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On a recent Sunday afternoon, Pastor Daryl Thul was leading a group of two dozen people in prayer.

“Open our hearts, open our brains. Help us to shine your love,” Thul recited before opening up this meeting of rural and urban churchgoers. They were there to share some of their impressions of the recent presidential election.

With a mix of conservatives and liberals in the room, the goal was to understand — not to get heated.

In this fraught political moment

As an act of faith

This group is used to talking politics even when they disagree because they’ve had lots of practice over the past year.

Some of them are from Thul’s congregations in the Kerkhoven area, in central Minnesota, where voters tend to be more conservative. Others are from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, where voters lean liberal.

The most recent meeting was held in St. Cloud, a midway point intended to make a shorter commute for all participants.

The idea for these meetings came from Randy Atchison. He’s a member of the St. Paul church who grew up in Kerkhoven. He said his congregation is full of curious people, but they lack perspective from communities that experience the world differently. 

“Our church is predominantly liberal,” he said. “But we’re also an urban group of people who have a lot of similarities in how we live. Having grown up in a different setting, I could explain that, ‘Hey, this isn’t the way a lot of other people live.’”

Pastor Jennifer Thul, Daryl Thul’s wife, recalls getting a cold call from Atchison about a year ago. She said his invitation to partner congregations felt like “an opportunity that we could not pass up.”

She thought her rural congregants would also get a lot out of hearing from Minnesotans who live in more urban areas.

“Here is something that the Holy Spirit has placed in our laps,” she said.

The two groups have met several times since the beginning of the year. At their last gathering, they reflected on what they've been learning so far from each other.

Daryl Thul said he learned how much crime is on the minds of his urban counterparts. 

“I don’t worry about crime. In fact, my car is parked right out in front [[of the church]], and the keys are in the console. It’s unlocked,” he said. “And so I realized right then and there that this urban, rural divide is very, very real. What does that look like, and how can we bridge that gap?”

Regional differences over perceptions about the economy emerged over the series of conversations, too. And so did political differences. 

At their most recent meeting, Atchison said he didn’t vote for President-elect Donald Trump but is now finding himself hopeful about what he could accomplish. 

“I am excited about some of the changes that are going to happen, because I think they’ve needed to happen for a long time,” Atchison said.

For instance, Atchison wants to see immigration laws enforced and improved. Atchison thinks all of Trump’s blustery rhetoric is a strategy to get people motivated to tackle tough problems. 

Before forming this group to bridge political divides, Atchison said he might not have shared these views publicly — and certainly not at his liberal St. Paul church. 

At the same meeting, fellow congregant Marie Strom said hearing Atchison and other conservatives talk about Trump has been unexpectedly comforting. 

She noted that she has had a lot of fears about a Trump presidency.

“I’m really scared of the guy,” she said. “Here I was sitting with people I know and I trust, and who were saying they're quite excited. What I realized is that talking with people who believe in the guy gave me actually a whole new perspective.”

She said she still has to be convinced but it was helpful to hear that others think Trump’s tactics could prove effective.

The election may be over, but group members aren’t going to stop meeting. Next year, they want to bring in more churches and more political perspectives. 

Catharine Richert

Author

A rural church and an urban church’s congregants and leaders have been meeting during a contentious election year. They wanted to see if they could lower the political temperature among their congregations by learning from each other.

A prayer across the rural-urban divide: ‘Open our hearts, open our brains’

Go Deeper.

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