I speak with Reverend Beth Chrisman about the Purple Church Initiative, which aims to bridge partisan divides within congregations by fostering inclusivity and dialogue. We discuss the initiative's origins and its practical tools, like "Conversation Across the Aisles," designed to promote healthy discussions around differences. Rev. Chrisman emphasizes the need for open communication to build understanding among church members and shares proactive steps churches are taking to engage their communities.
Related Links:
Purple Church Initiative webpage
Related Episodes:
Beyond the Purple Church with Jack Haberer | Episode 194
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[0:06] Music.
[0:31] Hello, and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, my guest today is Beth Chrisman. She is an ordained elder and a district superintendent in the Western North Carolina Conference at the United Methodist Church. Chrisman is also behind the Purple Church Initiative. This is an effort by the Western North Carolina Conference that is working really to get people on differing sides of our partisan divide to be able to see each other as children of God. So we kind of talk about how this effort can help in the aftermath of a very contentious election and also how it can be used beyond North Carolina to help heal our partisan divisions. I think that this is a very timely episode, and I hope that it can be of help
[1:31] for your congregation, wherever you are here in our country. So, here is the conversation with Beth Christman.
[1:41] Music.
[2:00] Well, greetings, Reverend Chrisman, and thank you for taking the time to chat today. Oh, it's my honor and blessing to be here. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, even though we've been talking about the election and red and blue and even purple, and many think that that's over with, it's really not. We're still kind of talking about politics and probably will be, and there's still some importance about this.
[2:31] And so, I wanted to have you on to talk a little bit about the Purple Church Initiative and what is that all about. But kind of before we do that, if you would mind just sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do within the United Methodist Church. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Dennis. So, I currently am serving. I am an ordained elder in the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, and I currently serve in a dual capacity. I am the Uwari District Superintendent, so I'm the District Superintendent, Missional Strategist, but I also serve as the Director of Peacebuilding Ministries for the Western North Carolina Conference. So you could just say it's a very unique two-point charge. Wow, it is. Okay. Yes. So... Can you tell me a little bit about the Purple Church Initiative? Was that something that is something church-wide by the United Methodists, or is it limited or kind of from the Western North Carolina Conference? Where is it, who started it, and what were some of the decisions that led to its beginning?
[3:51] Absolutely. Well, I'll share a little bit about the origin of the Purple Church Initiative. Of course, the phrase Purple Church is not new. It's been around for many years. I think the first time that I encountered the term was probably around 2018, or maybe even a little earlier. And it actually refers to churches, actually, of any denomination or non-denominational, but our churches being made up of diverse people, particularly of politically different political ideologies, social ideologies.
[4:33] And oftentimes, from a political context, we think about that as being red and blue. And the reason it's called purple is because we all know, we might remember from kindergarten, when we learned to mix colors, that when you mix red and blue together, it makes purple. So that's the reference for a purple church, meaning that we have people within our congregations that represent both more conservative political views as well as more progressive political views. And so the Purple Church Initiative actually stemmed in many ways from our peacebuilding ministries in Western North Carolina. So it is a specific offering of the peacebuilding ministries in our conference. And back early in 2024, the Duke Endowment and through also some research through Duke Divinity.
[5:42] They had released an article that looked at the churches in North Carolina, the two conferences in North Carolina, pre- and post-disaffiliation.
[5:55] Of course, another one of the places where we have seen these ideological differences emerge has been through disaffiliation within our denomination. And so the study was actually done to see, was there a lot of difference? Was there still this diversity within our congregations post-disaffiliation?
[6:22] Since our season of disaffiliation ended in December of 2023, about a year ago, the study was conducted after that through surveys of churches and mostly our clergy. And what we discovered through that research was that we are still very much a diverse denomination in North Carolina. Our United Methodist churches are still very much conservative and more progressive. So we still represent these differing ideologies and therefore are still a purple church. So when that study came out, I was in a conversation with Bishop Ken Carter, our bishop in the Western North Carolina Conference, and we talked about the importance of embracing being a purple church. This is something that we celebrate as United Methodists. We talk about wanting to be a church that welcomes all people.
[7:29] That includes people who even differ from us ideologically, politically.
[7:37] Even to some degree, theologically. And so therefore, we need to learn how to be a healthy purple church. Okay. We also knew as a conference that this was going to be increasingly difficult in the midst of a highly polarized political season. And so we decided to launch an initiative in our conference through our peacebuilding ministries that really equipped and empowered our congregations in being able to have healthy conversations across the differences. So one of the primary pieces of our Purple Church initiative was a resource that we released in August for our local churches called Conversation Across the Isles. And it really was designed to foster conversations, and we're obviously doing a play on the words across the aisles within our congregation, both the aisles of our sanctuary.
