For many, church is a place of community and fellowship, nurturing spiritual growth in faith, love, and service. Over the past few decades, though, many congregations have found themselves hurt, fractured, and divided by a cultural conflation of politics and religion.
Daryn Henry recently led a webinar in Baptist General Association of Virginia’s Fanning the Flame series on the topic, “Hope-Filled Discipleship in a Divisive Political Age,” in which more than 50 pastors and church leaders participated. Henry is an associate professor of Christian Studies at the University of Virginia, and he is also a member and elder at All Souls Church, a BGAV church plant in Charlottesville, VA.
“Hope-filled political discipleship is one of the major contemporary issues that a lot of people circulate around,” he explained. His content drew from his studies of how Christian believers relate to American politics — and to politics more broadly — to discuss how faith commitments inform Christians’ interactions within those spheres of American life.
“This isn’t my primary area of research, so obviously I talk about this with some fear and trepidation,” Henry laughed, “but just knowing a lot of pastors who have a deep concern for political division in their congregations, congregations splitting, people leaving, people lambasting them on social media over something they’ve said, relationships broken, and communities torn apart as a result of this cluster of issues made me want to help and equip people with ways to navigate that and reckon with it.”
Henry’s approach is one rooted in Scripture. He begins with a question to consider that casts light on political engagement through a larger lens — a whole-life application of the fruit of the Spirit:
Q: To what extent does the fruit of the Spirit manifest in our public interactions/political engagement?
Theologically, the fruit of the Spirit is a key characteristic for Christian living. That Scripture passage calls believers to juxtapose that fruit with acts of the flesh in all of life. “In the last few decades,” Henry recalls, “I think Christians have been obsessed with the what of politics: what candidates, what parties and what policies. Those do matter, but I don’t think there will be Christian agreement on those things.”
“But there is a Christian consensus on a way of being in the world that comes out of the shape of the New Testament. Focusing initially on the fruit of the Spirit is a way to reorient and re-center around a way of being in the American political sphere that should be common to Christians who read Galatians. It’s not about whether certain policies and trends are right or wrong, or whether I need to be related to this party or that candidate. It’s about Christian faithfulness — about having characters of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Henry has drawn criticism for his approach, especially from those who think it’s naïve — that it doesn’t work or isn’t effective in the political realm. “To me, that betrays a sense that people have gone astray in terms of thinking about their foundation on fundamental values,” he countered. “Jesus gives us a way for all spheres of life, even if we are going to disagree about how those are implemented. The political realm is not exempt from that.”
Henry’s webinar went on to address another critical issue causing division: American identity superseding Kingdom identity among some Christians and congregations. He explained that there are key biblical and theological problems with that, the primary one being that the New Testament doesn’t have a modern nation or culture as its fundamental communal reality or entity.
“The only entity that fills that role biblically and theologically is the Church,” he clarified. “And the Church is multi-ethnic, cross-national, and multilingual. That’s the vision we’re given in the New Testament.”
In the final segment of the webinar, Henry offered some helpful tools he’s learned from the university teaching atmosphere to pastors and church leaders who want to address political division in their congregations by fostering constructive engagement and conversation.
“It’s important to help people feel comfortable and safe enough to risk sharing their opinions — to risk being wrong,” he said. Some things to consider are:
- Remembering the role of a facilitator (fostering conversation),
- Asking for stories and narratives to understand people’s underlying motivations,
- Cultivating a posture of respect, invitation, and hospitality, and
- Reemphasizing belonging.
Creating community of trust, openness
Creating a community of trust and openness, where people can have hard conversations, has to be intentional. “In the church we can rely on what’s common to the church — Bible reading, Communion, and small groups,” Henry instructed. “But we also need to be modest about our expectations. We’re all fallen and broken, and it’s easy to give into temptations.”
Current literature, Henry noted, tells us Americans are more divided now than they have been at any time since World War II, so we must not look past that fact or pretend it isn’t true. This needs to be an ongoing conversation, and Christians need to keep doing this work.
He has found some encouragement since he started focusing on this topic in 2020, though. “I’ve seen new communities form that are committed to this way and many books written about these examples,” Henry recounted. “I think we’re not as divided as we think we are, and I think people are hungry for those virtues — the fruit of the Spirit — that way of operating and having hard conversations in a way that doesn’t explode community and relationships. This is a major crisis, and the Church is responding.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
