I read a book last year that I’ve continued to ponder: Tim Cooper’s When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter. It’s a story I wasn’t familiar with—how two titanic figures of the Puritan era allowed theological differences, but more, differences of personality and posture, to develop into a lasting dividing line between them. The book has many takeaways, including the role that temperament plays in our intramural evangelical squabbles.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway is this: Faithful men and women who love Christ and his church, who want to see the gospel spread and take root, who remain committed to personal piety, may not see eye to eye on some of the most critical issues of their time.
Collapse of Charitable Expectation of Difference
What I see increasingly, especially in the fracturing of evangelical alliances and the breaking of friendships over the past decade, isn’t just disagreement (that’s to be expected!) but shock that disagreement exists at all. Many Christians today assume that faithfulness will produce uniformity: that committed believers, reasoning from Scripture, will all arrive at the same conclusions on disputed points of doctrine, or on the application of neighbor-love in the realm of politics, or on the church’s posture toward new cultural challenges.
And when differences arise, we question not only the maturity or faithfulness of a brother or sister but also the sincerity of their faith. Hidden motives get attributed to those who, because of their background, their location, or the particular way they’ve applied biblical reflection to their cultural context, simply read the moment differently than we do.
This shows up across the evangelical spectrum. On immigration, a debate over wise and humane policy gets sorted into sin versus righteousness. Disagree with your self-assured brother or sister, and your dissent becomes evidence of spiritual immaturity, or capitulation to sin, or culpable ignorance of both Scripture and the present crisis. It’s as if Jefferson’s phrase about self-evident truths has been transferred from the Declaration of Independence to one’s own reading of Scripture. It’s so clear, right?
Whether the cry is to enforce the law and preserve cultural cohesion or to welcome the stranger and love your neighbor—there’s no longer any room to debate how best to hold competing goods in tension, because everyone is so shocked that a fellow Christian might make different judgment calls.
The same dynamic appears on climate change and creation care. Christians in the United Kingdom and the United States often hold sharply different instincts about what our duties are, and I’ve felt backlash from both directions: Shock among brothers and sisters in the United Kingdom that I’d question the Church of England putting so much emphasis on climate change. Shock among brothers and sisters in the United States that I’d argue creation care is part of the conservative Christian heritage. (It’s in Tolkien. It’s in Schaeffer. It’s in Teddy Roosevelt, for goodness’ sake.)
On race and justice, if you question the legitimacy of recent DEI implementation, you’re accused of upholding white supremacy. If you acknowledge that racist prejudice can shape societal structures, you’re a race-baiter and cultural Marxist. When the only two options are “practically Communist” or “basically a Klansman,” is it any wonder that honest conversation among Christians becomes nearly impossible? We could multiply examples like these.
What Does Winning Look Like?
In conversations over the past few years—in denominational life and broader evangelicalism—I’ve tried to talk believers down from the ledge of assuming an unassailable rightness, of seeking to discredit those they disagree with. I remind them that there have always been pastors and churches marked by stronger or lesser forms of political engagement, always been Christians distributed across a spectrum on the contested questions of any era.
The existence of disagreement doesn’t require a sinister motive. It doesn’t mean one group or another is compromising the church or selling out for worldly approval. To assume the worst—that a brother who sees something differently is a subversive operative or part of some coordinated effort to steer the church toward danger—is to make nefarious what has always been normal: Christians disagreeing about what faithfulness looks like.
When I survey the hellscape of online Christian interaction, I want to ask the loudest voices a simple question: What does winning look like? Do you think the leaders you oppose will simply disappear? That they’ll repent in dust and ashes and bow to your superior judgment? That their churches will shut down? That you’ll tarnish their reputations so thoroughly that no one will ever benefit from anything they say again? That everyone who agrees with you on one point will blacklist them on every point?
Sorting pastors and leaders into “safe” or “suspect” over differences of political prudence, or writing someone off over a single misstep or disputed position, isn’t a sign of spiritual strength. It’s intellectual insecurity. To flatten a fellow servant of Christ into a single disagreement is to impoverish yourself. Those who are truly discerning will remain open to what’s helpful, reject what isn’t, and resist the pull toward wholesale dismissal. Disagreements between brothers and sisters are a permanent feature of the church. They always have been, and they’re not going away.
Way Forward
None of this means differences don’t matter, or that no one is ever right or wrong. That’s relativism. Shrugging at every dispute will get us nowhere.
If that’s the case, how do we move forward? I hope we can get better at making the most persuasive and charitable case for the positions we hold, while remaining open to critique and refinement. We should expect faithful Christians to disagree with us. We recognize that churches will often have different instincts, different cultures, different postures. And whenever we don’t see eye to eye, we should work hard not to assume the worst about those whose conclusions differ from ours.
There will be no unconditional surrender in today’s evangelical civil wars. No total victory. No unquestioned defeat. So that leaves us with harder, slower work: hearing a brother or sister out, pinpointing the real place of disagreement, praying for and cheering on those we differ from, and partnering wherever genuine alignment exists.
Owen and Baxter never fully reconciled. That’s the cautionary tale Cooper tells. But they spent decades in the same country, serving the same Lord, contending for their convictions. Neither one disappeared. And today, we appreciate them both, even if they couldn’t appreciate each other. That’s worth remembering.
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