[8:42] But also the political aisles. How do we enter into healthy conversation and remain in healthy relationship with one another, even when there are significant political differences among us? So that was kind of the origin of the initiative. We launched it in August. But in doing so, we knew that we wanted it to be available and to reach beyond our conference, but also beyond our denomination. We wanted this to really equip and empower us as Christians to know how to be in community even in the midst of differences. So, that's the origin and the purpose for the Purple Church Initiative, and in particular, conversation across the aisles. And just for clarification, when you talk about disaffiliation, you're talking about kind of the recent...
[9:42] Recent things going on, especially around sexuality, but some other issues where a number of churches left for other denominations, and sometimes they'll be even independent, but various ways of leaving. Yes, absolutely, Dennis. Yeah. So, we, within the United Methodist Church, we had a season of disaffiliation from February of 2019, and then the disaffiliations expired, or the paragraph in the Book of Discipline that allowed for that in December of 2023. So, yes, that refers to the churches who chose to leave the denomination for various reasons, but many were related to issues surrounding human sexuality. Okay.
[10:35] So, in starting this, what have you kind of seen as the challenges, or what are the challenges, do you think, for churches that are purple in nature, that they're not all on one side or the other, but they're a mixture? What challenges do you see them having to deal with, and especially pastors who are having to lead these congregations? Right. So one of the primary challenges that we find, Dennis, is one of two things often happen. One is we just ignore the differences, you know, that it's best not to talk about it. In fact, just this afternoon, I was having a conversation with a Pastor Parish Relations Committee chair, and part of the conversation among one of my churches is, you know, should a pastor refer to politics at all from the pulpit? And I saw clarification from the PPR chair or the Pastor Parish Relations chair, and And I said, now, did the pastor in any way try to tell the congregation how to vote?
[11:54] And she said, oh, no, not at all. There was nothing like that. It was just talking politics at all, even talking about the elections. And I reflected back, well, it is a reality, and it impacts every person who sits in the pews of our churches. It's only faithful for our pastors to be able to talk about elections, how they impact our people, and with the reality that within most of our congregations, there are going to be people who are going to vote different. From one another differently. And whereas we embrace that, it is a challenge. So part of it, Dennis, part of the challenge is some congregations are like, nope, separation of church and state means we don't even acknowledge it.
[12:55] And the reality is we, you know, when we voted on Tuesday and when we showed up on Sunday, we're still the same people. You know, we are the same political creatures, you know, and we still bring those thoughts, those ideologies in with us in the pew. So part of the challenge is knowing how to navigate that space. I was having, honestly, Dennis, a conversation with a family member prior to the elections, and we were talking about a conversation across the aisles, the study that we wrote and released. And a family member said, I'll just be honest, I'd really rather not know what they think so I can pretend that I still like them.
[13:54] And I found that really disturbing I actually found it really sad Dennis because inherent in that kind of statement is if I knew what they thought I might not like them anymore and so part of the challenge is helping us realize that being in community means knowing that even if you and I don't agree, Dennis, I can still choose to be in relationship with you. I can still love you as a sibling in Christ. I can still choose to be in community with you, even if we have differences. That was the whole purpose of the study, but also the Purple Church Initiative is to say, you know what, we need to acknowledge this and to figure out how to navigate these spaces well. Because as you made the comment as we began in our time together, even though the elections have come and gone, we're still just as much a purple church. And those differences are still there. In some ways, they may be ingrained even more. How do we be in healthy the community with one another in the midst of those differences.
[15:16] Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that you're kind of dealing with two extremes, because you have one side that just doesn't want to talk about politics at all, and it'd just be better to not know, and that doesn't have anything to do with anything else, especially in our religious life. And then the other side is, well, I don't want to know what you really believe, because if you do, then I can't be around you type feeling. So you're just kind of dealing with these two, that one wants to be in kind of denial and the other one, in some ways, both. But another one is like, I can't be in a relationship if we disagree, which makes it really challenging. Right.
[16:00] Because the reality is for a pastor to enter into that space. And, you know, I have both as a district superintendent, as well as I was a church consultant for over 12 years through the ministry of Plow Point. And so, you know, I worked with over a thousand congregations, and many of those I was called in because the church was in conflict, and they were divided over a variety of issues. And, you know, over the years, I have people say, well, where are you on, fill-in-the-blank issue. Well, the reality was, it really wasn't my role to articulate where my stance was on any of this. I was there to lead them, to facilitate them as a pastor, to pastor them. It's not that I enter into those spaces without an opinion.
