Andy Hale on Church Conflict, Political Polarization, and Rebuilding Trust

Church conflict is no longer the exception—it’s the norm. In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram are joined by Andy Hale, congregational psychologist and author of Mending the Fracturing Church, to explore why churches are experiencing deeper polarization and what it takes to rebuild trust.

Hale explains how psychology, family systems theory, and theology intersect in congregational life, and why conflict itself is not the real threat—avoidance and fear are. The conversation digs into how political identity, generational divides, and moral certainty are reshaping church communities, often in ways leaders are unprepared to address.

Rather than offering quick fixes or ideological answers, Hale calls for patience, self-awareness, and practices that restore human connection—starting with understanding how fear, identity, and the need to be “right” shape the way we treat one another. It’s a grounded, hopeful conversation about what it looks like for the church to remain faithful in a polarized age.

Mending the Fracturing Church: How to Navigate Conflict and Build Trust for Thriving Communities: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798881806644

Guest Bio 

Andy Hale is a congregational psychologist, minister, and organizational consultant who works with churches navigating conflict, polarization, and institutional change. With nearly three decades of experience in congregational and denominational leadership, his work integrates psychology, family systems theory, and theology to help faith communities rebuild trust and practice healthier forms of disagreement.

He is the author of Mending the Fracturing Church: How to Navigate Conflict and Build Trust for Thriving Communities and hosts two podcasts, including Clergy Confessions, which explores the hidden pressures pastors face today. Hale currently serves in denominational leadership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? doing great. Thanks, well. And today we are joined by Dr. Andrew Hale. is author of Mending the Fracturing Church, How to Navigate Conflict and Build Trust for Thriving Communities, where his work explores why churches are experiencing deeper conflict and polarization and how insights from psychology and theology can help communities rebuild trust and navigate disagreement in healthier ways. And we're just so glad to have you with us today. Dr. Hale, welcome to Faithful Politics. Well, Josh, thanks for having me on. Yeah, do you go by Andy or Andrew or would you prefer us to call you doctor? We can do any. well, I'm supposed to technically be Reverend Doctor, you the ordination always go first, you know, but uh until the publisher told me to do Andrew instead of Andy, anytime I was called Andrew in my life, it was usually by my mother or father using my full name because I was in trouble. So we can go with Andy for the sake of not feeling like it's triggering some early childhood trauma. I got you. Andy, Andy, is. Well, Andy, I'm kind of curious because on your website, you list yourself as a congregational psychologist. And this is a term I've never heard. These are two words I've never seen put together in that fashion. So why don't we just start there? And then I think that will probably actually lead us into more about your book. So what is a congregational psychologist? Yeah. So a little bit back story. I've been in vocational ministry since I was 14 years old and I've been serving in congregational life for almost 30 years and various capacities from, you know, associate pastor roles to serving a senior pastor and then serving in several different denominational roles. And, um, you know, I did an undergrad in religion and philosophy and then a master of divinity and put off doing doctoral work for a long time. And I had a mentor that told me he would break my kneecaps if I went for a doctorate of ministry. No offense to anybody who does that, but what he saw in my passion and my work for the church was needing a different set of skills, needing a different approach than what most people do. And so that's why I pursued a different degree and wanted to look at really the sociology and psychology, really organizational psychology and how does that apply to the congregational setting. Uh, and so, uh, you know, blessed to do a lot of work around that, uh, you know, all the writing and research and things of that nature to focus in on that area. Um, my mother did an undergrad in psychology and I kind of was raised in a house that loves to understand why we, why we do what we do, what's going on behind all that. And so it's, it's been a life, um, passion of mine to, really understand how we tick. I think that's really cool. I love when someone uh finds a passion and it's connected um to what they do. And you obviously served a ministry for so long, but then having this thing that connects with it, but also is its own independent discipline. I always respect that and I appreciate that because I love other disciplines like history, weirdly, oddly enough, mathematics. and AI studies, all these different things I get really interested in are economics. And it's always cool to meet someone who took it to another level in those pursuits. And it's funny that you're a congregational uh psychologist counselor. I have a few churches I could recommend uh you talk to. I've been to a few churches that I can recommend you talk to. um No, I'm kind of being a little bit tongue-in-cheek there, but when you're looking at a church, because I'm trying to imagine, right, you're looking at a church, like, this church needs counseling. m How, like, as a whole, and obviously I'm oversimplifying what you do, what is the pattern that shows up that makes you realize they need counseling? And then why did that kind of prompt you to write this book? Yeah, I think the word of encouragement I would say for every congregation is we would not have two thirds of the New Testament if conflict wasn't inevitable within the church. Really, if you look at all the epistles, uh they are vast majority of them written because of something. Something shady was going on in a lot of places. Sometimes mind boggling. You you think about like some of the passages from Corinthians, you're like, who married who? And like Paul's having to write about this and You know, did that person that he was writing about know that for, you know, time and space, everyone's going to be reading about his situation. Corinth, you know, uh, so every church has conflict because to be human is for us to air. I think, um, if conflict is missing, any level of conflict is missing in the church. probably need to be asking some even deeper questions. Like is there actual leadership within this church or is this more of a cult where one person or a group of people are running everything? And they're holding everything close to the vest or people aren't vested enough in each other's lives that the messiness of who we are as human beings comes out. so, uh, that, that is the most important thing for every congregation to realize is that conflict is inevitable. It's just a matter of the scale and particular aspects of conflict that, that you have to look at for each congregation. Um, and so, you know, when you look at a congregation, it could be any number of things. I'm big on a family systems. Bowen's theory around these things where it looks like that honestly at the end of the day the the congregation is a relational organization where each person is coming in with their own particular systems of function around communication and conflict and things of that nature and then not only are these