Red Church, Blue Church

In the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, one commentator wrote, “Kirk’s death feels like a watershed. It is the most stunning evidence we have to date that America is becoming two nations, divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology.” I’m afraid there’s a lot of truth in that.

Here in Wallowa County, in rural northeastern Oregon, that divide is evident and yet crossable. Last Sunday, I departed from my usual blue-ish congregation to go to a reddish one. It kills me to describe churches this way, and I hate that so many churches mirror the political divide, rather than challenging it.

I’m guessing that three quarters of the congregation at our blue church voted Democratic; while probably three quarters of the congregation of the red church I visited on Sunday voted Republican. I could be wrong in these estimates, but if I’m wrong it is most likely I’m low-balling those percentages.

Blue church is a congregation of 35 on a usual Sunday. Most are in their mid-seventies, or older. Two-thirds female. No kids. Blue church is LGBTQ+ affirming, which is a riskier proposition here in Wallowa County than in a place like Seattle, where we live in the winter.

There are many very dear and wonderful people in this blue congregation, one I would describe as “a Golden Rule church,” that is, it’s about doing good in the world and community: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Red church is a congregation of 150 or more. Average age is maybe 40, pretty evenly divided male and female. Quite a few kids and teens. I don’t know people well in red church, but folks have been warm in their welcome in the couple of times I’ve been there. On its website, red church states, “marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Another difference: I’m guessing that two thirds of the congregation at Blue church, maybe more, are college grads. At Red church, less than a third, and for many of those it was a community college degree. The political/cultural divide is, as we now know, also an educational divide.

I recognize some at Red church, people I see working in the hardware store, cleaning VRBOs, doing construction. Some are farm or ranch people. Most are folks I would call local. Some at blue church are local, but many have come here, after retiring, from Portland and Seattle.

I went to Red church last Sunday because I was curious about what the pastor would say about Charlie Kirk’s murder. I wondered, what would “the vibe” be. And, at some level, I was consciously crossing the divide to worship with folks on “the other side.”

So what did I find at red church this past Sunday? The pastor skipped the usual “announcements” at the beginning to say it had a been a hard week and he knew people were struggling. He said that while a lot of people saw Kirk’s murder as political violence, he saw it as religious persecution.

I’m not sure I agreed with him about calling the murder “religious persecution,” rather than “political violence,” but that take on it was another indication of the divide, “not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology.” Was the pastor fueling the fire by terming Kirk’s killing “religious persecution”? Maybe, though his words weren’t spoken in anger but in sadness. I was grateful for that.

When he got into his 45-minute sermon (standard length in evangelical circles) he made no further mention of Kirk. His text was from Romans. In Christ, God the Father has adopted (i.e. “chosen”) you to be a child of God, who lives by the Spirit. God is your loving Father. He devoted quite a bit of time to acknowledging that many people had fathers, as well as families, that weren’t so loving. He knew people had baggage, were triggered, when it came to the language about fathers and church as “family.” He said that his own father had been pretty much MIA when he was a kid.

While people often think the big difference between blue and red churches is politics (and that certainly is part of it), I wonder if it goes deeper. Most of us at blue church grew up in a time when institutions were more reliable: marriage and family, church, civic groups, schools, etc. Sure, there were problems, but life was generally more stable with shared moral values and reliable institutions.

I suspect that for a lot of younger people, many of those in red church including the pastor, that was not the case. They’ve grown in a world with a high percentage of unmarried parents, single moms, and absent fathers. It is also a world of drug addiction, other forms of substance abuse, mass shootings, and now “the dark corners” of the internet.

I suspect that many come to this red church not as one pillar in an orderly life, but more as their stable point in an unstable world, and maybe as part of a re-build effort after a breakdown of one sort of another. They want and need what you might call a “high octane” religion, one that puts a lot of weight down on the saving power of Jesus. That was evident in the sermon I heard last Sunday: Maybe you’ve been told you’re a failure, unlovable, unworthy. NO! You are a beloved child of God. The truth is not what the world says but what God says: “You are my beloved, precious child.” In that way, it reminded of some African-American churches I’ve been to.

People in blue church seem comfortable with a lower-octane faith, and its encouragement to do good for your neighbor and help out those in need. That more people, including young people and working class men, seem to be finding a home in red church may tell us that ours is (and perhaps has been for some time) a society and culture in disarray, or at least one that works for some, but not for all.

In today’s America of two nations it seems to me important, if not urgent, that we do less talking about people on the other side of the line and more talking with people on the other side. Admittedly, that’s not easy, though the opportunities to do so are greater here in this rural, small town place than in the political mono-culture of a place like Seattle. It was, after all, just a two block walk one from one church to the other.