Rector's Blog: Unity not Uniformity

This blog is also available as a podcast.

When I was growing up, we talked about politics in my family. Which is to say we argued a lot. Mostly around the dinner table. I’m not sure what there was to argue about – for all intents and purposes we were all Republicans at the time – but somehow we found endless ways to disagree with each other. My dad was a Log Cabin Republican and stalwart moderate who shook Ronald Reagan’s hand once and had run into Barbara Bush while they were both antiquing in Maine. My brother was more of a McCain guy – a limited government contrarian. Me? I was the intractable idealist. I wanted right to be right and wrong to be wrong, and I did not understand compromise or nuance. When I was 11 years old, I found out professional wrestling was fake - the winners, it turned out, were predetermined – and I was so disillusioned I stopped watching it altogether. Just imagine what my political awakening was like.

Here’s a sample dinner argument: I was 19 and my Dad found out I hadn’t registered for the draft. He said I had a responsibility to my country, and I said I’d gladly serve (as he and his father had) but that compulsory military service was immoral. My brother decided that basically we both were wrong: My dad was wrong for supporting the draft, but I was wrong for doing something illegal by not registering. And then we argued. The three of us sat around that table long after the last pork chop was spent yelling and whispering and everything in between. I’d like to say nobody won, but I went and registered the next day, so there you go.

Some might think we argued for the sport of it, but that’s not what it felt like. Our arguments weren’t gentle or polite, and I wouldn’t exactly call them fun. They weren’t. But we were family. Funny as it may sound, arguing was one of the DeVaul love languages. And we mattered to each other. And what each of us thought mattered to each other. And what each of us did with our beliefs – how we lived mattered to each other. So, we talked about politics.

We have a problem in a lot of our churches. Many of us have been taught – and many of us have repeated – the idea that politics don’t belong in church. We’ve been told that our relationship with Jesus is spiritual and it shouldn’t be sullied by partisanship or engagement with current events. And I get that sentiment. Or at least I think I do. In our gut we know that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t a Republican or a Democrat – that his work in the world transcended the boundaries we keep creating. And we know that God loves all of us even amidst our difference, so in a culture as divisive as ours, we want to find comfort in our shared belovedness and say we’ve found a place where we can belong even though we’re not on the same page about everything.

This is a good desire. And also, there's something wrong with it in practice.

Let’s start with Jesus. To the Christian, Jesus is Lord. This means that we are meant to give our whole hearts and souls and minds to God and follow Jesus throughout our whole lives. If we take that seriously, we cannot believe there is such a thing as a place where Jesus doesn’t belong. We cannot genuinely think that Jesus is ambivalent about how we vote – or if we vote at all. We cannot sincerely suggest that Jesus doesn’t care if we set up a country where some people don’t get to vote, or where doing so is demonstrably easier for some than for others. According to our Prayer Book, to be church is to actively work to promote justice, peace, and love. How can we pretend this does not have political implications?

If we’re serious about being Christian, we cannot say that anything is secular – that anything is or should be disconnected from our relationship with God.

On a practical level – each church is a community – a gathering of people around a common cause. In our baptism we say we are one body with one spirit, that we are members of one another, that we belong to each other. This belonging, forged in the death and resurrection of Jesus, connects us to one another inextricably. We become family.

Of course, a lot of families maintain the peace during difficult times by not talking about the things on which they disagree. I understand that. Not every gathering has to be about disagreement. At the same time, for us to say we are all welcome so long as we don’t talk about the things that are affecting our daily lives – that doesn’t sound like Christian community to me. Our shared life in church is meant to focus us on God’s presence in our world and nourish us so that we can participate with God in the transformation of this world. This has political implications.

There’s a lot of ways for us to get this wrong. Myriad mistakes for us to make along the way. But I’m thinking about my family and that dinner table right now. We got a lot wrong as a family. We messed up and we hurt each other a lot. But we belonged to each other. We belonged at that table. And our political disagreements and discussions did not keep us from that belonging. This doesn’t mean each of us was right, that each opinion was equally valid. A lot of really problematic and wrongheaded ideas floated in the air of our dining room. But it did mean that even when someone was wrong, they were part of the family.

Imagine a country where Christians were known as people who listen to each other and disagree with each other and even argue passionately with one another, but still love one another in real and practical ways. Imagine if we understood “Jesus is Lord” is a political statement that insists we place our allegiance to God over nationality, ideology, or political party. Imagine a church where we were so assured of our belonging that we didn’t merely seek comfort in our faith, but transformation.