, she proposed something simple and ambitious at the same time: invite her colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, to read it together.
My answer was simple: How can I help?
I wrote The Soul of Civility to be a handbook for leaders trying to navigate a divided time. This is not a book about civility in the abstract. It is a book for people who have to make decisions, hold authority, and work alongside others they do not agree with. It is written for those who cannot opt out of disagreement, and who still bear responsibility for what follows from it.
The Soul of Civility is the result of a decade of work and a lifetime of attention to a question human societies have always faced: how to live together without destroying one another when disagreement runs deep. Over time, the book has become a shared framework that leaders across politics, geography, and vocation are using to navigate division without dehumanization.
Over the past few years, the book has been used by leaders across vocation, geography, and political persuasion. It has been read in city halls and courtrooms, classrooms and churches, by people asking the same practical question in different settings: how do we disagree without destroying one another, and how do we lead without giving up on shared life.
What makes this week different is not that the book is being read again. It is where and how it is being used.
An invitation has gone out to every member of the Texas Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike, to read the book together. Not as a gesture. Not for display. But as the basis for sustained conversation inside one of the most polarized institutions in American life.
That matters because legislatures are not book clubs. They are places where power is exercised, trust is thin, and disagreement is unavoidable. Decisions made there shape the lives of millions of people. Ideas brought into that space are either used or discarded. They do not remain intact simply because they are appealing.
This is the kind of place ideas are written for.
Four ideas from the book matter for what is unfolding now.
First, there is a difference between civility and politeness. Politeness is manners, etiquette, technique, surface harmony. Civility is an inner disposition, a way of seeing people correctly, as human beings with inherent dignity and worth, and therefore worthy of respect.
Second, disagreement is not our crisis. Disagreement has always existed and is essential to democratic life. Our crisis is dehumanization, the speed with which we turn people into caricatures rather than treating them as persons. Not all ideas are equal. All people are.
Third, this crisis cannot be solved through technique alone. More training sessions, better messaging, or improved listening skills are insufficient. What is required is a change in how we see one another, especially when disagreement remains unresolved.
Fourth, each of us has more power than we assume to shape the tone and substance of the institutions we inhabit.
Civility, as I argue in the book, is not politeness or surface harmony. It is an inner disposition, a way of seeing others as human beings with inherent dignity and worth. If that way of seeing cannot function inside a legislature, where incentives reward tribal loyalty and restraint carries a cost, then it cannot claim to meet the demands of our time.
The experiment now underway in Texas rests on two hypotheses.
One, that many leaders inside divided institutions are weary of the current toxicity, even if they rarely say so publicly.
Two, that sustained, honest conversation, grounded in shared language and serious ideas, can rehumanize people across difference and allow them to govern together again.
We are creating an oasis inside the Texas Legislature to test this theory. No cameras. No speeches. No pressure to agree. Legislators from across the political aisle have chosen to participate.
We will meet virtually next week, then in person at the Capitol in Austin the week of February 3.
Texas is offering a proving ground.
What is unfolding there belongs to an older tradition. For most of history, serious ideas earned their place by being used in councils, courts, and assemblies, in moments when disagreement was real and failure carried consequences. Ideas were not protected. They were tried.
That is what is happening now.
There are no cameras. No speeches. No pressure to agree. Legislators from across the aisle have chosen to enter into sustained conversation, using the book as a shared point of reference, to see whether they can recover a way of working together without reducing one another to caricatures.
This is not symbolic. It is a test.
And it is not happening only in Texas.
Texas is not the point. It is one site among many.
Across the country, and increasingly beyond it, people are asking how to move these ideas off the page and into lived practice. Similar efforts are underway in city councils, schools, courtrooms, churches, and civic organizations across the country. In each case, the same wager is being made in different words: can we disagree without dehumanizing one another, and can we lead without abandoning the people we serve.
This is where the work moves from reading to responsibility.
The Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program exists to answer that question.
The Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program
The Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program exists for people who want to carry this work into the places they already inhabit, their schools, towns, institutions, and communities, and test it there. Not by repeating slogans, but by doing the slow, human work of convening, listening, and leading across difference.
We need you.
Every person reading this has a role to play in the renewal of our public life. This work does not advance through attention or applause. This work does not advance through attention or approval. It advances when people take responsibility for carrying serious ideas into real places, where outcomes are uncertain and failure is possible.
