Who made this and why?

You can read more about the creator here. This site exists because the creator has led political discussion groups at multiple churches using her own curriculum and has learned a lot from that experience. She made this site with the goal of helping other Christian communities have balanced, biblical conversations about controversial topics.

How can a Bible study be “bipartisan”? I don’t think of the Bible as partisan in the first place.

The Bible shouldn’t be partisan. But in our current political climate, it is. Churches are now more divided than ever along explicitly political lines. The only way to move beyond partisan interpretations of the Bible is to first acknowledge the partisan lenses that we bring to the text. This Bible study is “bipartisan” in that it acknowledges a range of partisan lenses that people have used to interpret the Bible. The goal is to bring awareness to those lenses so that Christians can begin to look past them and have substantive conversations across difference.

Abortion is a controversial issue that divides people. Why should I talk about it? Won’t that just make things worse?

It’s unfortunate that our political discourse has gotten to a point where people don’t feel comfortable having conversations about important topics that have a broad impact on our society. A big reason why we’re so divided is that we’ve stopped actually talking to each other about these things. Instead, we gossip with people who we know agree with us and consume news that fits our own worldview by ourselves.

Healing our divisions takes work. But that work can be life-giving! It starts with having conversations with each other, even when we disagree, and then figuring out how to love each other well through those conversations. If you can have a conversation about abortion, then you can have a conversation about anything! And if you can’t have a conversation about abortion without things descending into chaos, what does that say about your Christian community? There’s clearly some work to do!

Do you have any tips for facilitating this Bible study?

Yes! Email out the weekly topic in advance so that folks can opt in or out of the conversation. Given the nature of these topics, it’s important that everyone who shows up wants to engage.

Also, set norms for discussion and repeat them before each session. It helps folks feel more comfortable engaging. These ones are my favorite, but ask folks if there are other norms they’d like to agree on:

“let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” – James 1:19

“to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.” – Titus 3:2

Kick off each session with a prayer and an icebreaker question to get folks talking— it can be relevant to the week’s topic or totally unrelated.

If your group tends to agree on everything or stick with one perspective, challenge them to consider an alternative perspective featured in the materials. That makes it more fun!

If you’d like to hire the creator of this study to consult with you or to lead discussions in your community, you can contact her.

My relatives are crazy and I want them to understand that they’re wrong when it comes to politics. How do I reason with them?

Conversations that begin with the goal of convincing people of something normally do not end well. People can immediately tell when you think you know more than they do, and no one likes to be lectured. Maybe your relatives are crazy. But your best shot at moving the needle with people in general is to make clear that you love them and that you think that they are smart, reasonable, and caring. If you do that, ask them questions about what they believe and why, and then actually listen to their answers, they’ll be a lot more likely to consider your viewpoint. No one’s views change overnight. But if you maintain a relationship with your relatives that’s based on love and trust, over time they might show more openness to new ways of thinking. They also might not! We can’t control people or their beliefs, and we’re also not called to do that. Trust that God is working through your relatives, as hard as that may be, and be open to seeing the ways in which the Spirit is moving in your relationship with them.