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Here are ten things we have learned so far with a little discussion of each:

1. The differences in contexts (such as urban, suburban, and rural) influence the ways congregations interpret polarizing issues and also how they respond.

We began by wanting to test this assumption and have found it to be largely true. For instance, some Indiana counties are very diverse by race and ethnicity. But in about half of Hoosier counties, white, non-Hispanic, people make up more than 90% of the population. Some counties (both rural and urban) have high poverty rates, some have low. Differences like these help determine both what congregations want to do and what they can do.

One of the best examples of this came the week before the 2024 presidential election. As part of a statewide listening tour, we held sessions with Black pastors on the east side of Indianapolis and then with white pastors in Boswell, near the Illinois border. Both sets of pastors identified economic concerns as the most polarizing issue in the election, but their descriptions of the problems were almost entirely different. They were 90 miles apart and might as well have been on two different continents.

2. Nearly all pastors are frustrated by the degree to which social media and cable news media are influencing their members.

If we heard one recurring theme from pastors more than any other, it is “Our members spend 20 hours per week on social media and cable news and I only get their attention for 20 minutes.” We asked pastors, “If you had one magic wish, what would you do about polarization?” Their answer was overwhelmingly: “I would eliminate social media and cable news for our members.”

The corollary to #2 is that sowing division and disagreement is wholesale, building community is retail. Nearly everyone agrees that face-to-face engagement lowers the temperature of polarizing tension. Unfortunately, nearly everyone also agrees there is less face-to-face engagement and more time spent in front of screens.

3. Congregations find it difficult to take a stand on every issue both because of their social context and because of their need to remain inclusive of all their members.

Congregations want to offer moral leadership, but there are two big problems for congregations when it comes to actual advocacy. First, some issues are very difficult to grasp in some social contexts. Racism is always wrong, but understanding it and responding in an all-white rural area is different from understanding it and responding in a very mixed urban area. Second, congregations who take “all in or all out” approaches to every social issue often find themselves getting smaller and smaller. The members who agree on abortion, for instance, may find they do not necessarily all agree on immigration or other issues.

4. Relatively few congregations see themselves as combatants in the culture wars.

A large majority of congregations do not see themselves involved in politics or culture wars as congregations. Their members might be engaged as individual citizens, but pastors usually are not deeply engaged in politics themselves despite media depictions of a few who are.

There is more to say about this than can possibly be shared in this short essay, but here are two correlated observations. 1) Progressive congregations are more likely to take advocacy stances, as congregations, than moderate or conservative ones. This does not mean their members are more likely to be engaged in issues as individuals, just that their congregations are more likely to be. 2) Some congregations keep all political and cultural division outside their worship, seeing focus on God and on mutual support as their only goals. Some do this very intentionally, some do it by default through always focusing on non-polarizing ministry. One pastor referred to his congregation as a “turtle on a fencepost.”

5. Congregations can benefit from looking at networks and structures from other faith traditions, some of which are older and stronger.

Many pastors in our project learned from other traditions with whom they had previously had little contact. An evangelical Protestant pastor, for instance, was accustomed to having to make personal decisions about what the Bible required on a wide range of issues. Learning from Catholics who draw from nearly two thousand years of social teaching and from more hierarchical patterns of decision-making was informative and perhaps even liberating for him. There is a tendency for congregations to assume that the way they have always done it is how everyone always does it and the way it must be done. We have observed concrete benefit to congregations who learn from other traditions about, for instance, the way important decisions are made.

6. Pastors are often unaware of their members’ stances on polarizing issues.

We have spoken to many pastors in the past two years who learned that they do not always realize what their members are thinking and doing outside of church even when it comes to items that are clearly “religious” in nature. Pastors tell us that people often discuss issues at home or on social media in ways they simply don’t talk about at church.

The examples are instructive. Many pastors learned after October 7, 2023, that their members supported Israel much more strongly than they realized. Others learned after Charlie Kirk’s murder that many of their members followed his activities online. In a different, specific, Indiana case, pastors learned their members opposed an immigrant welcome center that many pastors thought would be well-received.