This is not for me. It is for the ideas at the center of The Soul of Civility: the distinction between civility and politeness, the refusal to dehumanize across disagreement, and the recognition of human dignity as inherent. It is for the world our children will grow up in, and the models of shared life we choose to build now.
Here is what members of the first cohort of Civic Renaissance Ambassadors have begun building in just the last few months. This is not at all an exhaustive list; it’s just where some have chosen to start:
An Ivy League professor formed a faculty book club around The Soul of Civility, then developed a first-year orientation curriculum that gives students shared language for disagreement and trust.
A mayor gifted the book to members of his city council, invited their feedback, and began working with them toward a community-wide initiative rooted in its ideas.
A former communications and political professional convened a civic working group that includes a megachurch pastor, a school board chair, and local civic leaders. They read the book together and now meet regularly to pursue community-level change.
A national security expert, who sees civility as an upstream response to the crises he confronts daily, began by gifting the book to members of his church to read together, while also advocating for its use in national security and policy circles.
A federal judge read the book and encouraged fellow judges to engage it as a shared framework for navigating disagreement and sustaining public trust.
An appellate jurist invited me to lead a court retreat centered on the book and its application to judicial life.
A school board president is advancing the children’s edition, Heroes and Villains: The Soul of Civility for Young Citizens, in his district, while also gifting the adult book to teachers, principals, parents, and fellow board members as a shared foundation for school culture and governance.
A mother whose children experienced suicidal ideation linked to excessive social media use is using The Soul of Civility as the intellectual foundation for her work supporting youth mental health in her community.
A pastor preached on The Soul of Civility, then led his congregation in reading the book together as part of a sustained effort to strengthen civic life within the church and beyond it.
This is only the beginning.
The question is not whether there is a place for you here. There is.
The question is where your responsibilities, relationships, and capacities meet a real need in the world.
Lasting social change is never the work of a single person. One book does not do it. One conversation does not do it. One talk does not do it. Change happens when ideas are taken up by many people, carried into many places, and practiced over time. It is cumulative. It is collective. It is built through small, repeated acts of leadership in homes, schools, churches, courtrooms, councils, and workplaces. That is how cultures shift. That is why this work cannot rest with me alone. It depends on people willing to take responsibility for carrying it forward where they already live and lead. We need your help. Please join us.
If you are ready to carry this work into your own community, apply to become a Civic Renaissance Ambassador.
Applications close tonight.
We are setting the table in Texas.
Whether you are in Texas or elsewhere in the world, will you join us?
The Forgotten Virtue of Moderation
A live dialogue with Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams
In an age shaped by outrage, certainty, and faction, moderation has become suspect. Those who refuse to sort neatly into camps are often dismissed as weak, naïve, or uncommitted. And yet, across history, the thinkers who most enlarged human understanding were rarely loyal to a side. They were loyal to truth.
This evening is a live dialogue between Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams on the recovery of moderation as a serious intellectual posture, and on the examined life as its necessary foundation.
In the news
“Author launches national civic renaissance tour in Shelbyville,” The Shelbyville News
The Shelbyville effort is being led locally by Pastor Ralph Botte of First Christian Church of Shelbyville, who invited Hudson to help launch a community-wide initiative inspired by her book.
“When I read The Soul of Civility, it gave language to a problem I was seeing every day in Shelbyville,” Botte said. “People wanted to engage across differences without tearing relationships apart, but we didn’t have a shared framework for doing that. The book clarified what was missing: a way to practice civility that goes beyond surface politeness and is grounded in human dignity. That’s what led me to reach out to Alexandra. As we began sharing the book locally, people recognized themselves in it and wanted to take responsibility for living these ideas together.”
The Civic Renaissance Tour represents the next phase of Hudson’s work, building directly on the impact of The Soul of Civility. Since its release in 2023, the book has been taken up by community leaders, universities, and bipartisan legislative groups across the United States and abroad as a practical framework for engaging disagreement without dehumanization and for reclaiming responsibility at the local level. Rather than remaining a theoretical work, the book has repeatedly served as a catalyst for concrete civic initiatives. In an age marked by polarization and distrust, The Soul of Civility asks a central question: how can people flourish across difference?
