A few months ago, a woman that I will refer to as Maddie asked me an accusatory question about President Trump and January 6th as she walked past at church.  I redirected the topic away from partisan politics to building unity by saying, “That’s not how I look at it.  How I see it is that those who attended the January 6th rally are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  You do realize that leaders from our church attended that rally?” “Insurrectionists!” she exclaimed.  “Maybe we should set aside the name-calling,” I responded.  Maddie threw up her hands, said, “I’m done,” and walked away.

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The following Sunday I gave Maddie a draft copy of the article, unity requires civility, and told her that I’d like to have the opportunity to sit down over a lemonade and share my vision for building unity within our congregation.  The third Sunday, Maddie approached me and said how relieved she was to learn that I hadn’t attended the rally.  For me, this felt like someone telling me that they know my son in law is a “darkie” but are relieved to know that I’m not a “darkie”.  These leaders from my church that attended the January 6th rally are longtime friends of mine, that I deeply respect, and cherish as much as my own family.

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In my short interaction with Maddie, I noticed that she didn’t express any disagreement with those that attended the rally regarding their belief that voter disenfranchisement is an important issue.  Nor did she express concerns with the behavior of our church leaders who attended the January 6th rally (based on the reports I received their behavior was exemplary).  This suggests that the public contempt (as defined by Justin Giboney, Michael Wear, and Chris Butler their book, Compassion and Conviction) for these fellow brothers and sisters in Christ is driven by the fact that they are from a different political tribe.  Hearing a fellow congregant express public contempt for other congregants is a reminder of how we all struggle to express empathy with fellow congregants, outside of our own tribe, when those fellow congregants believe their tribe is the victim of injustice.

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Several months later, I had a chance to sit down with Maddie.  I asked her if she had any friends who believed that there were widespread election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.  To her credit, Maddie said she did not.  Maddie lives in a political echo chamber.

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We’ve already discussed how unity requires civility.  But mere civility doesn’t build unity.  Building unity requires that we go beyond civility to the next step of expressing empathy, even when we believe our brothers and sisters in Christ are not entitled to our empathy.

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Proximity breeds empathy, distance breeds suspicion.

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Ephesians 2 talks about the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.  One group hated the other and the other distrusted the other.  There was suspicion and animosity.  Jews and Greeks lived separately, breeding suspicion due to lack of understanding.  We struggle with the same problem today.  But not just with those outside of our political tribe.  The same problem exists with those outside of our racial and ethnic tribes. 

 

We would never feel the freedom to look our brothers and sisters of a different skin color in the eye and say your skin color deeply offends me the same way we tell our brothers and sisters from different political tribes that how they vote deeply offends us.  But the distance is still there, and it breeds suspicion.  That is why our church leaders have so long encouraged civil dialogue and good listening about political issues.  Our problem with race is that we deny that the distance matters.  We tell ourselves that we don’t see color, that people are just individuals, regardless of their skin color, and thus, it doesn’t matter if we primarily associate with other people from our own racial and ethnic tribes.  We tell ourselves that differences in perspectives is rooted in the fact that we are all individuals, with different life experiences, and that skin color is not a major factor in our varied life experiences.  Yet Barna tells us that in 2020, 33% of white Christians said that our country definitely has a race problem while 81% of black Christians said the same.  Clearly, our perspectives are different based on our race.

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Korie Edwards summarizes it well in her book, The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches: “Homogeneous churches actually entrench racism.  In these echo chambers our biases are never challenged; they are only entrenched.”  It would be fair to say the same about our homogeneous Bible studies.

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So how do we overcome our entrenched biases?  Pastor and author Bryan Loritts asserts that: 

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Proximity breeds empathy, distance breeds suspicion.

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The more we are relationally connected to someone, especially those that are ethnically other than we are, the more we will be able to empathize with them.  It’s not that it will change our convictions, but it can certainly soften our response.  In my own life, being involved in a reading program in a local failing elementary school with a predominantly black student population gave me a measure of empathy for the students, leading me to start a soccer program there.  This further expanded my empathy for the students and the community. 

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In the essay The Parable of the Good Samaritan I share about feeling convicted to intentionally develop meaningful relationships with black congregants at my church.  This led me to invite a young black man who had just been hired as the Youth Pastor at our church into my home for lunch.  Just a few months later when this young man publicly shared a poem he wrote in response to George Floyd’s death, I had a measure of empathy for him specifically and for black men in general that I hadn’t had before.  My empathy I have when this young man shares stories has only grown since he has become my son in law.

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I have seen my empathy grow the most through my interaction with Helen, a black woman that first came through our church doors 20 years ago, when our church was 98% white.  Through intentional relationship building, my empathy for Helen’s stories and perspective has grown slowly over more than a decade, culminating in the story we share together in our About video, leading to the launch of Embracing Unity.

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If we are to build unity within the body of Christ, we must become deliberate about developing meaningful relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ that are ethnically, politically, and economically different than we are.