[17:00] Believe me, you can ask my family and my closest friends, I always have an opinion. That wasn't the purpose. My purpose is to enter in and to pastor and to lead and to love all those with whom I serve. That's probably one of the biggest challenges is how do we as pastors step in? And I would say this is true for lay leadership as well. How do we step in to lead a congregation when some of them just want to ignore that any of this is even happening, and some is like, you know, I'm not even sure I want to be in the same space as some of these other persons. So, you know, and yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, Dennis. Well, I was just going to say, one of the things that we are encountering as a culture more and more is how much, I remember maybe 15 or 16 years ago reading a book called The Big Swords, and maybe you're familiar with it. And it was even back then talking about the fact that there were people who wanted to self-select into like-minded political communities. And I think that that's even more so these days. Right. And even more so in the church, that there are churches that sometimes we want to be one or the other.
[18:28] So, how do you kind of counter, how is the Purple Church Initiative countering that desire in some ways to segregate? Yeah, that's a great question, Dennis. And thank you for naming that, because I would say that was part of what we even saw within disaffiliation is, you know, we sometimes use this language of non-compatible. Noncompatible and that churches or persons who are noncompatible with people with whom they don't agree will choose to leave. Well, I really have struggled, and I think we as a denomination struggle with this concept of noncompatibility with people with whom we differ. Why do I find that to be inconsistent with who we are as the body of Christ? Well, Scripture makes it very clear that part of the nature of who we are as the church is rooted in our diversity. I mean, when you look at Paul's writings and the reference to the church being the body of Christ, It talks about differing members having differing functions.
[19:47] One of my favorite scriptures of Paul is he begins the first letter to the church at Corinth. In chapter 1, Paul begins by saying, I plead with you, brothers and sisters, to stop arguing with one another, with yourselves, among yourselves. And what's interesting is that Paul doesn't tell the church to stop disagreeing. He says, stop arguing among yourselves. And then he goes on to say, let there be real harmony among you, united in thought and purpose. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 10 says, One of the reasons that has always been a foundational scripture for me is because Paul calls us to live together in harmony. Well, for anyone who's a musician, you know that harmony is only possible if you have multiple voices singing differing notes tuned to a common pitch.
[20:53] That's the very essence of what it means to be the church. Is to have differing functions, differing people with differing voices, even differing opinions, but we're all tuned to the common pitch. And in our case, and Paul goes on to say, united in our thought and purpose. Well, our thought and purpose is the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ.
[21:20] So the reason I think this work is so important, Dennis, is because it's foundational to who we are as the church. We're to not live in echo chambers, because when we go out in the world, we're not in an echo chamber. How will we faithfully share the gospel of Jesus Christ and embody the good news with people who are differing for us if we don't know how to be with people
[21:50] who are different from us within our own walls. So, that's, I think, at the very core and the very nature of why this work is so important, and why we believe Conversation at the Crossroads, the Purple Church Initiative is an important work. And have you sensed a lot of interest in this work, especially throughout the conference? I mean, Are there people really engaging in it? And if so, what are some stories that you've heard so far?
[22:26] Absolutely. Yeah. So there was a lot of churches across our conference, and I would say in beyond our conference, who have utilized the resource, and they've engaged it in multiple ways. We specifically wrote the curriculum and the resources to be engaged in a variety of ways. We offered weekly worship resources if a pastor chose to preach through the six weeks of resources. It could be also used as a small group study. There were social media pieces that could be posted with weekly prayers and discussion questions. And one of the things that was really distinctive, Dennis, is these were not political questions.
[23:18] The study was not about politics. The study was about fostering conversations across differences and doing that rooted in our biblical call of Christian community. And so what we heard back from pastors and churches is that we had congregations in rural settings, in urban settings, small, medium, large, who engaged it in all of those ways, both through sermon series, through small groups, Sunday school classes, having coffee meetups where folks would take the questions and meet with others and talk through them on a weekly basis. A lot of use on social media, you know, engaging people through social media.
[24:13] And the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. And in many ways, what we heard more than anything, Dennis, was people said, thank you. And clergy said, thank you for giving us a way to frame the season that we're in, knowing that not only was it going to be important leading up to the elections, but it would be just as important where we are now post-election and as we move forward because we're no less a purple church than we were prior to the elections in November.
[24:53] Yeah. And where do you see this going moving forward? As I said, obviously the actual.
[25:02] Time together or you know the election is over right but in a few years basically we'll be starting this over again so how is this right yeah i mean i think the resource will always be there um and of course today we we are keeping it on our our peace building um web page on the conference website and so those resources will always be there will be available um we won't continue to necessarily push and promote the Purple Church Initiative, or in fact, Bishop Carter and I were having a conversation just last week about how we began shifting the focus away from the Purple Church Initiative to other of our peace-building initiatives. And I think what we're finding is that the Purple Church Initiative and this encouragement within our congregations to have healthy and fruitful relationships and conversations across differences. We'll just continue to build on that through our peacebuilding initiatives. You know, we actually are hosting the Junaluska Peace Conference in April, April 4th through 6th. And this is relaunching a peace conference that went on for about 10 years. The last one was in 2019.
