I trust that you all have had a wonderful weekend celebrating the Fourth of July. I count it a blessing that I get to live in this time and place, that God has gifted us with this land of bounty and opportunity. Of course, as Jesus says, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required,” or to use Eugene Peterson’s translation, “Great gifts mean great responsibilities; greater gifts, greater responsibilities!”
I’ve had the privilege of traveling pretty widely. Travel gives the opportunity to notice the ways people and societies are different. Some of it inspires me to be better. For example, every time I go to Belize, I am reminded how deeply these folks are involved in each other’s lives and how devoted they are to their church. While sometimes travel makes me yearn for the comforts of home.
Of course, one of the things that has become so difficult is that our land has become a place where partisanship in politics is so pronounced.
I came across a study from Stanford University that measured the political divide in America and in other democracies over the course of the past four decades — basically during my lifetime. What they found is that polarization has increased in other democracies but not to the extremes we have experienced in the U.S. In 1978, the year I was born, the negative sentiment gap between Democrats and Republicans was 27 points. By 2016, that difference grew to 46 points. I can only imagine it’s higher in 2025. Partisan polarization is measurably larger and growing faster here than in any of those other democracies in the study.
And polarization hasn’t stayed just at campaign stops and debates. It’s made its way into churches and families. It has made our life together fraught with anger and division. While, overall, I feel like our church has hung in there better than some others, it doesn’t mean that we’re flawless and unified. So, today, I’m going to bring forward several questions that the congregation submitted. I’ll be answering them more broadly by looking into scripture for what it is I believe the church should be doing when it comes to politics and partisanship, but I also recognize that there is no way to thread this needle perfectly. You’ll see the impossible task I’ve taken on just by the diverging directions of these questions.
So, wish me well. Here goes nothing.
Here’s a sampling of the questions that dance around this topic of the church and politics.
We received a question about the struggle over how how to love God and neighbor as it applies to politicians and movements that they view as running counter to the gospel. How do we pray for leaders we disagree with? Is it possible to love others who are doing things we find offensive?
We also received pointed questions coming from a very different direction, asserting that we are pushing our personal political views on everyone, and given the topics listed, it’s assumed that I’ve become an agent of the Democratic Party. (I’m not. I’m actually an Independent, if that matters to anyone. Liberals think I’m conservative, and conservatives think I’m liberal. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Also, I won’t get into the specifics of what these questions asked because, generally speaking, the pulpit is not the place for those answers, but I’d be glad to have a cup of coffee with you to have a conversation about them.)
People in this church have differing political convictions. The issue that really is at the heart of this is how it is possible to be with one another in difference. Or to directly quote another question that we received on this — How do you come to terms with other Christians’ values when their views of political issues are so different? How can we see the pursuit of life, liberty, and freedom so differently and call it Jesus’ love? And I want to acknowledge that this is particularly hard when views stand in opposition and neither person is able to engage in mutuality to listen well to the other.
I also have to be clear that these are particularly fraught times for churches. In this church, we’ve had both liberals and conservatives leave because we haven’t said or done the things they want said and done or because we’ve said or done things that made them feel unwelcome. And, I’m sure that we aren’t perfect in living the gospel and have sinned against our sisters and brothers.
Obviously, that’s not the intent of our ministry, and it grieves me because our mission is offering a very different — and I think more difficult — way forward. We are staking the claim that we believe it’s possible to choose and challenge each other in a politically divided world. It’s hard work. It takes a ton of self-reflection. It takes making choices that others aren’t making — like shutting down social media or eliminating cable news or talk radio from our lives. It takes the strength of entering into relationships with folks who are not like-minded and seeking to love them in the manner of Jesus.
I’ve joked this week that I have enough material to do about six months’ worth of sermons on this topic, but none of us want that. So, I’m going to focus on two major ideas when it comes to what we’re focusing on regarding the church and politics. So, buckle in. Here we go.
This past spring we held three small groups on the study called One Anothering: Choosing Each Other in a Politically Divided World. We found these classes to be helpful and healing. They were training us to take a new direction in how we engage one another in this time. I actually started a new section this past Wednesday, and you can still join in. Just let me or the office know you’d like to come, and I can get you caught up. About halfway through that study, we take a look at the text we read from John 8, where the religious leaders bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus and ask him to pronounce judgment over her. These leaders hold the high conviction that Moses’ law requires that they stone her to death. They are testing Jesus to see if he holds the same high conviction.
Jesus responds in silence, bending down to write in the dust on the ground. There is only speculation about what Jesus was writing, so I won’t go into that. The leaders press Jesus for an answer, and he says, “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.” (Which, of course, Jesus is the only one who hasn’t sinned, and he doesn’t pick up a rock.)
