Disclaimer: The following is a transcript from a recent Marscast interview with Dr. Alan Strange, President of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. The views and opinions expressed are his own and are not necessarily reflective of the official position of Mid-America Reformed Seminary.
Jared Luttjeboer: Welcome to Marscast, the official podcast of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. I'm your host, Jared Luttjeboer, and today we're beginning a four-part series that explores one of the most pressing challenges facing pastors and church leaders today: political exhaustion. For those who serve in local congregations, you're probably aware that politics has become an increasingly divisive force within the church. But what does faithful pastoral leadership look like when your congregation is politically divided? Over the next four episodes, we'll explore these questions with President of Mid-America, Dr. Alan Strange, whose historical perspective on these things is going to help guide us through these turbulent waters. Dr. Strange, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Alan Strange: Thanks so much, Jared. It's always a pleasure to be with you and our wonderful listeners. We appreciate your support of us very much with your prayers and gifts, and your interest in and use of these podcasts, as we hear from you about that. We want truly to wash the feet of the saints, to be a real aid to the churches as they minister and seek to build godly communities, to be salt and light in a very dark and needy world.
Jared: Today's episode focuses on the unique challenges that pastors face when leading politically divided congregations. Dr. Strange, let's first talk about what's actually happening beneath the surface when political divisions threaten church unity. I'm sure there are many scenarios out there. You may have office bearers in some churches who won't want to serve together because of their voting records, small groups fracturing along political lines, and even families leaving churches over political disagreements. When you encounter these situations pastorally, how do you diagnose when political disagreement has crossed the line into something that actually threatens genuine Christian fellowship? And what are the warning signs that politics at this point has really become an idol?
Dr. Strange: I think that last part of the question is especially important, Jared. When does politics become an idol? When politics is more important in the local church setting — particularly in the broader church as well — it can be more important than the Bible, the ecumenical creeds, and our Reformed confessions and catechisms. This certainly happened during COVID, George Floyd's death and its aftermath, the 2020 election and its aftermath, and a number of churches have sought my opinion over that time.
People often confuse what the church as an institution — Kuyper particularly spoke this way — was called to do with what the church as an organism — that is, Christians living their lives out in the world — is called to do. In Canada, this happened in a number of ways, particularly in the convoy protest. And some of our students were particularly consulting with me about this. Some parishioners wanted the churches in that convoy protest to take a political side here.
Christians have the freedom to do so. Christians could have been on one side or the other, but of course, some people thought there was only one side, and that should be reflected in the church. And I'll give you an example. One of our graduates was particularly criticized for praying for the convoy in the pastoral prayer — for safety, well-being, and peace. And a particular couple said, "You should be praying for their success, for the defeat and their gain." They wanted a very politicized pastoral prayer. And thankfully, this brother resisted that.
Some wanted to follow COVID mandates more narrowly than the elders did, while others resented the elders following them in any measure. Some people did not want to yield to any authority in church or state and became resentful of all authority. Others became unquestioningly submissive to all authority. Christians often judged each other in all of this, contrary to Romans 14. I won't read that right now, but I would encourage you to read Romans 14, which reminds us that we may differ on many matters. Christ is our judge, and we ought not to set ourselves up as judges of each other. We will answer to Him for the deeds done in the body. And we have to remember that. And many of these folks were judging each other as if what they were doing had a clear divine mandate, as if the Bible gave us a detailed blueprint for government and political life rather than godly principles we work out together regarding proper leadership and the different spheres.
Jared: Can you address the pastor's role in speaking to political issues here? You mentioned a brother who had prayed, and others had some concerns about that. I think some pastors adopt a sort of — you could say — "stay neutral on everything" sort of approach, and they believe that silence protects church unity, whereas others feel compelled to address every political controversy from the pulpit, because they believe that silence equals complicity. Now, neither extreme seems sustainable or wise. What criteria should guide a pastor in discerning when to speak directly to a political issue versus when to equip people with broader theological principles and trust them to apply wisdom?
Dr. Strange: I freely admit, this is a tough one, Jared, and we can never get around the hard work needed here. In other words, you can't just adopt a protocol that will answer all the questions. And I agree with Charles Hodge — that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who knows me. Hodge, in his discussions on church polity, said at the beginning of his article on the relation of the church and the state, he said this is an exceedingly complicated and difficult subject.
One thing that doesn't help is folks in our church who say, "Well, the political right side about all of this is very clear, and all Christians should be in agreement." That may or may not be the case. I would say this: the pulpit should sound no uncertain note about what God's Word clearly reveals. The nature of marriage, sexuality, gender, and the like. The preciousness of innocent life and its proper protection. This is all part of loving our neighbor as ourselves, as we see in the Good Samaritan account. We're called to that. We're called to care for those—part of being salt and light and evincing all the other characteristics of the Beatitudes.