[26:27] And we're relaunching that. And, you know, through the Peace Conference, we have four phenomenal plenary speakers from actually around the world and across the nation, laity and clergy. And we anticipate a great crowd together. And so we're really kind of leaning into how do we now build on this to say, you know, part of our role and responsibility is to equip and empower the church to be ambassadors for peace within our local communities.
[27:06] That's what's key. And that's where we're focusing forward is how do we, no matter how we vote, no matter who we support, because, you know, we pledge our allegiance to one and one alone, and that is to Jesus Christ. How do we step into our public square within our communities and be ambassadors of peace in a context that may continue to be increasingly polarized and even with threats of violence? How do we make sure that we show up? As peacemakers. It was real interesting. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, which is several steps beyond being a peacekeeper. It goes beyond just keeping peace. Keeping peace might lean into that. Let's not talk about this.
[28:09] Peace building says peacemaking says you know what let's find a way to talk about this so that we can learn how to live in harmony with one another so i think that's what's next is we build on this to to learn how to do it not only within our churches but even more so how to be agents and ambassadors for peace within our communities.
[28:40] And just kind of wrapping up, just two more questions is one. Absolutely. Where do you see, or how do you see this being replicated into other conferences within the United Methodist Church, but even other denominations? I think this is something that would be necessary or people desired. Right. Well, you know, like I said, we have really designed this so that it is free and accessible to anyone, anywhere, to be used, anytime. Part of our hope is that the, particularly the conversation starters, the questions that we put out there, the biblical foundation that we provided through the study. You know my hope and prayer is that people will continue to use that one of the things i had a conversation with a group of pastors several weeks ago and they talked about picking it back up during lent kind of leading up to the peace conference and saying let's lean into what it means to be.
[29:55] Peacemakers, and how do we live into that call from the Beatitudes, the blessed are the peacemakers, and so reengaging some of that. What's interesting about everything that we've done within this resource is it is in no way specific to the United Methodist Church. It is very specific to our call as Christians, but it is universal in that. And so our hope is that it will continue to.
[30:27] To grow and spread and be utilized and modified. I mean, you know, that's the good thing is it can always be improved upon. And you mentioned, well, we'll have another election in four years and we'll still be purple between now and then. So my hope and our hope is that people will continue to engage it. And if people want to find out information about the Purple Church Initiative, where should they go? Absolutely. They can visit the Western North Carolina Conference website, which is wnccumc.org, and under Ministries, under the pull-down menu, just select Peacebuilding Ministries, and they'll see the Purple Church Initiative there, and all of the resources are listed right there. And they're, again, easily downloadable, free resources all there for anyone to utilize.
[31:35] All right. Well, Reverend Beth Chrisman, thank you so much for your time. This has been really helpful, especially, as I said, after the election. And hopefully we can have you back and maybe talk a little bit more about where the Purple Church Initiative has moved forward since we last talked, and what happens next. Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Dennis. And again, if people visit the website, they'll also see information there about the Peace Conference, and that also is open to anyone and everyone.
[32:10] Just had an Episcopalian church pastors in North Carolina say, can we come as well? Is absolutely so it's open to to everyone so thank you dennis thank you for this important work you're welcome take care.
[32:26] Music.
[32:55] So, I want to thank Beth for taking the time to chat with me. I'm kind of curious what you thought of the episode. I'm also curious to know, is your church or is your denomination doing something similar to the Purple Church Initiative? I would love to hear from you, so consider dropping me a line. You can send an email to churchinmaine at substack.com. I've put links in the show notes to the Purple Church Initiative, just so that you can know a little bit more about them. Also, if you want to learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, you can check us out at churchinmain.org. You can also go to churchinmain.substack.com to read related articles. There are a few things, though, I would like to have you do. Um, if you like what you hear and, um.
[33:53] In the two things that I would like, uh, or a few things I would like you to do is first, please consider subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app. If you have not done so, that will help. Also, I would really, really love if people would rate or review the podcast, especially if you listen to this on Apple podcasts.
[34:17] Rating a podcast is pretty easy. All you got to do is click how many stars they are. And leaving a review is also helpful. When you do that, that actually helps other people find the podcast. So if you really like this podcast and would like to support it, that is a really easy way of doing it by simply rating or reviewing the podcast. And final thing is that is donate. And donating helps to also to pay for some of the costs related with the podcast. It's not necessarily free to do. So if you can do that, that would be great. And there are links in the show notes to where you can donate. You can also donate at churchinmain.org. there is a link there as well. So, that is all for this episode of Church in Maine. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, everyone. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. And again, take care, Godspeed, and I will see you very soon.
[35:30] Music.
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