people mixed together but then you have an organization that has its own history and legacy of conflict and trauma and how all these things were dealt with and so uh You know, it's baked into the DNA of a congregation. But then when people come into it depending on when they've been there and how long they've been there and the history they have together and what they're bringing in. It's any number of things. And so it's a messy thing. But I want to state this, that it's a beautiful messy thing because the church should be the place where we learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy Christ-centered way. You know, I am I didn't grow up in the church. I came to the faith in 2008 and Got a pretty healthy dose of it. I married a PK um and You know, I one thing that kept coming up over and over again just in my church attendance was you know Yeah churches for the broken people so on and so forth and I remember at one point time it may have been a year after I I gave my life to Christ it was like How is the church even functioning? Like if you get a bunch of people, you're inviting, you're openly inviting people that are broken, downtrodden, all this other kind of stuff. And you're like, hey, come sit in the pews for an hour a week, you know, be a part of the team, help out. And then like you expect like nothing's going to happen. Like I would imagine it'd be like an HR nightmare. like help me understand like why are churches having these kinds of issues? is it because of the people? It's because of the Yeah, I mean, you look at some of the stuff that we consider to be like normal within churches. Like if that happened in any other organization, there would be lawsuits. People would be fired. You know, if the church wasn't a purposeful gift from God, you know, to Christ followers and ultimately to the earth, uh it would be viewed as a fool's errand, you know. Let's just take the early church for example. You see the merging of Palestinian-centric Jews who grew up in the Holy Land area and then you look at Hellenistic Jews and we already get to Acts chapter 6 and chapter 7. by the way, we're already seeing racial and cultural discrimination. uh so it's a tale as old as time, right? And so it's a fool's errand in the sense of... different people from different walks of life, of different journeys, of different levels of privilege are all coming together around a collective purpose. What could go wrong? uh And yet Paul writes that in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek. There is no slave. There is no free. There's no male. There's no female. It's not that we, our identities are intended to be, uh you know, neutralized, but that all these things come together under the unity of Christ. And it's a pretty incredible thing, but that's why it's so messy, right? uh And that's what makes for the challenge is because all of us are so complex and we come into this thing and it's any wonder that any church can be successful. uh And so, know, I would ultimately credit that to the Spirit of God and Spirit of God's work within our lives that the church can function, the church at its best can transform lives. The church can do incredible work in the world. Yeah, I I absolutely agree with that assessment that church can change lives and do incredible things in the world. I posted something today that was essentially this thought that if scripture is powerful enough to heal, it's also powerful enough to hurt, especially if you take it and you mishandle it, right? So if you think about any kind of tool, right? A hammer, a scalpel. versus a knife, right? Something sharp, what changes it, it's how it's used in that moment and if it's used correctly. And I think about the experiences I've had in church growing up and it's definitely a community that I did feel cared for, but it definitely wasn't a community that I felt I could be honest about what was going on in and... And it's funny, I wasn't a place where I really felt safe to actually be myself, necessarily. Like it was like I had to be something else. I had to put on some kind of air, some kind of mask, some kind of maybe that mask isn't the right term, project some kind of persona to people that wasn't necessarily accurate or authentic. And... You know, that's been a lot of my church experience. And I wonder, I wonder part of the reason that God brought all these like, and requires and wants all of this diversity of people to come together, Jew, Greek, right, from the very beginning, the ethnic diversity, even religious diversity, to come together under the Lordship of Jesus. Part of it is what does it do within us as we're trying to wrestle through the conflict of? You know getting our sharp edges dulled and you know the right ones dulled and then the dull what the right dull one sharpened with people and I just I just wonder if you have insight on that or if you thought about that or even as I'm talking Maybe what you're thinking like how? Is this How much of this is a part of the plan that we're supposed to be with people that think so differently than us and try to wrestle through this in the lordship of Christ? And that's even that's part of it. That's what's supposed to happen. That's actually a part of like the maybe the training program for life. Yeah, I always feel like at some point in these conversations, there needs to be a little bit of like a preface to say, uh you know, we're not talking about staying in places of genuine abuse, whether verbally or emotionally or sexually, we're not talking about places in which uh people's gender or sexuality or race or any number of things for that matter. uh are dehumanizing to them. And that's where you get into the territory of almost feeling like you're part of an occult that's inescapable. I look back at my childhood and you speak a little bit about this. I was raised in a very apolitical Southern Baptist church who nurtured me, nurtured my understanding of scripture, nurtured my understanding of missions and how we are called to serve our world. When I responded to this call at 14, when all I was interested at the time was chasing girls and playing football, they were like, we believe God has called you and we're going to give you opportunities to serve. And I have people to this day from that congregation that still love me and reach out to me. One of those couples I wrote about in the church or in my book. However, this is also a church that has complexities that the church when we joined it had female deacons. Uh, and they hired a more conservative pastor who promised he would allow everyone to serve in leadership roles and slowly over time alienated women. So they were no longer serving in a leadership function in the church. That's, that's like the messy complexity of this place that both formed me and shaped me, but also created a lot of theological dissonance within me that caused me to leave that tradition when I got into college. And so there, there's a give and take in these types of things, but I do believe that one of the challenges we have today. is that too many of our congregations are becoming homogenous. We are simply surrounding ourselves with people who think like us, who live like us, who believe and value the same things as we do. And I don't think that's the design of the church. The church is actually supposed to be heterogeneous. It's supposed to be a place in which our perspectives are challenged in a loving Christ-centered way that the way that we think about things, the way that we see other people should constantly be in flux. Because at the end of the day, the little translation of that word that Jesus uses in the gospels, the word that we translate