Belonging Beyond Politics
There’s a sense of anticipation as we approach what might be another politically polarizing year. Clapham Senior Associate Juliet Vedral reflects on how churches can navigate political diversity and find unity through shared faith.
Juliet Vedral and her family have found community and belonging at Incarnation Anglican Church
According to the liturgical calendar that is followed by millions of churches across the globe, we are in the season of Epiphany, where Christians look for the ways Jesus is revealed in the world. At the start of this politically charged year, it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on one way that Jesus is showing up in “the swamp,” and how Christians of different political allegiances can create a place of belonging that transcends politics.
My experience is that you can’t avoid the image of God in your neighbor, when you regularly worship and fellowship with people from across the aisle.
One of the unique aspects of going to church in the DC area, is that the Christian world here is a small one. Contrary to what one might think about the area, it’s not unusual to find oneself worshiping next to someone from across the aisle politically. “We see how the sausage is made and we know the people making the sausage,” said Father Morgan Reed, vicar of Corpus Christi Anglican Church in Springfield, VA. Reed started Corpus Christi in the spring and summer of 2020, after working helping to plant Incarnation Anglican Church in South Arlington in 2018 (full disclosure: my family and I have been part of Incarnation since it began).
Both of these churches were founded during one of the worst times of political polarization our country has faced. And both churches had people with a mix of political alignments that seemed to defy the trend of self-sorting that was taking place in churches and communities around the country. Incarnation began in a unique context, coming on the heels of both the 2015 Supreme Court decision permitting same-sex marriage across the United States, and the 2016 election.
Reflecting on Incarnation’s beginnings, the church’s head priest, Rev. Amy Rowe shared, “We were not an established church trying to make sense of these social changes, but a church being built in that context. It shaped who wanted to be part of it.”
Reed, when asked to describe the context in which Incarnation was planted, shared that “the things that were not political before all of a sudden became political. In other words, if before I’d say ‘hey, I want to care for my neighbors, who by the way are immigrants who are here illegally, how do I share the love of Jesus with them?’ didn't feel as controversial. Until Trump was elected and then all of a sudden…there's a loss of nuance in discussing social justice and kingdom justice because it became done along party lines rather than human lines.”
Incarnation’s first Sunday service in 2018 featured an ideologically diverse group, with attendees sometimes diametrically opposed to each other’s work and politics, receiving the Eucharist and sharing a common cup for wine. Though Corpus Christi began online during the pandemic, it featured a core group of families who were committed to creating a local church in Springfield with a focus on a more formal service. The “shared project of building something new,” according to Rowe, seemed to hold greater weight than political ideologies.
Ultimately, while neither church has been immune to the political self-sorting that’s been going on for the past several years, Incarnation and Corpus Christi still remain politically diverse congregations. Rowe believes that this political pluralism is happening because “people really want to encounter Jesus. They stay in the mess because they are hungry for Jesus.”
Juliet Vedral and Amy Rowe, Head Pastor of Incarnation Anglican Church
In its bridge-building work, The Clapham Group has been looking at “belonging” as a way forward during these days of heightened polarization. After my conversations with both Revs. Reed and Rowe, I reflected on how these churches were creating inclusive cultures for their congregants to be authentically themselves. I saw three things that seem necessary for belonging:
A shared narrative or story
A shared vision
A shared mission
Narrative or Story
Several months ago, we shared a piece that Clapham founder Mark Rodgers co-wrote with Erik Bork (the Emmy-award winning writer for Band of Brothers) and Debilyn Molineaux (the founder of Bridge Alliance, the country’s largest association of bridge-building organizations). In that piece, they argue that America needs a “shared story” to combat political polarization. Similarly, Christians need–and thankfully, have–a shared story. In my church, we recite the Nicene Creed each week. Despite our differences, the entire congregation lets itself be formed by ancient words proclaiming spiritual mysteries and realities. The assertion that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end” supersedes any political ideology or project that we might work on during the rest of the week. By declaring our belonging to a heavenly kingdom and to a heavenly King, we create a space of belonging for others: it’s Jesus’ job, not ours, to rule His kingdom and, to mix biblical metaphors, to determine who will be a part of His Body here on earth. Therefore, we all belong and have an equal share in the kingdom of God.
Vision
Beyond the overriding vision that our shared narrative points to–of Christ and his coming kingdom–an immediate shared vision seems like an important component of belonging. With regards to Incarnation, the vision for the church was to reach out to the multicultural community of Columbia Pike and South Arlington. That vision drew a variety of people who lived in or near the geographical area and were looking for ways to care for their neighbors. Anyone who shared this vision–or was willing to take it up–could join and belong in this community. At the time I lived with my husband and then-infant in DC. We weren’t in the geographic area and didn’t have a particular attachment to Columbia Pike. But we shared the vision of creating a beautiful Christian presence run by a female priest, so we were welcome. Eventually, our shared vision and sense of belonging in this community led us to move across the river to be more intentionally close to fellow congregants in the Arlandria area.
Mission
The third component of belonging is in having a shared mission. Mission is the work that one does to achieve a particular vision. Because of our shared vision, those of us who attended Incarnation in those early days found ourselves participating in ways we might not necessarily have if we were in more established churches. And when we might have been hesitant to jump in, Rev. Liz Grey, who was Incarnation’s original head priest, had an endearing habit of “voluntelling” congregants that they were going to read or serve or help in some way that Sunday. It is difficult not to feel ownership or belonging in a community in which you are actively involved.
But a shared mission also requires one to put aside priors or preferences for the sake of the church (or organization). “If we're on a mission together, then I actually have to die to voicing my preferences in order to be on mission with you,” shared Reed. “I think that that's a helpful cultural piece in [a] church plant because it actually does take all of us to do this. And if we're gonna do this then we don't get to be as loud about the things that we are passionate about because I would ruin the relationship and this church would fail. There's a direct causality there.” Rather than leading to a sense of inauthenticity, this dedication to the mission fosters greater belonging for a more disparate group. If you opt into this mission, you are not opting out of your preferences as much as allowing new preferences and allegiances to form.
It would be impractical for every church to spawn off and start new churches as a way to combat political polarization. But in this second week of Epiphany 2024, it is a hopeful sign that Jesus is still proclaimed and seen by the Left and Right in the same church.