How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics?

Jonathan Leeman and Andy Naselli

wheaton, illinois

How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics?

Copyright © 2020 by 9Marks

Published by Crossway

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First printing 2020

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9Marks: Building Healthy Churches

“What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free.”

Matthew 17:25–26

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

Romans 15:5–6

How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics?

It was the Sunday after a presidential election. I (Jonathan) had been teaching an adult Sunday school class on Christians and government that fall. The church, like most of the nation, was still absorbing the result of the election’s unexpected outcome. And feelings that morning were raw.

I began the class by talking about sympathy. I wanted to encourage members whose candidate had won on Tuesday to sympathize with members whose candidate had lost. Christian maturity, I observed to the class, knows how to both disagree with someone and yet still show compassion. An older minority woman whose candidate had lost raised her hand and said that she had not felt any sympathy from the church and that she was scared. Minutes later, a middle-aged white woman raised her hand and said she was astonished at my call for sympathy because the losing side was “evil.”

At that moment—you can be sure—I second-guessed my decision to teach that class that morning.

Yet those two women offer us something very honest: a picture of how challenging ...