repent, actually means change your way of thinking and living. And in order to do that, we have to constantly be in a place in which our assumptions, our biases are being challenged. And typically that's not gonna happen if we're surrounding ourselves with people who just wanna believe what we already believe. You know, we spoke with Ryan Burge recently. He has a new book out called The Vanishing Church. ah in our discussion, he made a comment about one of the reasons people are leaving the church. And it's basically like their treatment of LGBTQ. So I believe that the data came out of PRI. ah And... And I'm curious, like how much does that, like sort of the stated reason for why people are leaving churches or, you know, I don't think that the survey asked, you why churches are fractured. But, you know, one could imagine if you have a big influx of people leaving, like it's going to cause like an uproar. So like how much of like the LGBTQ stuff comes up in your consultations with churches? And, you know, like how are they working through deciding kind of like where to land? on that. Well, I'll say is that a verge is a great friend and you should believe anything that comes out of his mouth. He's a you know, he's a credible guy. I've wrote an endorsement for my book, believe it or not. So, yeah, so I would say you have to pull back a little bit. We can look at the issue of sexuality and I don't want I'm not trying to lead that, but I do want to I do want to talk about that. But there's actually a larger issue in the fact that social capital is at an all time low in institutions and that What that essentially means is the mutual trust that exists between people and institutions is at all time low. And this stuff has been tracked by Pew for decades now, and it has been a sliding scale for uh religious institutions. And when you look at the studies of why people cite, why they are leaving the church and here again, I talk to congregations all the time about this. 12 % of adults are leaving the church each decade, but the vast majority are not leaving their faith. That is very telling. And what we need to listen to what they're saying. Either all of these people have an invalid experience or it's genuinely true that the church has an exclusionary problem because too many people associate the church and the studies showed this, that we are uh anti-intellectualism, we're anti-environment, we're anti- uh homosexuality, uh we don't care about issues of race and equity and all these different kinds of things. So these, all these things stack up and you look at the trust in institutions at all time low, it's any wonder, there is no wonder why people are leaving the church. And it could be that people are leaving because they've tried to raise these issues and talk about these things and they've been told it's not your time, it's not your place. Or they've also maybe been in congregations that aren't comfortable wrestling with those things. And honestly, most congregations aren't. Because they might reflect a family system that doesn't allow for open dialogue. we can talk about that stuff later on. How do you cultivate that within a congregation? But yeah, you look at this specifically the issues of sexuality and it is almost unilaterally a generational shift. Really starting with Generation X, Millennials and younger. That their views are much more what we call progressive when it comes to issues of sexuality. And they might not be an individual whose sexual expression uh is what's considered non-traditional, know, quote unquote, but they might have someone they love, or a family member, and they care deeply. And that's the weird thing, you know, it's, did we live in a time in which we were okay that our opinions and perspectives were completely detached from our religious life? What we're seeing more and more is that the younger generations do not want to detach that. uh Directly connected to their ethics and their beliefs. or how they care for those that they love. And so if they're experiencing an exclusion, whether for themselves or for other people, and they associate a large chunk of the Christian expression in America tends to be anti-LGBTQ, then that creates a lot of dissonance within people's lives and departure becomes more likely. But there are, there are a lot of expressions in the United States, you know, from any denomination you can think about that has wrestled with this issue. and come to a different place, a greater place of exclusion versus exclusion. And they are seeing more young adults that are interested in it. And so I understand the complexities of this. It looks at how we translate scripture and how scripture applies to our lives. And so I don't want to alienate. And I'm not making a stand saying, hey, if you don't believe this, you need to believe this in order to get young people in your churches. That's not what I'm saying at all. But it is a tremendous issue for a lot of people. Yeah, I know it definitely is. And I'm super curious about how do you talk about this? Because my church is like any other church in the sense that I think, you know, there's definitely a very clear gap between those in one generation, say a boomer generation, and certainly Gen Z, you know. And I mean, it's almost like they're from different planets. And that know that that's not true, but that's kind of the sense that's given like anything they say is absolutely crazy. then anything, you know, that the boomer say is like, my gosh, that it's so old. What's wrong with them? can't like, this is insanity. Get, you know, get with the new world. Like the world is changing and you're not changing with it. And all that has some legitimacy to it on both sides of that. And I'm, and I'm wondering, how do you approach this conversation? Because Like, especially for someone like me who, you know, at the end of the day, I, I, on one hand, I want to be very, very compassionate and as empathetic as I can be to anyone that comes to the church. And the LGBTQ community is within anyone. And so I would want to understand, have empathy, compassion, care, and, you know, acceptance, really. I mean, unconditional love, care, acceptance. mean, it's like, we're so scared of unconditional love. It's amazing how scared we are. Christians are scared of unconditional love. We can't even imagine that God would be, uh like, we can't imagine that God would be too loving. If God is too loving, it's just, it's a little too much for us to handle. We don't really like that. And I won't get into all the details. I'm not trying to spark a controversy. What I'm saying is that it's like, We need Jesus and his love so deeply and so badly. And I have a certain view of the scriptures. I have a certain view of what they say and what they teach. Right. I'm also open to knowing and learning new things. I'm also open to, maybe I'm misinterpreting something, either I'm misinterpreting the reality and science as it is right now, or I'm misinterpreting the scriptures or I'm misinterpreting both. But my question But it's like, how do we talk about this? As a congregation, I'm supposed to be a pastor, but I want to let people, I want to be as open as I possibly can be without violating my conscience or what I feel like is a clear teaching of scripture. And so that's what like, it's a really, it's like, it feels like a tightrope. And I'm like, is this supposed to be it? Didn't Jesus say that his burden is easy and his yoke is light? And yet it feels like this is a tightrope and the burden is massive. and crushing not his. So yeah. So then I apparently don't have Jesus burden. So yeah. I know. I would just love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's like uh