Why We Exist
Our country is ripping itself apart over semantics, but semantic modeling is so much more fun!
Christian Nationalism is taking over. Maybe that’s good news to MAGA Christians, but for those of us in their crosshairs it’s a dangerous reality. In reaction, we speak against them, about them, and occasionally at them, but rarely with them. And why would we? We live in different worlds, subscribe to different facts, organize reality into different categories, and use completely different language.
So we shout into the void. We know organizing resistance is necessary, but direct attempts at persuasion are rarely effective. Dialog seems pointless. Worse, all that shouting and failed persuading is burning us out.
An essence is just an excuse not to love somebody
Dialog is hard, especially because we can’t just play nice when lives are at stake. At it’s root, Christian Nationalism thrives on essentialism. America is essentially a Christian nation, they say, so pluralism isn’t just bad it’s an abomination. Gender and sex are essentially binary, so the trans kids and parents among us don’t just make them uncomfortable, we’re freaks of nature and groomers who threaten to undermine the very foundations of society.
Framed by the essentialism of Christian Nationalism, conflicting semantics isn’t just the practical challenge of alignment — how to encourage meaningful communication and effective collaboration for the common good. No, semantics has become their existential struggle. They have defined us and our semantics as the threat to their existence.
Use your words
We seek to move beyond essentialist labels that drive division and toward shared, pragmatic understandings that allow for coexistence. But you don’t have to play nice to connect in an authentic way. At Pragmantics, we’re pursuing a practical strategy, not to smooth over differences or convert Christian Nationalists to Progressive Christianity, but to disarm and redirect our neighbors (and ourselves) from fear to love. We don’t have the only solution, and it won’t always work, but we do have a powerful method. We don’t argue directly about who Jesus was and what he taught. Instead, indirectly, we do what Jesus did in the same ironic way he did it.
We believe Jesus’ strategic answer to Christian Nationalism would be his same announcement about God’s rule of love on earth, the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus preached his message through dialog with friends and enemies alike, but the way he preached it was paradoxical. He spoke with authority and urgency but also in a cryptic, confusing, colorful, and often comedic way. Usually we try to be more clear the more urgent our message, but Jesus’ parables made curious people struggle to understand and figure out what to actually do in response, while it frustrated the hell out of know-it-alls who couldn’t get it right away. Like Socrates, Jesus’ method was part of his message: love trumps knowledge.
That’s exactly what we’re doing and what we’re helping churches, activists, and content creators do, too, through collaborative, practical semantic modeling.
Who We Are
Pragmantics joins Christian mission with a movement consultancy across a cooperative platform with the primary goal to mitigate religiously motivated political violence.
Pragmantics Gospel Mission focuses on practical, semantic peacebuilding. We’re a specialized initiative driven to prevent political violence through pragmatic semantic dialog. Threatened by verbal and physical violence, we love our enemies (while still fighting for justice) by engaging with them in conversational semantic modeling. It’s creative, practical dialog across social bubbles about our country’s conflicting social ontologies. In other words, we discuss reality across realities, prioritizing love over knowledge.
Pragmantics Conceptual Design focuses on engaging with our movement partners in the kind of semantic modeling that makes data meaningful for AI-assisted networking and strategic communication. We know everyone bumbles when trying to reach across social bubbles. That’s why, through what’s called semantic social network analysis, we provide recommendations for your next best action: who the very next person is you should talk to and what the very next thing is you should say to them.
Dash, our forthcoming tech-enabled cooperative platform, will stitch together passion and expertise for the common good. Owned and controlled by our workers, vendors, and clients, we’re leveraging economies of scale to connect socially conscious dash teams with impact-driven organizations that need specialized expertise at sustainable price points.
