{"id":16585,"date":"2026-01-17T13:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16585"},"modified":"2026-01-17T13:51:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:51:49","slug":"political-division-is-ruining-relationships-in-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16585","title":{"rendered":"Political division is ruining relationships in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Mark Creech<\/span><\/span>, Op-ed Contributor Thursday, January 15, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n

What is tearing this country apart is not merely politics. It is something far deeper, far older, and far more consequential. We are witnessing a moral rupture.<\/p>\n

Recently, a man informed a friend of mine \u2014 by text message \u2014 that he could no longer maintain a friendship with him because of his \u201cRepublican values,\u201d which he described as \u201cungodly.\u201d He insisted he bore no hatred, yet declared the relationship effectively over. In just a few lines on a phone screen, a friendship ended. It was heartbreaking, but something increasingly common. It also reveals the real nature of our national divide.<\/p>\n

What we are experiencing is not primarily a contest between parties or platforms. It is a conflict between moral authorities. One vision holds that moral truth is received \u2014 revealed by God and preserved in Holy Scripture \u2014 while the other increasingly treats moral truth as constructed, fluid, and subject to cultural reinvention. The consequences of this divergence now dominate nearly every major debate in our public life: marriage, sexuality, the sanctity of human life, the definition of family, human nature, and even truth itself.<\/p>\n

The Bible warned us of this moment. \u201cWoe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!\u201d (Isaiah 5:20), the prophet Isaiah declared. This inversion is no longer theoretical; it is institutionalized. Long-standing moral boundaries are being erased and rewritten, while those who hold to historic Christian teaching are portrayed as dangerous, intolerant, or unfit for civil society. Increasingly, citizens are encouraged not merely to disagree with people of traditional faith and moral absolutes, but to sever relationships with them \u2014 and in some quarters, even to treat them as enemies.<\/p>\n

In 1858, standing before the Illinois Republican Convention, Abraham Lincoln spoke words that still echo across American history: \u201cA house divided against itself cannot stand.\u201d \u00a0Lincoln was not addressing party politics as we know them today. He was diagnosing a moral estrangement \u2014 the growing conflict between the self-evident truth of human dignity and the institution of slavery. Lincoln understood that a nation could not endure half committed to freedom and half committed to bondage. One ethical vision would ultimately have to prevail over the other.<\/p>\n

He was absolutely right.<\/p>\n

The division did not heal itself through polite disagreement or procedural compromise. It hardened and deepened. In time, it tore the nation apart in civil war. Lincoln\u2019s warning remains painfully relevant in every generation: a society cannot survive for long when its people no longer agree on what is morally true.<\/p>\n

This is where we find ourselves today. What we are witnessing is not merely political conflict, but a clash of competing worldviews \u2014 over good and evil, truth and falsehood, human responsibility and divine authority. There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans broadly agreed that life at every stage possessed inherent dignity, that marriage had a God-ordained structure, that religious conviction deserved respect rather than suspicion, and that truth was not endlessly negotiable. Today, these foundations are openly contested. Just as in Lincoln\u2019s day, the result is not mere disagreement; it is destabilization.<\/p>\n

Yet while the cultural conflict is real and the moral stakes could not be higher, the Christian response must remain radically different from the spirit of this age. We do not surrender conviction in order to preserve peace, nor do we surrender love in order to defend truth. We tenaciously hold to both \u2014 without compromise and without bitterness.<\/p>\n

Jesus never retreated from moral clarity, but neither did He withdraw from those who opposed Him. He spoke truth plainly, and He loved relentlessly. The apostle Paul captured this posture with rare precision: \u201cSpeaking the truth in love\u201d (Ephesians 4:15). That balance is not weakness. It is the highest form of strength.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of moments like the one my friend experienced \u2014 when he received a text ending a long-standing friendship \u2014 is not simply the loss of that relationship. It is the replacement of tolerance with political tribalism, the elevation of ideology over the commonality of our human dignity, and the quiet assumption that loyalty to a political party now determines righteousness. God help us.<\/p>\n

The Church doesn\u2019t navigate moral storms by retreating into factions or mirroring the hostility of the culture. It traverses the treacherous terrain by standing unflinchingly on the authority of God\u2019s Word, while extending grace to those who reject it. Genuine Christianity does not fear disagreement. Neither does it answer rejection with resentment. Nor does it abandon the Gospel of reconciliation when reconciliation becomes costly.<\/p>\n

The path before Christians in this moment is narrow but clear: unwavering allegiance to biblical truth, combined with an unwavering commitment to Christlike love \u2014 even toward those who misunderstand, oppose, or reject us.<\/p>\n

Sometimes this witness is carried in the simplest of replies. When my friend received the sad text message, he was deeply saddened and contacted me to ask what he should do. I suggested he might respond by sending the following text in return:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m truly sorry you feel that way \u2014 truly I am. I have always valued the time and friendship we\u2019ve shared, even though we have often seen some things very differently. But I don\u2019t believe our differences should cancel our human connection. There are still areas of life where we agree, and we may need each other someday. Nevertheless, I respect your decision. I wish you all the best, and I\u2019ll leave my door wide open if you ever want to reconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the world must divide, let it never be said that Christians forgot who they were and to whom they belonged.<\/p>\n

Rev. Mark H. Creech is Executive Director of the\u00a0Christian Action League\u00a0of North Carolina, Inc. He was a pastor for twenty years before taking this position, having served five different Southern Baptist churches in North Carolina and one Independent Baptist in upstate New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Creech, Op-ed Contributor Thursday, January 15, 2026 What is tearing this country apart is not merely politics. It is something far deeper, far older, and far more consequential. We are witnessing a moral rupture. Recently, a man informed a friend of mine \u2014 by text message \u2014 that he could no longer maintain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[82,3955,697,5003,5179],"class_list":["post-16585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-church","tag-division","tag-political","tag-relationships","tag-ruining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}