Jesus talked about that and then it's like Jesus maybe should have spent a little bit more time with the church that came after Ascension. uh Cause he would have been like, I said, said, I said, know, my burden is light, but y'all are making this super heavy for everybody. Yeah, you know, so there's a couple of things here and one we can address the generational piece because the generational gaps are increasing. Uh, you look at the differences when it comes to generational perspectives on any number of things. And we almost could not be more diam, diametrically opposed when it comes to certain generations. You look at the studies of like the number who are in a young adulthood now and who trend to be more democratic. the baby boomers who turn to be more Republican and, the representation of that ideology is coming across when it comes to perspectives on environment and economy. mean, it's. It is diametrically opposed in so many possible ways. And then you add on top of that, the older generation, you know, baby boomers are no longer the largest portion of the population, yet they own the vast majority of the wealth. And, and they also benefited from a time that is economically different than it was today. So, you know, take for example, a home that would have cost $10,000 for a boomer buying it for the first time. That same home would cost well over a million dollars today. And so, you know, when you start to talk to the older generation and they, just, can, I could see it in members of the congregation face when I start to talk about these things, like it dawns on them. Like the reality by which you were a young adult is, is, is so different than today. So the generational stuff we could, we could take a whole podcast series to talk about. But really when you talk about like, where do you even start with this? I think, I think there's two important things I would encourage everyone on. One is time and the other is our relationship with rightness. these things take time. I talk with more and more ministers, kind of the cool thing about my role is I get to pastor pastors and I talk with pastors all the time who are just so frustrated that their congregation is not where they are theologically. Uh, many struggle with they're the forerunner sprinting ahead on matters and then they look back and realize their congregations at the bottom of the mountain and they're mad that they're not right there with them. And so that's, that's part of the problem. We are paid to think theologically. for 40 plus hours a week and our congregants are living life to their best, right? Things are hard right now. uh know, economically things are hard right now. Socially, and these are people who might have children or aging parents. They are trying to do their best every single day and then they're coming home and then we might get them for one and a half, two hours on a Sunday morning. by the way, the average churchgoer is two Sundays a month. So you're not even getting them for You know what, like five hours a month. If even that, my math is horrible. So don't even ask me to go back and walk through those numbers. And so what we have to recognize is this stuff takes time. And so one of the things I say to younger generations who are so angst with older generation that they don't have the same perspective is to say, you have been afforded more information overload, more opportunities for an abundance of perspectives. than any other generation before you. Your friends talk about these things, you're experiencing these things, they come from a generation where these things were not socially acceptable, these stories were not readily told, in fact they were frowned upon. And so these things take time. It takes time to talk about this. And we can talk about what to do in that time at a congregational level. The other thing is our relationship with rightness. We are so obsessed with being right. Cognitive psychologist, have studied and looked at what happens in our brain when it comes to us uh in our relationship with feeling like we're right and what we're wrong. And the same part of our brain that triggers uh fear, fear of death, fear of loss is the same area of our brain right now being triggered around our sense of rightness. And so for many of us, it quite literally feels like if we don't express our opinion, if we don't say it until we're blue in the face, if we don't ruin a relationship in order to make sure that our voice is heard, that quite literally the air from my lungs might be taken out. And then we're constantly being fed examples from politics, from media. mean, heaven forbid, I took a lunch break today, went and got my hair done. Y'all don't say anything about it. I mean, it keeps falling out. And I'm sitting there and I love sports, but I wanted to hit mute on the TV because I'm hearing is like Stephen A. Smith and these other guys arguing about who's right about something dumb about sports. And this is... are constantly is being inundated. And then we sit down, and this is what's being modeled to us, and we sit down with people that we spend one hour a week with, and we expect somehow we're going to change each other, or better each other, or somehow come to the same perspectives, even though we have differing views on things. And so this is why it's so layered and so complex. And one of the things that I'm trying to address through this book, is helping us understand that the church can thrive, but there are lot of aspects that are going on underneath the surface that we need to better understand for ourselves and understand as we look at that person across the pew forest in order to even have the opportunity to be successful in what the church is called to do. And it's just whether it's that issue or issues uh of gender or issues around politics or issues around the environment, I don't care what the issue is. or who is related to it. uh We have done ourselves a disservice in how our society is propagating everything so much right now as a battle and we go in ready to fight in our churches. I'm curious about um the role of politics and kind of like how that has changed or affected your work and kind of what you're seeing. uh you know, to kind of preface that a little bit is when we spoke with Greg Boyd years ago, uh he wrote a phenomenal book, case, oh gosh, The Myth of Christian Nation? It's a really good book. If I'm butchering it, then please somebody correct me. Hey, hey post editing, it'll sound like you knew exactly what it was. Yeah, totally. Right. But in his book, he talks about uh a church that he led, a couple thousand people, 2004. He preached a message that really kind of went against the political current at the time. I think it was about Bush or something like that. And I don't think he even mentioned Bush and the sermon, but he uh really got it for preaching this message and lost like... I forgot what the number was, but it was like 90 % of his congregation or something like that. I mean, it was massive. And we see situations like that kind of like, since 2004 for sure. So I'm curious, like, that a common thread that you see when you are looking at churches and they're fracturing and you've been called to come in to do what you do? Like, is politics a big factor? Yeah. I mean, the short answer is yes. Next question. No, it's, you know, I experienced this in my own pastoral ministry. so a little bit about my story. like to call myself a, recovering self-righteous liberal. meaning that, uh, when I pastored a new church, we were trying to be so inclusive for those who were post church or, or, you know, D church people have never been in church and You know, I had come through this great deconstruction