Is 'Do Unto Others' the way to bridge the political divide?
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Good morning. Welcome to Christ Church. I'm so glad you could join us for worship. This was the scene in mid-July at Christ United Methodist Church in suburban Pittsburgh. That Sunday was a difficult one. A day earlier, a man had nearly assassinated then-candidate Donald Trump 40 miles north in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Pastor Chris Morgan asked people to pray for Trump and the victims of the shooting. And he added this. We want to be praying for the family of the shooter that lives two streets from this church. Morgan had already planned a sermon series to deal with the nation's and his congregation's political divisions ahead of Election Day. We have a series we're doing in the fall called Do Unto Others.

Talking about showing kindness in the midst of the world we live in. We need to be praying that we do that and that people get that. Because there's a lot going on. Morgan called the series a movement for civility, built around a handful of sermons, hundreds of do unto other t-shirts, and a whole lot of lawn signs. And Piers Frank Langfitt went to Christchurch the weekend before Election Day and the weekend after to see if the efforts there made a difference.

Consider this. As Americans prepare to come together at Thanksgiving, how do we bridge this country's political divide? And can we? From NPR News, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sotva. Founder and CEO Ron Rudson shares why Sotva sales associates are focused on finding the perfect mattress for their customers.

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It's Consider This from NPR. Pastor Chris Morgan has a message for his congregation in Bethel Park outside of Pittsburgh due unto others. It's a principle he hopes will help his parishioners manage their differences with people on the other side of the political fence. And NPR's Frank Langfitt went to find out whether that message is resonating with congregants. Tommy Longnecker is a huge fan of President-elect Trump.

He's got the flag and lawn signs to prove it. This is an 8x4 Trump-Vance sign. We put a dozen signs up.

in our neighborhood. This big? Yeah. And let me tell you, Democrats don't like the sign up. They've been destroying my signs all over the neighborhood. Longnecker's next door neighbor, Bob Lewis, didn't tear down his signs, but he wasn't a fan either. They're a little big, a little garish, a little bright. A week before election day, Longnecker, you know, the guy with that huge Trump sign, was out blowing leaves when he noticed something in Lewis's yard. I saw a sign about

It read, It's from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And it spoke to Longnecker because people had torn down his signs and sometimes given him the finger when they drove past his house. After he saw the do unto others sign, Longnecker told Lewis it seemed on point.

Lewis described their exchange following church services one Sunday. He said, yeah, it's obviously relevant in this time, and clearly not everyone agrees with everyone else's politics, and you maybe don't agree with mine. And I said, well, that's probably a correct assumption. And at that point he said, but I like the message that it gives, and I like the fact that we can still get along and not be hateful and mean to each other. The two men have been neighbors for nearly eight years. It was the first time they'd really talked about their faith.

Longnecker is a non-practicing Catholic. Lewis attends nearby Christ United Methodist Church. Christ Church has nearly 2,000 members, four services per weekend, including traditional services, which occasionally feature a handbell choir. ♪ Fix your eyes on Jesus Christ ♪

and contemporary services, which feature a rock band. How are you? I'm fine, Pastor Chris. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. So I'm Chris Morgan, and I'm the senior pastor here at Christ United Methodist Church. I'm in my 15th year. Morgan, everybody calls him Pastor Chris, says his congregation is pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and the previous two presidential elections took a toll. So I had people just coming into my office thinking that the world was going to end.

It was both sides, depending on the year. So Morgan drafted a sermon series to give his flock some spiritual tools to help them navigate the country's divisions in the November election. We wanted to remind our people that no matter what happened,

whether Trump won or Harris won. Our job as followers of Christ is to remember that God's bigger than all of this, and our call as followers of Christ are to show people kindness and respect and love and humility and compassion no matter what. Parishioner Patty Goyette said the sermon series helped her deal with personal and political divisions at home. I can tell you in my personal life, I'm engaging with my significant other much differently. You know, I don't want to go into too many details because it's personal, but...

You know, we've had a lot of struggles, and I think the messaging I'm getting from church helped me change my perspective entirely into, how do I fix this? Goyette recalled one sermon where Pastor Chris spoke about becoming stranded on a long bike ride because he hadn't had enough to eat or drink. That hit me because, realistically, was I feeding and watering my relationship? Was I nourishing that? So...

That was a turning point sermon for me. How have you nourished your relationship? I haven't gone into a confrontation with the higher heart rate and clenched muscles, you know. I listen and I hear. When you do that, people stop yelling and start talking, and it makes a difference. The Do Unto Others program helped Goyette, but other parishioners had problems with it. Tony Rita ushers at one of the church services.

He thinks the sermon series encouraged people to express their political opinions. I felt, and I've told Chris this, I felt like going to church was an hour of peace and quiet and trying to be closer to Christ. And I felt like that sermon series encouraged

Rita says some in the congregation openly criticized Trump, which he found especially disturbing after Trump was nearly killed north of here in Butler, Pennsylvania. People at church have said that? I returned to Christ Church last weekend after the election and met parishioner Steffi White at coffee hour.

She's a big supporter of Pastor Chris, but thought the Do Unto Others program didn't go far enough. White says Trump speaks hatefully about others and wishes the church had called that out. The piece that I think is missing was the willingness to openly identify the rhetoric behind it.

being used in the campaign. White says failing to do so creates a false equivalence. I understand the valid criticisms of the Democratic Party. I would never argue that the Democratic Party is any kind of saviors. They're not. But can we also talk about the terrible things that Trump says? And the response you get is, well, it's both sides. It's both sides. But Pastor Chris Morgan says doing to others isn't about calling out sides. This series was not about making a statement

about anyone's morality. Outside of the pulpit, I personally will stand up for what I think is right and what I think is wrong, and I have done those things. My job as a pastor when I am preaching is to help people grow in their faith and become as much like Jesus as we can.

Reporting there from Frank Langfitt. And Frank is with us now. It's fascinating reporting. My question is, did it work, the Do Unto Others program? Did it make a difference? I think at an individual level, as you kind of heard, I think it did help some people a lot. And I think what it allowed them to do was...

Instead of sort of approaching this from taking a fraught personal approach and looking at it through a political lens, it allowed people to sort of go back to scripture and focus it from a Christian perspective, from kindness and compassion. And I think that did help people deal better with what has been an incredibly emotional issue for so many voters in this country. That said...

They distributed a lot of these do-and-other t-shirts at the church. But when I went to the services, I did not see that many of them, which also raised questions for me as to how much buy-in there really was in the congregation. Well, and I have to also ask, I mean, this is, it's lovely. It's a lovely effort, lovely story, but it's one pastor, it's one church. Is this being replicated? It is. I mean...

This is one of a number of United Methodist Churches who have similar programs like this. And Pastor Chris has no illusions that he's going to change the country, but he had to start somewhere. And he'd seen these problems earlier in 2016 and 2020.

I think the big challenge that I think you're getting at is this is a, you know, the United States is a huge country. 150 million people voted this year. The election was decided by fewer than 3 million votes, which means you have enormous numbers of people on either side of this election and their feelings and thoughts are deep and wide. And if you were going to try to bridge this division in this country, you're

you know, in any meaningful way, you'd have to have a lot of efforts along these lines, a lot of these programs, and it would take a very long time. We're talking about something that could take a generation. That is Frank Langfitt, NPR's roving national correspondent. Thank you, Frank. Happy to do it, Mary Louise. This episode was produced by Catherine Fink. It was edited by Catherine Laidlaw and Courtney Dording. Our executive producer is Sammy Yinnigan. ♪

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