Addressing the Partisan Church Divide

When Pastor Mike Slaughter invited friend Chuck Gutenson to interview for a position on the pastoral team at the mega-church Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, OH, he was completely unprepared for the concerns expressed by his church’s Leadership Board over Gutenson’s politics. (Gutenson was the COO at Sojourner’s Magazine and a politically left-leaning Evangelical.)  The word that immediately came to Slaughter’s mind during the energetic discussions surrounding Chuck’s interview was “hijacked.”

The Board’s reaction, in his opinion, was another symptom of the church being hijacked by partisan politics. At the extreme, a hijacked church can forget  and has forgotten its true identity as a Christian community called to follow the way of Jesus, rather than a particular political party. Galvanized by this real-life encounter with how politics can infiltrate the Church, Slaughter teamed up with Gutenson to write Hijacked: Responding to the Partisan Church Divide. (For more on Hijacked, visit the Patheos Book Club here.)