of the evangelicalism I was raised in and, you know, was pursuing something different that I was like pushing people away from the church who were not quite ready to abandon their evangelicalism. so, you know, that's why I say self-righteous. I wasn't very pastoral in lot of those things. I learned from that and then went past her to church in Louisiana for four years. And I was told that this was a liberal church and I got there and uh liberal in Louisiana might be moderate in most places. And I loved that congregation and that congregation was beautifully theologically diverse, which meant that I caught it from both ends of the spectrum. ah You know, on these matters, I'll never forget when I, I think I wrote about this in the book. uh I had a uh church member came up to me on a Christmas Eve service, patted her pocket and uh she said, Hey pastor, said, Merry Christmas. She said, you know, you know, my brother, he's a big doctor in town. Uh, he's coming tonight. He wants to bring a year in contribution check. And I've got a blank one right here and patted her pocket. And, uh, I said, okay. And so she said, so I don't want to hear any of your flaming liberal democratic agenda from the pulpit tonight. That was my, look on my face. Now I will not tell you what I said to her. It was pastoral and prophetic and maybe not the best. I wish I had just said Merry Christmas, but I didn't. uh But you look at the research and I talk with pastors all the time, especially people who've walked away. Why? It is, they cite over and over again, the political polarization of today. And when you look at why most people are leaving the church, one of the number one issues of the top three that comes up and Ryan. Ryan has done all kinds of research around this. They cite the church's disconnect from the teaching of Jesus and it's his misrepresentation within the support of American politics today. And so we are losing people over these things. One of my favorite chapters I wrote in the book is the greatest cause of atheism in the world today is political idolatry. And it's true. We do not realize our relationship with politics in America. And we are, we are being Tom Sawyered. I use this as a story in the book of, you know, Tom gets assigned to, you know, whitewash this fence and somehow ends the day with his feet up and a bunch of gifts in his pocket with the boys from the neighborhood all painting the fence. And that's what's happening in America today. While we are absorbing the fear-mongering and the hatred being spewed by politicians, their pockets and the media that propagate them are being filled with commercial dollars. And then we are the ones who fight amongst each other, while half of these guys and gals in Washington are getting meals together and sharing drinks across the aisle when the cameras aren't on. We're foolish to believe that that stuff isn't spilling into our pews, into our congregations and our relationship with politics and how that comes across. You know, it used to be for a lot of people, especially from, you know, my tradition, if you will, separation of church and state is a tremendous core principle of what it means to be Baptist, right? We believe in the religious freedom of all people, but for a lot of Christians in America, religious freedom means me to be able to speak what I want to while you stop and listen to what I have to say despite, despite your faith. And so I do think we live in a challenging time. I do think one of the biggest lies that we're believing right now is that we are more divided than we are. And I think one of the biggest lies, um, that we need to remove from our brains is that, around that division, I think we actually have more in common than we realize. Um, but it's in the best interest of those in power. for them to remain in power and for them to continue to get rich off our division is to believe that we, don't have anything in common with my neighbor who might have a different political persuasion than I do. That's really powerful and I... I definitely relate with a lot of everything that you're saying. I mean, I'm not a pastor, but I consider myself a Christian and I try to live my life in such a way that people won't second guess by Christian-ness. uh And it's difficult sometimes, especially in this political environment and also having a political uh podcast probably doesn't help, but I always like a challenge. I am kind of curious though about like... uh Yeah, just about this role of politics. Because it seems like, so on one side, you can visibly see, okay, church is shrinking, you've got pastors that are stressed out, mental health issues, congregants that are deconstructing ex-vangelicals, all over the place. And then you've got the conservative church that seems like it's growing. And this is anecdotal, you know, but uh you got like Turning Point USA, like where you've got these huge stadiums filled with people, know, worship services like Chris Tomlin and Matthew Wess, you know, and like, and you look at that, you're like, like really is church like really in that that bad of a shape. So I'm curious on like, like, what do you think lends itself more to kind of the cohesiveness that seems to exist around like right-leaning churchgoers, specifically kind of in the Trump universe, and, you know, folks like yourself, like you mentioned, or Ryan Burge used to be a pastor too, you know? So there's definitely a sliver of American faith communities that are like, when I look at the Turning Point USA worship services, like that looks nothing like, you know, like what we're dealing with. So I'd love just for you to kind of help us just compare contrast, kind of like... what the reality is for folks like you and other folks. And then, you know, when you look at sort of like the religious right, it seems like they're growing. Yeah. Wow. I mean, we could, again, I think we could do a whole podcast series, you know, breaking down those aspects. I would encourage everyone to see that the loudest voice doesn't always mean the greatest following. And we're actually seeing, I think a consolidation of congregational expression. um, a church, might have a fast growing church plant in the town. You might want to start going to the other churches around town to see that. where their people have left and gone to that church. And so it's transitional growth than it is actual kingdom growth. um You know, a lot of these evangelical expressions are infamous and people have done studies around this of baptism numbers. Well, what they don't tell you publicly is that if you weren't baptized in that church, they believe your baptism was illegitimate. And so, of course, you know, if you're guilting people, Into that or these spontaneous baptisms. We have people placed in the congregation who are already going to stand up and do these things So, you know a lot of the stuff, know, we look at that and we think you know I deal with churches all the time. We're like, why are we not as successful as that? I was like well is that successful and Just how willing are you to get your hands dirty in order to quote be successful, right? You know, is it worth the money? Is it worth the power? To express that and I think this generation is waking up to this I will confess that one of my favorite shows is The Righteous Gemstones. And when I first started watching the show, was so fearful. well, you know, there's aspects of it, obviously, that are disconnected, I think, from the teachings and way of life that I think is the way that Christ reflects for us. let me just say that first and foremost. When I started watching it, I was so fearful that it was going to be making fun of Christianity as a