You see, these religious leaders had high conviction but low compassion. But Jesus operates in the space of high conviction and high compassion. He wants to see this woman live a full life. Stoning her won’t make that happen. Neither will continuing a promiscuous life. (And let me just say here that it takes two to tango, so shame on the leaders of this patriarchal society for ignoring the adulterous man!) No, after everyone leaves, Jesus turns to the woman and asks, “Woman, where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?” She replies, “No one, sir.” And he says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on, don’t sin anymore.”
Jesus embodies high conviction and high compassion, and as people learning to live like Jesus, that’s where we should want to be. But what I’ve learned in One Anothering, is that it’s rarely the posture we actually take, particularly when it comes to politics. In the class, we go through an exercise where the leader reads off a series of sentences, and people move to corners of the room that are marked like this grid I’ve put on the screen.
As you can see, the upper left is high conviction/low compassion — the place where the religious leaders are in the story. It’s the space where a person believes they are right and they care little how that belief impacts others. I think this is where the vast majority of our political discourse is these days. The lower right is the space of low conviction/high compassion, what another book calls “the exhausted.” These are folks who want surface unity and ignore all the trouble brewing beneath the surface. The lower left is the space of low conviction/low compassion. This is the space of cynicism, and, to be honest with you, before taking One Anothering, it’s the quadrant I most often found myself in. It’s the place where despair settles in, where hope fades away. It’s not a good place for anyone, especially a pastor.
But the upper right is the space of high conviction/high compassion. It’s how Jesus acts in our text. It’s where we should want to be if we really want to follow Jesus into all the world — including in how we engage in political conversations and actions. It’s the place that holds in balance our differences in conviction and even lifestyle, because we believe this is the place where we are seeking restoration, collaboration, covenanted community, and unity with our highest purpose of loving God and loving neighbor. (After all, isn’t that what Jesus says the summary of the law is? And, shouldn’t the way we view politics and the way we engage in them be aiming towards a way of lovingly, gently, and faithfully doing just that?)
So, it’s my belief that as Christians we need to be aiming ourselves into this space of high conviction and high compassion. It’s hard work, but it’s providing another way — an alternative to the current state of the world and the church. We are folks learning to love one another and to love our neighbors as ourselves in every aspect of our lives, including our politics.
Which brings me to my next major idea. We must have a biblically shaped vision of the future that informs our approach to politics now. I know that text from Matthew felt a little weird when we read it. But in it we see two rival factions uniting to give Jesus a litmus test. The Pharisees and Sadducees were opponents in their religious-political world. Yet, they teamed up to find out whose side Jesus was on. They’d seen his signs of miraculous feedings, but these were not decisive in knowing where he stood.
They demand a sign, and Jesus refuses to give them one. He speaks of knowing how to predict the weather from looking at the skies, which is future-oriented. Jesus does the same with the sign of Jonah. Jonah’s work in preaching repentance to Nineveh is a precursor to the work God is doing in Christ for the whole world. It is future-oriented. Just like Jesus did not directly answer the accusation of the religious leaders in our previous story, so too Jesus goes another way in responding to their test. It’s as though he’s saying, “If you really want a sign from me, you wouldn’t be trying to fit me into your existing partisan options; instead, you would be seeking me in order to understand the future.”
So, as a church, what does this mean? It means that we have to study what the Bible says about the in-breaking Kingdom of God and let that study shape and inhabit how we live now, which includes letting God shape and reshape our convictions around politics. It is something that is done in humility and in community. It is how God sharpens us with our different perspectives and backgrounds and readings of scripture, so that together, we can be living for our true King Jesus. There is an expectant future-orientation in this work. In the good words from the book The After Party, “If you wish to adopt the better politics of Jesus, the key is to grasp his after, his vision of the future.”
So, to end by answering our questions, how do we come to terms with the differences between Christians’ political views? Well, I think we have to work on offering another way — a different way of doing this — than the world offers. We have to learn how to love and listen to one another. We have to move to that Christlike posture of high conviction and high compassion. We have to give up the winning and the sound bites and the anger, and instead be with each other. And all of us have to be willing to change as the opinions we hold dear get challenged in the holy and glaring light of the way of Jesus.
And, yes, we should pray for our leaders. It’s a great spiritual discipline to learn how to pray for those you disagree with — fellow Christians, leaders, neighbors. Our prayers don’t control others, but they do help us release to God what lays heavy on our hearts, as we pray for God’s kingdom to come and will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
