Northwest Passages: ‘Fabric of Character’ author set to visit Bing Crosby Theater

Anne Snyder spent her formative childhood years overseas. Her dad’s banking job took the family to Hong Kong and Australia, with some Southeast Asia travels. She learned about her mother’s upbringing in Peru.

Snyder returned to the U.S. by age 10, but she describes that time around people of different cultures as having made an imprint.

“Something about all that probably stays with you in terms of your being drawn to those unlike yourself, more curious, not so judgmental or afraid of different ways of knowing and in which very different cultural contexts shape people’s convictions, conclusions and ways of seeing,” Snyder said.

Today, Snyder is Washington, D.C.-based editor-in-chief of Comment Magazine, for “Christian leaders and culture makers with rooted, fresh ideas for the faithful practice of public life.” She authored the 2019 book, “The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Renewing Our Social and Moral Landscape” and hosts “The Whole Person Revolution” podcast.

Snyder plans to bring such perspectives to a Whitworth University’s Election Year Speaker Series talk, “Social Architecture: Creating a Scaffold of Social Life for the Common Good,” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Bing Crosby Theater. Northwest Passages is co-hosting the event.

The university’s series is focused on critical thinking and civil discourse around the 2024 election. Whitworth University President Scott McQuilkin will lead the talk.

Snyder co-edited the 2022 anthology, “Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year.” It came from a collaborative project with a cross-section of leaders responding to various social issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as health, economic hits, polarized politics and the outcry after George Floyd’s murder.

McQuilkin plans to talk about why Snyder wrote, “the 21st century calls for character more than ever.” Other dialogue might delve into how churches and pastors are addressing the interactions between Christianity and politics.

McQuilkin expects to ask Snyder about when she meets people in her research on “society-changing” efforts, what seems to differentiate individuals who are able to affect change long-term versus those who aren’t?

Despite political divisions and differing views about the country’s future, Snyder said during a recent phone interview that she still sees hope.

“I feel like I’m trying to cultivate a world of leaders who are trying to build it back another way – regrowing roots is almost how I think of it,” Snyder said.

“When you’re on the ground at local levels, there are so many people creatively weaving neighbors together, creating thicker communities and not beginning with political differences or social class divide, racial divide and other things. I’m often trying to go inside organizations and neighborhoods from Shreveport to Jasper, Texas, Indianapolis to San Antonio, to parts of rural Georgia.

“All over, you meet amazing people with hearts of service and neighborly hope.”

Snyder graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois for a dual philosophy and international relations major. Her first job was as a research assistant in a Washington, D.C., think tank’s foreign policy program.

During that time, she was told she should write. Still in D.C., she eventually worked in research for the New York Times opinion page. By night, she completed a graduate’s degree in journalism from Georgetown University.

Snyder found her niche writing long-format pieces for publications. She moved for a few years to Houston, where often her articles touched on the subtle dynamics involving political shifts among demographic groups and immigrant communities.

She felt most drawn to understanding patterns in various immigrant groups – and their hopes, tensions and losses in coming to America.

“Especially with first generation and often second generation, they have such a clear conception of what the U.S. can be,” Snyder said. “I think I was always drawn to their moral clarity and hope.

“I was trying to tell the stories of both human individuals, but then what’s become more my thing, which is telling the stories of communities and people’s sense of moral agency, citizenship and belonging or lack thereof, or mobility patterns. I was asking where are millennial immigrants moving? And Nigerians versus Vietnamese versus Koreans, and why is the Asian American vote shifting?

“It was a wide range of questions that I would broadly call the new American, back in 2012 through 2016.”

The “Fabric of Character” book evolved next. Returning to D.C., Snyder was tapped for a project spearheaded by the Philanthropy Roundtable, involving philanthropists and seed funder, the Kern Family Foundation.

“There were a variety of others that joined who were concerned by what they felt like was a slow, but noticeable erosion of morally formative institutions across the U.S.,” Snyder said.

The project sent her across the U.S. for answers about character and a unifying set of principles to define an organization or community at its healthiest. It sought to build a coalition of “donors, doers and thinkers,” animated by a practical, implementable and principled framework of how to build a healthy organizational culture where people work, worship, volunteer, play sports and create.

Snyder in the book centered on 16 principles, “what I was observing in the most amazing rehab programs, sports teams, companies, schools, neighborhood thickening efforts, social capital reweaving efforts,” she said. “I wrote the book ‘The Fabric of Character’ and tried to activate bridges between philanthropists, foundations and a wide constellation of nonprofit organizations.”

Some of the principles include: Does the organization have a clear, strong reason for being in the world that’s embraced and perceived by all? Does it have full engagement by everybody regardless of position or stature? Does it have a clear conception of the whole person – head, heart, helping hand – and seeks to develop that? Are there healthy relationships and fostering of social trust? Is there joy in the house?

Snyder had written for Comment before she became editor in 2019. Its audience now is mostly American, but the magazine was founded by a Canadian think tank, Cardus.

“Cardus has long had the tagline – sometimes official, sometimes less official – that is ‘renewing North American social architecture,’ ” Snyder said. “This is an organization that really believes deeply in a civil society.”