Our finding here is not that pastors and some members of their congregations disagree. Everyone knows that. Our finding is that there are often undercurrents in a congregation that pastors truly do not know about because the matter never comes up “at church.”

7. Polarization is not about people being miles apart on any one issue. It’s about being on the opposite side on most issues.

This is still a research “finding” insofar as we believe we have learned it through our investigations, but here our analysis moves beyond simple description. This is an interpretive finding based on what we have observed. Many have suggested there is still a large center in American public life; we have found this to be true in congregational life as well. When pastors from different traditions and different social contexts talk to one another face-to-face (even if on Zoom), they find they have many common hopes and concerns, despite some significant political, theological, and moral disagreements.

Here is how we have come to think of it: Imagine a political scale where 1 is the most progressive and 10 is the most conservative. Or imagine a religion scale where 1 is the most theologically and biblically liberal and 10 is the most conservative. A lot of pastors, like a lot of other people, are in the 3–8 range on either of those scales.

However, folks on the extremes get the most attention. If you are a moderate liberal, say a 3, 4, or 5, you tend to hear from more extreme liberals (1s and 2s) and, more to the point, you only ever hear from liberals. If you are a 6, 7, or 8 you tend to hear from more extreme conservatives (9s and 10s) and you almost always hear from conservatives. Worse, what you hear about the “other side” emphasizes the most extreme version of those views too. This makes it very difficult to build empathy or to work toward dialogue where people who begin from somewhat different moral foundations can coexist peacefully.

8. All congregations are communities and all congregations serve communities, but these are not the same thing and discerning the connection is challenging.

This is again an interpretive finding, but it comes from decades of observing congregations and talking to pastors about their work, including in this project. Congregations must maintain cohesion. Shared beliefs play a role in this, but they are never the only important variable. People share histories, they are concerned about similar things, they offer mutual support. They do missions together. They celebrate holidays, weddings, and funerals. This meaning of community is internal and all congregations do this work. Congregations are communities.

Congregations also serve communities. In our research, they all do. Some have vast outreach networks, some do local work on a relatively small scale, but they all serve communities. This meaning of community is external and all congregations do this work at some level.

While these two are related, sometimes people confuse them or suggest they are really the same thing. They are not. It is best when the two senses of community are mutually reinforcing, but as a descriptive matter, they are frequently in tension. If you do not think so, ask any pastor who missed a funeral or hospital visitation to attend a school board meeting.

9. All congregations have structures of authority, though this varies tremendously by tradition. All congregations focus on care, though again this varies widely.

Some very persuasive research suggests polarization is rooted in the fact that Americans operate from different moral foundations. To boil that down quickly: Liberals operate from the foundations of fairness and care. Conservatives also value these ideals, but they add considerably more emphasis on authority and tradition.

We have observed that all congregations contain both foundations, though the balance of care and authority is very different from one congregation to another. Wesley said, “Unite the two so long disjoined, knowledge (authority) and vital piety (care).” All congregations try to do this, but it is hard, as even the most ardent followers of Wesley would admit.

A blog post recently circulated that attempted to summarize this difference as vertical and horizontal morality. Vertical morality was, it said, about top-down authority whereas horizontal morality was about a flattened care for others. One was rules-based, one was person-based. We would suggest Christian congregations are always in the process of balancing the two. We have come across no congregations, literally none, who say, “Biblical authority and church authority do not matter.” We have also not come across any who say, “It is not important to care for others.” Congregations are always seeking the balance.

10. Congregations can benefit from thinking about their own balance of authority and care. They can also benefit from engaging with others who balance those two differently.

This is clearly a more interpretive finding, but based on our more descriptive work, we think congregations could improve their own discernment process by asking themselves how their moral foundation of authority fits with their moral foundation of care. To what degree do they turn to Scripture, reason, tradition, or even democracy for authority? Or to what degree do they turn to pastoral or episcopal roles? And what does this have to do with their own views of care as fairness, charity, or justice? How do they decide when they must act and what they must do?

By asking themselves these questions, congregations create an opportunity to build empathy with others who balance these things differently. It is easy to criticize others for being “wrong” on authority or on care. Trying to understand how others attempt to balance authority and care might be a good first step toward empathy.

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