whole. And it very specifically was looking at the hypocrisy of mega churches and that culture and the double standards by which those who are in power live by at the cost of those who followed them. And so I think our culture and people who are deeply rooted in their faith, whether they go to a local church or not, See that for what that truly is. And I think while we see these, these mass gatherings, I think there's more people out there who have awakened their faith to something different. Why do we have so many books on deconstruction? Why do we have 12 % of adults who are leaving the church each decade? Um, you, start to do the micro studies of those things and crunch the numbers and it may be not as big as you think it is. At the same time, I don't want to completely discredit that and saying, that just because you have a large church means that you're not authentically following Christ. That just because it might be an ideology that I don't jump to those same conclusions when I read the scripture doesn't mean that there doesn't need to be a diversity of theological perspectives in the kingdom. And so I do want to be really cautious in saying that and to not paint people into a corner, if you will, because I have friends who are conservative, evangelical pastors who are the most genuine Christ-centered people I've ever met before in my life. we might just not agree on a lot of different doctrinal perspectives and that's okay. You know, I wonder if it's kind of like, and I'm going to, know, go to an analogy here. It's kind of like an immune system, in a sense, for the body of Christ, if it's operating well, if you have people that are maybe more liberal and people maybe more conservative, whatever it is, and maybe what you're looking at is your people, you know, there's going to be certain people that are pushing more towards the truth side and certain people, if you just want to like, over oversimplified category, right? So maybe the truth side and then some certain people pushing towards the grace side or pushing towards the compassion side. And it's like, but we need both of those things because if we don't have someone saying, if all the truthy people get together, then it's just a whole lot of truthiness and then not a lot of compassion. And that kind of that's and I know that's kind of a trite example. Right? But it's kind of true if all the people you're getting like surrounding you, think the same way and they're very legalistic, then it's going to create a very legalistic. um It's going to take on that character. The group dynamic will take on the character. Correct me if I'm wrong. I love to hear right from your professional opinion on this. example. mean, you look at Jesus interaction with the Pharisees, the teachers of the law and the Sadducees. When people think that Jesus spoke harshly and talked about warning of the coming dangers of, know, Gehenna or what we translate hell, uh the vast majority of time, yeah, Jesus was responding to the self-righteous religious people. He was not talking to the everyday commoner. More often than not, you see Jesus literally standing between the ostracism that has been done by politics and society and religion. Jesus is creating for people a new sense of belonging where a religion, a political system, a social perspective, isolated people. One of my favorite passages is a passage of the Gerasene demoniac where You know, Jesus risks life and limb with the disciples to cross the sea and this raging storm. get to the other side and literally what happens at the other side is the only thing they do because they get back on the boat and cross back over is they come across this man who is chained up naked in a graveyard. And, and we talk about that story because he's possessed by demons is only having supernatural implications, but also has deeply societal, religious, political. and psychological and physiological implications. Here is a man who quite literally has been rejected by his community, chained up and left to waste away. And what does Jesus do? Jesus gives that man an incredible sense of belonging in a way that the religion and society of his time could not do for him. And that's why I caution all churches that want to draw more exclusionary lines than inclusive lines is the question of like, who's your model for that? If your model in your mind is the Bible, then you're not really actually fully reading the Bible because there's no way the person we claim to follow in Christ ever did anything that comes remotely close to that. And I think that's the challenge, right? In the South here, you come across as churches that have signs that say we're a Bible believing church. And it's like, what you mean by that is how we interpret the Bible. And if you don't interpret it this way, then you quote, don't believe in the Bible. And so that's the beauty of our faith, but also at the same time, the great dangers of our faith that someone could read something like the Levitical passages and say, well, this was clearly trying to differentiate one society from a different society they were coming out of in the time and understand and respect that. And other people can look at that and say, well, we're supposed to follow all these laws today. You know, I used to joke with the people in Louisiana, but like, if we really want to be Levitical Christians and all those crawfish y'all are eating every single day. You know, is it considered an abomination? so, but that's what we do. We're uncomfortable sometimes with a more open perspective of the scripture, understanding that it can be gray at times and not black and white. And that often leads people to absolutes. And that's that we'll come back to that conversation about rightness, that we're just not comfortable. We need something to be black and white. We need to be right about these things because certainty is much more comfortable in an uncertain world and a challenging world and a changing world. think that's why you see people cling to that. I think for most people, it's at the goodness of their heart and out of their fear. Unfortunately, oftentimes the people driving them have more nefarious purposes behind it. You know, I'm curious if Jesus walked into one of these fractured churches that you work with, what do you think He would name as the real problem? And I know that that will probably vary from church to church, but maybe just, know, macro, like broadly speaking, ah if Jesus could simultaneously be in every church ah pew this Sunday. which ostensibly I suppose he can, or he is, right? But um what would he identify as the top three problems of the church? I think Jesus would say we have a self love and love for others problem. Self love problem being that we don't truly know how to love ourselves and we don't truly understand ourselves and how we function individually. And because we don't love ourselves properly, we certainly don't love the fellow member of our church properly. I take for example, one of my favorite, favorite kind of terms that I introduce and. in the book is fundamental attribution error in which, um, let's just say, example, um, you know, today I come rushing out of my neighborhood. cut somebody off because I'm running behind to go pick my kids up from school. Well, my expectation is that the person that I cut off understands that, Hey, I've got to go get my kids or like, I'm going to get in trouble. Like, I, this is how this works. Reverse course, same thing happens to us. We question the very morality and humanity of that person to believe that how dare they do this thing. There is no possible reason and justification for them to do this. This fundamental attribution error that it's a