Following the book’s publication, Hudson, often traveling with her husband and three small children, visited 136 cities across five countries. She spoke in venues ranging from local libraries and churches to Stanford University, Yale Law School, the Canadian Parliament, and the UK House of Lords. In city after city, the book sparked not only conversation, but sustained local action.
“The Civic Renaissance Tour grew out of listening,” Hudson said. “Everywhere I went, leaders were asking how to live these ideas together, not just talk about them. I realized my role was not to visit and lead every community, but to help local leaders build the capacity, relationships, and support they need to carry this work forward every day.”
The Shelbyville launch follows Hudson’s demonstrated framework for community renewal, a four-phase process that moves communities from shared understanding to sustained local practice. The effort begins with residents reading The Soul of Civility together, followed by Hudson’s visit for a public event and leaders’ roundtable. From there, local leaders across sectors will take responsibility for carrying the work forward in daily civic life, with the long-term goal of Shelbyville serving as a regional hub for civic renewal.
The Shelbyville engagement will begin with a community-wide public event on Thursday, January 29, at 7:00 p.m. at First Christian Church of Shelbyville. The following morning, Friday, January 30 at 9:00 a.m., Hudson and Botte will convene a leaders’ roundtable. During the roundtable, a select group of Shelbyville leaders will work together with Hudson to develop a practical action plan for implementing the book’s ideas and fostering long-term civic renewal in the community.
Hudson’s work with Shelbyville follows a demonstrated and repeatable pattern.
In Carmel, Indiana, City Councilor Jeff Worrell contacted Hudson after reading The Soul of Civility to explore how its ideas could be embedded locally. That effort culminated in the Carmel Civility Summit, which convened more than 100 mayors, city council members, commissioners, and civic leaders from 17 states and Canada. “The Soul of Civility was a roadmap that led me to invite Alexandra to speak and launch a civility effort in Carmel,” Worrell said. Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Hudson opened the summit with a fireside conversation on civility and leadership. “You’ve only begun to hear from this amazing young woman,” Daniels said.
In Zionsville, former Deputy Mayor Kate Swanson partnered with the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to integrate The Soul of Civility into the council’s core curriculum, grounding civic formation in a shared moral framework. The council then convened a public community discussion with Alexandra Hudson at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, drawing a standing-room-only audience and signaling broad public engagement across generations.
“Every person, and especially every young person, in America needs to read The Soul of Civility,” Swanson said.
In Muncie, The Soul of Civility was chosen as a citywide community read, anchoring a shared civic conversation across residents, institutions, and local leaders. State Rep. Elizabeth Rowray partnered with the Muncie Chamber of Commerce to invite Alexandra Hudson to keynote their Christmas banquet, where every attendee received a copy of the book as a call to carry the work into their own civic and professional lives.
Communities across Indiana, including Fishers, Valparaiso, South Bend, Evansville, New Albany, and Salem, are now implementing similar initiatives inspired by Hudson’s work.
Nationally, The Soul of Civility is informing freshman orientation programs at Ivy League universities and is being read in bipartisan book clubs within polarized state legislatures. The book has earned praise from leaders and public intellectuals across the political spectrum, including Francis Fukuyama and Jonathan Haidt.
The Civic Renaissance Tour formalizes this growing momentum by offering communities a structured pathway to move from shared ideas to sustained local practice. Additional tour stops include Colorado Springs, Colorado; Urbandale, Iowa; Sacramento, California; Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Toronto, Canada; and London, England, with more locations to be announced.
“My vision is to help unlock an era of human flourishing in our country,” Hudson, who lives in Indianapolis, said. “That work begins when people stop waiting for rescue and start taking responsibility for the communities they are shaping together. We each have way more power than we realize to be part of the solution.”
She continued, “Ralph, First Christian Church of Shelbyville, and the greater Shelbyville community are showing what that looks like in practice. I am honored to partner with the leaders of Shelbyville in this work.”
As the kickoff city of the Civic Renaissance initiative, Shelbyville is helping shape and refine a new model of community renewal rooted in Alexandra Hudson’s The Soul of Civility. The city is piloting the framework as it moves from idea to practice, generating lessons that other communities can adapt to their own contexts. By launching the Civic Renaissance Tour in Shelbyville, local leaders are contributing to an emerging national effort to strengthen civic life by investing in their own capacity to lead and flourish.
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