Coming Together For The Common Good
In 1858, then-U.S. Senate-candidate Abraham Lincoln looked out on a nation split in half by slavery and warned us with Jesus’ words. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The Civil War came two years later. Our nation is still recovering.
One hundred sixty-five years on, we’re divided again – more polarized than we’ve been since that bloody Civil War. Our strife is political, religious, racial, and economic, between Red and Blue states, Red and Blue neighborhoods, Red and Blue churches, Red and Blue family members. It puts us in conflict between White and Black and Latino and Asian people. It produces what one writer has called “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines.” Sadly, we live these days in The Divided States of America.
The cost of our tribalism is enormous: research reveals that we enjoy fewer friendships, suffer more loneliness, lack valuable support systems, and live in increasingly broken communities. Political polarization has been growing among us for four decades, and it’s time to turn this trend around, learn to be different together, and build together what James Madison called “a more perfect union.”
House United is a non-profit initiative designed to build robust, different- together community, person by person, family by family, village by village, city by city. We invite church people, academic communities, corporate teams, law firms -- any who are fed up with American incivility and animus -- to come together across difference and live out the glories of neighborly connection.
We help people leave behind destructive ways of life and train toward new connectional habits, because our lives, our churches, our republic, and our world get better when we do.
House United brings people together across difference. We can do this!
We’ve all broken a lot of bad habits in our lives. Let’s break the polarization habit so we can enjoy the blessings of liberty and community, different together.
House United is looking for willing partners who are ready to cross chasms to make peace. Interested? Join us!
One hundred sixty-five years on, we’re divided again – more polarized than we’ve been since that bloody Civil War. Our strife is political, religious, racial, and economic, between Red and Blue states, Red and Blue neighborhoods, Red and Blue churches, Red and Blue family members. It puts us in conflict between White and Black and Latino and Asian people. It produces what one writer has called “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines.” Sadly, we live these days in The Divided States of America.
The cost of our tribalism is enormous: research reveals that we enjoy fewer friendships, suffer more loneliness, lack valuable support systems, and live in increasingly broken communities. Political polarization has been growing among us for four decades, and it’s time to turn this trend around, learn to be different together, and build together what James Madison called “a more perfect union.”
House United is a non-profit initiative designed to build robust, different- together community, person by person, family by family, village by village, city by city. We invite church people, academic communities, corporate teams, law firms -- any who are fed up with American incivility and animus -- to come together across difference and live out the glories of neighborly connection.
We help people leave behind destructive ways of life and train toward new connectional habits, because our lives, our churches, our republic, and our world get better when we do.
House United brings people together across difference. We can do this!
- Picture neighborhoods where political yard signs don’t identify enemies.
- Picture police and protesters doing the hard work of transforming community together.
- Picture a gay church and a fundamentalist church building schoolhouses together for impoverished Mexican children.
- Picture a college campus where progressives and conservatives bring both conviction and connection to engage important issues together.
- Picture passionate Republicans and devoted Democrats collaborating in Congress to make government work again.
- Picture a 2024 presidential election that inspires us instead of depressing us.
We’ve all broken a lot of bad habits in our lives. Let’s break the polarization habit so we can enjoy the blessings of liberty and community, different together.
House United is looking for willing partners who are ready to cross chasms to make peace. Interested? Join us!
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Christianity has the potential to heal our differences and bridge our divides.By entering the culture wars, churchgoers in the United States have ushered the Left and the Right to even greater extremes. Battles over moral issues like abortion rights and homosexuality have now widened to include taxation and size of government, so that specific church affiliation has become an accurate predictor of political party affiliation. The extremists in American politics rely on Christians to be the engine that pushes the culture farther right or left.
Allen Hilton believes that religion is not inherently divisive, and he suggests a new role for Christianity. Jesus prayed that his disciples "all may be one," and this book imagines a proper answer to that prayer in the context of American polarization. Rather than asking people to leave their political and theological beliefs at the church door, Hilton promotes a Christianity that brings people together and sees their different views and cultures as gifts -- assets rather than threats. Through God’s transforming work, he writes, we can create a house united that will help our nation heal. |
Rev. James Williams
Bay Creek, MI
A Student in Allen’s “Different Together”
course at Princeton Seminary, Nov 2017
Bay Creek, MI
A Student in Allen’s “Different Together”
course at Princeton Seminary, Nov 2017