Can a church be politically diverse? Or are we doomed to politically hyper-pure churches? We have been trying an experiment of resistance to the hyper-partisanism that has engulfed our city and nation.
Less than a month before the national election in 2016 our church, located near Columbia University on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, held a congregational forum. Two members—a Republican and a Democrat—shared how they were going to vote and why. They then answered questions from me (the pastor), each other, and the congregation about their political thinking, including the impact of their backgrounds and work environment on their thinking.
Following a brief talk by me on turning down political heat at church, we broke into small groups to discuss hot topics. We went home relieved, and not a little surprised, that we had been able to talk so honestly and amicably with each other. One of the participants afterward reflected:
“I felt a sense of liberation from the fear of having an open discussion about topics that can often be divisive within the church…I was heartened by the encouragement to struggle over how my faith might influence my political views, to discover that others struggle to do the same thing and that it can be a lonely journey. I am hopeful that this discussion will continue beyond the election, and that the church can unite to bring peace and reconciliation to a country that is at the moment caught in despair, fear, and frustration.”
In 2000, we founded Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. One of our aims was to be a sociological surprise, a sort of faith community that a political pundit cannot explain. We wanted to be a politically diverse place where we are able to talk honestly and safely about our differences. Could this be done in the super-partisan Upper West Side?
Living with political diversity is not easy unless we agree never to talk. But we have tried not to see silence as a useful remedy: it creates a “faux” community, isolating us from each other in significant areas, feeding divisive stereotypes which will likely surface explosively, and depriving us of the possibility of reaching towards political solutions.
We have sought to remind one another that political disagreement is bound to happen, and even should happen, in our midst: Jesus wants us to love our neighbors, and, if we take his command seriously, we will inevitably find ourselves disagreeing, perhaps vigorously, over the best way to do so.
It is not easy, for example, to find complete agreement on how to love our neighbors when one of them is an unborn child and the other is the mother who cannot afford for medical, social, or psychological reasons to carry that child to term. Trying to figure out how neighbor love should influence political decisions in such a situation calls for careful thinking, humble listening, and, in some cases, a decision to live with disagreement.
Our practice of pursuing peace in the midst of political differences has persisted because of certain faith commitments. Our congregation believes that Jesus died, rose, and sent his Spirit to break down the hostile dividing walls that tend to spring up between people, including the political ones.
The early followers of Jesus ran headlong into the hostilities that divided Jews and non-Jews (called Gentiles) in the Roman Empire. Both groups were suspicious of the “foreigners.” The Apostle Paul preached into this uneasy situation in the early Christian congregations. At Ephesus, he tried to remind his audience that Jesus’ purpose was to destroy “the dividing line” between hostile groups so that they could become “a new humanity.” This debate was covered in Paul’s Letters to the churches in Ephesus and Galatia.
The Book of John, chapter 17, records Jesus’ prayer that his followers would love each other so profoundly that their friends and neighbors would become convinced that he was the one sent to heal us all. He prayed that his followers would mirror the love and respect that he and his Father have for each other, offering their neighbors a foretaste of the heavenly social reality that will cover the earth when his work is completed.
Our church has sought with the help of Christ’s Spirit to live out Jesus’ prayer, looking for ways to loosen the customarily divisive grip that race, gender, and economics have on us.
We have sought to mirror the culture around us by reflecting its political divisions to “prove” that the salvation of God, Jesus’ prayer, and the presence of the Holy Spirit are effective against social pressure. Wouldn’t people say if we didn’t have those divisions, ‘Aha! In the end, there is nothing particularly special about Jesus. He was a great man, to be sure, but just one among the many enlightened ones pushing, ineffectually, against the forces that make our world such an inhospitable place.’
So, we have worked at transcending the customary political fault lines.
We have found that our efforts have become increasingly strategic as the social fabric around us has deteriorated. Writing in the months leading up to the last election, conservative columnist Arthur C. Brooks pointed out that the political parties in our country had become purer ideological vessels than they had been only a few decades earlier In 1994 nearly 40% of Republicans were more liberal than median Democrats and 30% of Democrats were more conservative than median Republicans; by April 2016 they had plummeted to 8% and 6%.
Brooks lamented:
“Watch and listen to politically polarized commentary today, and you will see that it is more contemptuous than angry, overflowing with sneering, mockery, and disgust. Studies on the subject have shown that, whereas simple anger is characterized by short-term attack responses but long-term reconciliation, contempt is characterized by rejection and social exclusion in both the short-term and the long-term. Polarization, and thus, contempt, leads to permanent enmity.” (New York Times, 4/10/16)
We too grieve over this development in our city and nation. But we have also tried to see it as a great opportunity to undermine enmity by being the sort of community for which Jesus died and rose—a community of robust love. Such love respectfully welcomes political diversity, listens patiently, disagrees humbly when it must, and looks for common ground wherever it can.
We hope that our isolated and angry friends and neighbors see love working so winsomely that they find themselves asking about how they can live this way. As Jesus put it: “I pray Father that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me” (John 17:23).
In the next article, we will fill in some of the details about how our church is working to bring people together over the political faultlines.
Charlie Drew is a member of the Center for Christian Civics teaching team and the author of Surprised By Community: Democrats and Republicans In The Same Pew. In 2000, he founded Emmanuel Presbyterian Church near Columbia University in New York City, Recently retired from Emmanuel, he and his wife live in New York City, where he continues to teach and preach. [Originally published on August 24, 2020, 5:55am]