And if you want to take a peek at that, I've recently recommended a book by Jonathan Landry Cruse's Paradox People: Learning to Live the Beatitudes. And so certainly this is something that we need to be doing in a world that is full of conflict and, in a certain sense, what Hobbes says — the war of all against all. We bring, as peacemakers, a certain ethos to that which the world so badly needs. That's part of the salt and light, which are part of — again, to use the language of Sinclair Ferguson in his great work on the Sermon on the Mount — living kingdom life in a fallen world.
But even here, one does not properly address — let me be clear — how such anti-abortion policies are best put in place. So it's one thing to say God describes the unborn life in this way, say in Psalm 139 as an example, and to preach the proper protection of that and the need to end the scourge of abortion. But should the minister go on and say, "Well, it should be through a constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution or to our state constitution, or it should be through congressional action or more local actions." Christians have freedom to determine all that, and the pulpit is not a place where any sort of political details — even if we're saying, let's protect unborn life — should ever be in view. Christians can work in these areas, but the church as the church doesn't decide political questions.
Charles Hodge, I think, was very clear about this and very right when he opposed the Gardner Spring resolutions — that great stand he took at the 1861 General Assembly, where Gardner Spring was in the assembly bringing forth resolutions that had the effect of deciding the political questions in the Civil War. And Hodge said — he made it very clear that he was a Lincoln man and he was a Union man — but he did not want that brought into the church courts. He wanted the church courts to, yes, properly say you should submit to due authority, but some people thought that was Jefferson Davis. Other people thought that it was Abraham Lincoln. And he thought it was Abraham Lincoln. But he said this body, this assembly, this court of the church shouldn't make that decision for everybody.
Jared: So you touched on the pastor there. I think even within the body, congregants seem to have what you might call "litmus test issues," right? Topics where certain members believe your position determines whether you're truly faithful, whether you truly or really love Jesus, or whether you're actually on the right side of history. You can think of immigration, climate change, healthcare policy, education — the specifics vary there, but the dynamic is the same. You've got political positions functioning as markers of gospel faithfulness in some of our churches. So how do you pastorally engage people who have essentially made political positions into tests of orthodoxy without either validating that framework or dismissing their genuine concerns?
Dr. Strange: Well, we were talking about areas that we would agree on as Christians in terms of marriage and sexuality, and unborn life. The simple truth is that areas like immigration, health care policies, gun control policies, and many others — like you mentioned, and more — are areas where Christians may genuinely differ. It's not that the Bible has no principles that may apply to these things, but Christians differ over them, and they're not confessional matters.
Some people emphasize certain Bible passages in immigration policies to suggest a less restrictive approach, while others emphasize passages that suggest a more restrictive approach. From the same Bible, an appeal is made. Lincoln said this in his second inaugural address. And that second inaugural address is — I always say — the most remarkable political speech in American history. And he says this within the address, it's a very short address, but he says: "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained, neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding."
Here's the particularly interesting part: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."
So, I mean, this is a recognition from the then-president of something of this reality. If we were to have — as in Europe, as in the Netherlands — if we were to have Christian political parties, a lot of people in this country, when I talk to them about that, they assume that all Christians would agree with everything that party "A" has. You could have two or three different Christian political parties that differ on some policies, because the Bible doesn't detail all of them.
This is why what I read in Lincoln's second inaugural address is why Mark Noll said the Civil War was a theological crisis: you had people who both believed the Bible arguing their case from it. Noll's book is worth a look. Our best hope here is to argue for policies that are in keeping with Scripture, or mostly those that don't go against it. And so, in other words, we can't say this is a policy that's directly taught by the Bible. We can say it's not in contradiction with it. And I think it's in the spirit of these principles. But the notion that the Bible is specifically endorsing our political program is not only not true, but it also becomes a bullying tactic to force other people to agree.
Jared: What becomes pretty evident from this conversation is that leading politically divided churches requires more than conflict management skills, but theological clarity and a deep commitment to the unity of the body of Christ that transcends our political tribes.
Next time on Marscast, we're going to move from diagnosis to deeper theological analysis. We'll explore what political exhaustion reveals about our theology and examine how misplaced hope, confused eschatology, and category errors turn politics into an idol, and how the Reformed tradition offers resources for a healthier path forward.
To our listeners, if you found this episode helpful, share it with your fellow pastor, your consistory, or anyone wrestling with these questions. This has been Marscast, the podcast of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next time.
MarsCast is the official podcast of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. To learn more, visit midamerica.edu/podcasts.
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