cognitive thing that happens within us. We place this on other people and that's one of the challenges we have in our society right now. that we cannot believe that people who have an alternative perspective on any number of issues, whether it's sexuality or abortion or immigration or healthcare or any of these things, we can't believe that that person at their basic core is a human being that has reasons behind this and a story behind why they believe what they believe. We want to question the very morality of that person. And so I think that's what the challenge that Jesus would identify is. We really don't understand ourselves. We don't understand how we function. We don't understand the bias we have, how we bring this baggage into the congregation, how we need to be better differentiated people and emotionally intelligent people and better understand how we function in so many different ways. And we certainly don't get other people. um And so through our own eyes, we interpret people in a way that sometimes they really aren't and we don't give them the benefit of the doubt in the way that we expect it for ourselves. And it's called fundamental attribution. Fundamental attribution error, yeah. Got it, because I've heard of... um Another similar concept called motive attribution asymmetry, which is like I think it was an NYU study where they looked at, you know, the division between Republicans and Democrats and found that it was as as polarized as Palestinians and and Israelites and essentially it's it's like our natural instinct to view all of our actions is very altruistic, you know, and holy and are the others there them like as very uh evil. uh So is motive attribution uh asymmetry connected somehow? Because it kind of sounds like the way that you're describing the fundamental attribution that there could be some elements that are similar. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about, in a sense, the same thing. Some of it comes to talking about morality and persuasion and, uh, philosophy on things and other, when it comes to motivation behind action and intent and things of that nature. So. Yeah, that makes sense. And actually, both of those concepts are super powerful. And I hope that people pay attention to it because the idea that I have so much access to information in my own life about what my intentions are, what my motivations are, what my situation is, that it's very easy for me to put myself in the protagonist view. or to see my needs as priority or as more important or whatever they might be. And then to put to someone else, like not seeing all that, that they couldn't possibly have the same situation. And yet I need to get more information from them in order to figure that out. And of course, when you're in a car, you're not really able to do that. And a very limited information, maybe they flick you off or honk at you or whatever it is, and you're kind of like, well. That's some data to work with that doesn't exactly help you feel better about them, right? You know, and, and, but, but one of these things though, it kind of comes to this sense of like humanizing other people. And I kind of feel like sometimes like really we at the core of a lot of our conflict is a dehumanizing maybe, not an effort, but like, like a bent within us. that possibly we see ourselves and we put ourselves in a place oh that's unique from others and can pretty easily slip into dehumanization of other people. And just wonder how much do you think like church conflict has to do, and conflict in general, has to do with that sense of like identity, we know who we are, we know what we. want and believe and think and everything. like how much of the conflict has to do with those kinds of issues rather than like a belief issue or a doctrine issue or a policy issue. It's really there's something in this conflict where it's like they they if they were me and if they knew what I knew then they would understand and they would choose what I'm thinking. I don't know. How much of that is in the conflict do you think? Well, mean, and then you throw in the fact that, you know, most cognitive psychology has proven that when we believe someone is trying to change our perspective, we only entrench what we believe even further. it's, it's not going well, right? I, I do. I think, I think it's easy for us to, I think it's easy for identity politics or identity theological issues to become what it is that divides us. And I think at the end of the day, it's all about what's wrong with a relationship. Uh, what's wrong with our approach to these conversations. Because I, I think if we're honest, people have more complexities than we give them credit for. Uh, I have pastored people who have been, uh, woefully, uh, economically conservative, but so progressive when it came to issues of gender equality and sexuality. And I. I was shocked to hear them say some of the things they said. was like, you support these policies and these things, but yet you have that particular perspective. And so I think that's the challenge we have is that I think it's easy to put people in boxes around identity issues, but it's not. I do think we have an other in crisis within our church, you know, um in the sense of that, our pursuit of being right. uh creates a mentality within us that we dehumanize other people and their perspective. This is a classic us versus them uh mentality. And I think that is a challenge we have that uh I think a biblical example that comes to mind. There's this uh passage from Luke where uh Jesus uh Commissions the disciples to go into these Samaritan villages and they rejected y'all remember the story right and and they come out and and the response to the rejection Was the sons of Zebedee saying Jesus we should call down fire from heaven to destroy them right and what I love about that passage is is like Have they done this before like have the sons of thunder done this before that they were so certain that they could call down fire from heaven Or were just, they were so angry. They were so angry that someone would not believe them and accept them for what they had to offer them that they wanted to destroy the very foundation of this community, destroy these lives. And Jesus' response to them was Jesus rebuked them. That's the same word when we talk about Jesus casting out demons. That's the same word used when we see Jesus responding to the self-righteous religious people. His response to their righteous indignation and their judgment towards people who did not accept their views was to reject that sense of othering. And that should speak volumes to us today that I think it's easy, whether we are on the right, middle, or left, to be like the sons of thunder. That we immediately want to reject people and push people away because they do not believe what we have and then we think that they're attacking us. because they don't have the same values of what we have. uh And yet Jesus' response to that is a response of ultimately compassion, calling them to something different. And the challenge we have is that there's so much going on in our brain that's outside of our control. And the more we can understand it, the more we can push past some of our impulses to deal with these things. But the challenge we have is that we are attracted to fear. uh Fear uh helps us to stay secure and our arguments and disagreements oftentimes are triggering this fear within us. And so that's why we find ourselves only entrenched more. I really love that example m you gave, because I... I just wrote a, a sub stack about Christian nationalism and, and, and I included uh a, reference to Dan O'Darling's book, um, in defense of Christian patriotism, which, um, I