“This report explores how American evangelical Christians might contribute to healing political and cultural divides in America.”

So much wrong and bad here. This report acts like everyone plays fair, has the public good in mind, and wants to treat everyone as equals. This assumption is so far from the truth it is sad. Really sad.

1- I do not believe any Democrat political leader has the public good in mind. Not at all. What they want is to push their progressive, liberal, secular, anti-God agenda. Period.

2- To that end, I do not seek to cooperate with a Democrat. I am seeking to defeat him/her!

3- If Democrats were not so pro-abortion, pro-socialism, anti-USA, anti-God, anti-true liberty and freedom, I could consider cooperation, but not the way they are now.

4- What about “whataboutism”? This matters. It is not passing the buck, or ignoring your side’s fault, or any such thing. The fact is, Democrats control the mainstream media. They have for a long time. They rarely go after anything wrong that a Democrat leader or administration does. I know too many dismiss this as conspiracy theory, but it is a simple fact. To this day the media acts like Obama ran a pristine administration. You cannot expect one side to offer up all their people for evaluation in an environment where there is not equality. Democrat leaders do not want clean, fair, transparent government, they want Democrat government. Until such a time as the media and Democrats play fair, then it is political war. They started it, Republicans didn’t.

5- Compromise isn’t the answer until our side gets a fair shake.

6- This is even more true when it comes to Christianity in our culture. The progressives do not want to compromise with us. They want to destroy us. You would think a man as intelligent as Russell Moore would know that. I guess not.

no modern Democrat leader has any interest in it. They are totally secular or anti-God. They might… MIGHT… allow a church to operate how they want on Sunday morning, but they will not tolerate any Christian having any influence outside of that time. And, they fight to remove your influence as a parent over your child… oh my. Don’t get me started.

This is not paranoia. Every semester at my school, in a red state, in conservative central, the faculty are constantly seeking to squelch the influence of Christians on campus, and seeking to promote LGBT everything. There is no right to your conservative, biblical views in their eyes. They are racist, misogynist, and bigoted in their opinion. Wake up if you have not.

I don’t see things as you do Mark. Just a few brief thoughts.

* I don’t agree with your assessment of Democrats. I have not come across many that would really be anti-religion or even anti-Christianity. Many do not believe in giving Christianity preferred status among religions. I agree with them on that. I don’t see them as anti liberty, anti-USA or any other of the “anti’s” you assign them either. Granted, there are far left nuts that may be all of these things but that is not where your average liberal is.

* In general, Democrats/liberals are just people in a different place from you on the sliding scale between two competing ideas: democracy vs authoritarian rule. They are not enemies.

* As you can imagine, I don’t really give much credence to the ideas that only Democrats are corrupt (as if Republicans are not as bad or worse). Republicans can choose to be different. They can throw Trump to the curb and get a moral candidate that believes in conservativism. I would love them to do that so I can vote Republican again. Until then, as long as they continue to protect a horrifically dishonest president in a horrifically dishonest way, they have no moral standing to throw rocks at the other side.

* I realize I am in a red state and it may be different elsewhere but I always shake my head when I hear that liberals do not allow Christians to have influence in culture. I doubt that here in Georgia Christians have ever had more influence on culture. They basically run the state. I think that is true in many places. While the marriage of the right with Christianity is going to go down in history as a colossal failure, it is undeniable that in the short run, Christians have won incredible influence in the political and civil realm.

I used to believe much like you and then I went out and honestly tried to understand the other side. What I quickly realized is that the other side looks a lot like me. People are people.

[GregH]

I don’t see things as you do Mark. Just a few brief thoughts.

* I don’t agree with your assessment of Democrats. I have not come across many that would really be anti-religion or even anti-Christianity. Many do not believe in giving Christianity preferred status among religions. I agree with them on that. I don’t see them as anti liberty, anti-USA or any other of the “anti’s” you assign them either. Granted, there are far left nuts that may be all of these things but that is not where your average liberal is.

Go to any state college faculty meeting and you will see your full of it.

Also, have you listened to Adam Schiff? AOC? Bernie? Warren? Buttigeig? Schumer? Booker? MSNBC? Chuck Todd? George Stephanapolous? etc, etc, etc… I practically guarantee your local city paper is liberal. Read the editorial opinions from their board.

And I never said Republicans aren’t corrupt. They are less dangerous though.

are like this. If this were a rare comment that would be one thing. It is a common, everyday sort of thing.

What is there to compromise about?

Hopefully others are reading the report, as it’s actually quite good. My take is that since Congressional leaders are taken on the basis of seniority by and large, we tend to get people from safe districts—hence a bit more extreme on both sides, because safe districts are of course defined by a one party monopoly.

And with that, what you get—on both sides—is quite a bit of fact-free rhetoric where it is believed that if you can at least temporarily “move” the middle enough to get votes, you’re golden.

One thing that occurs to me—has for years, really—is that there is a general failure to boil down policy positions in terms of their effects on all of our neighbors. For example, since electric and hybrid cars are more expensive than average, subsidies for them really amount to the poor and middle class buying cars for the rich. We can justify this morally exactly how? In the same way, I wonder if many pro-choice people would listen if we said “all those subsidies for Planned Parenthood are really keeping their abortion clinics open. Exactly how is it just for the nation to force pro-life people to pay for this?” With that next one, you’ve got to be ready with the obvious objection—“the poor need these clinics”—and the simple answer is that they’d have legitimate medical clinics near them (most already do, actually) if the money wasn’t diverted to Planned Parenthood.

And yes, I’ve got one of these for corn subsidies (I used to own cropland, actually) along the same lines. The article has some wonderful quotes of Rosaria Butterfield along those lines—it is not a common person who is able to talk well with people on the oher side of the spectrum. Her thoughts (she’s got some books out, too) are also quite helpful for those interested in actually meeting their neighbors and leading them to Christ.