mean, most people probably wouldn't expect like a liberal like me to read, you know, a book by a Southern Baptist, like scholar, but, uh, I actually agree with most of what he wrote in the book. And, and he uses an example of Jonah as an example of Christian nationalist, um, because Jonah didn't want to do the thing that God told him to do to the Ninevites. he wanted, in your example, like he basically wanted to smite them. uh so I think that's a very useful example to show sort of like the radical kind of love that we should be extending to people versus like a radical sword. Because in my version of Christianity, ah you know, I'm... I love everybody. So it doesn't really matter like who you are. And I think that that should be replicated everywhere. But my last question to you is, you know, in all of your work, and a lot of what we discussed today isn't necessarily all that hopeful. So I was wondering if you could, if you can kind of like help end us on a good note, like in your work and your research, or even a story that you have in your book, like what's... What's something that can give our audience listening to this at least a little glimmer of hope that all is not lost? Yeah, I do want to note, you know, one thing about Jonah as he then through the biggest hissy fit in biblical history and didn't get his way and God still did God's good work without him. Right. and the other piece, you know, when you look back at church history, we do have a weird history when it comes to those in power winning and, you know, snuffing out those who don't, you know, you just look at the, the whole controversy in Nicaea. uh Do a little research into what happened to the Aryan, uh Aryans when they were uh no longer on the winning side of things. So many of lost their lives as a result of that. Yeah, I think in the complexity of talking about these things, uh I think when we talk about the church from an analytical perspective, the idea can be in your head of like, you just want the church to fail. And I opened the book with my unabashed expression of love for the church. I love the church. I love the church. I want to see the church thrive. And it's not because I've committed, you know, nearly 30 years vocationally to this and been in the church since I was in my mother's womb. I believe in the church. I believe that the church can thrive. I think because of the comp- complexity of the society by which we live in today because of the The temperature that has been raised around so many issues that we need to approach this differently That we need a new set of tools to help us and so ultimately I wrote this book as a as a love letter to the church to help us understand That diagnosing our problem is important Diagnosis is the first step and accepting that that diagnosis is grim, but that doesn't mean that we can't do something in order to overcome this. And so that's why this book is not written necessarily for individuals. It's certainly not just written for clergy. It's written for the people in the pews. And what I imagine is that individuals are reading this and they're doing the work themselves to better understand themselves so they can better understand their neighbor, their church member. And I think through that, that's when we begin to cultivate a thriving congregation. Congregations that thrive are thriving not just because they're growing exponentially or their budgets are doing what they're supposed to or they're doing everything right. Typically thriving congregations are thriving because their people are thriving individually, both in the church and outside of the church. And so I think that's what I'm trying to do through this process. Every chapter invites people into introspection. What does this mean for me? What does this mean for my relationship with the church? the publisher was so gracious to allow me to include, um, as an online resource for every chapter, a creative design exercise. So the idea is you're reading this as a congregation and then you're coming together and putting into practice the things that you've learned. And that's what's going to, that's what's going to change churches, right? Now we, we no longer need to think that worship is going to be the space by which that we begin to shift our polarization, but actually needs to take place in the steady work of. caring for each other, of showing up in each other's lives. And so as people have been asking me, what is the most practical thing a church can do to take the step in the right direction? Have a meal together. Like no agenda, no Bible study, maybe pray to open, just have a meal together. Invite people into intentional conversations where maybe you're not even talking about churchy or controversial stuff. Ask people probing questions like what is your favorite movie and why? What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? The problem is we don't have Yes. collective trust and respect for one another and that does not come overnight. It comes from uh week after week of showing up in each other's lives, of genuinely caring and nurturing for each other. And so congregations and congregational leaders have to interject this into congregations in order for this to happen. And so I do have hope for the church. I believe in the church and I believe that the church is on the fringe of thriving. And I think when we can make a commitment to enhancing ourselves by becoming more Christ-like, we are going to then more authentically love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and the church will naturally thrive as a result of that. I think that's really well said and it's been such an awesome conversation with you, Andy. How can people, well, what's the preferred vendor for the book? And I heard some of how maybe churches could get involved in that. But if you have something that you're providing or a way that you want people to get involved in, how you recommend it being used and how they can follow you, things like that, now's the time to let them know. Yeah, so I mean, of course you can buy it from bloomsbury.com. Bloomsbury is an incredible publisher. The partner would mean this process. You can buy it wherever uh books are sold right now. uh They are going to be creating through the Bloomsbury website uh links to all of these creative design exercises that go with every single chapter. And so if you read that, you get this free resource that goes along with it. And so that's really going to be the best place to find your resources about the book. I've got a pretty static website you can go to to learn about that. host two podcasts. I host our denom created and host our denominations podcast. And then one of my close friends and I started a podcast called clergy confessions, where we interview pastors in complete anonymity. changed their voices to hear about what are some of the things people are dealing with and how do we change as a result of this? Um, so yeah, you can check out, uh, cbf.net or cbfnc.org. my two organizations I work for to learn more about the work we do there as well. All right. Well, thank you so much, Andy. It's been a real pleasure to have you on and have this conversation with you. Seriously, thank you for doing it. Josh, well, it's been a joy. I've loved every second of it. So thank you for having me on. Absolutely and to our viewers and our listeners guys Thanks for jumping on spending some time with us share this with someone who needs to hear it like subscribe You've already done that if you've listened this far Thank you for doing that share it with other people help us grow join the patreon do all that good stuff and until next time Keep your conversations not right or left