One People: What the Early Church Can Teach a Divided America
One of the great, often overlooked achievements of the early church was the creation of a radically new kind of community. In a world deeply divided by ethnicity, social status, gender, wealth, and political allegiance, followers of Jesus embraced a new identity that transcended all the others. They were simply Christians. Their primary identity was no longer found in the circumstances of their birth, their position in society, or their cultural loyalties. They belonged to Jesus, and because they belonged to Him, they belonged to one another.
The apostle Paul captured this revolutionary vision when he wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). These distinctions had not magically disappeared. Men and women remained men and women. Slaves and free people continued to occupy vastly different positions in Roman society. Jews and Gentiles retained their cultural histories. But something remarkable had happened. These distinctions no longer possessed the authority to determine who belonged, who mattered, or who was worthy of love.
This was the genius of the early Christian movement. Jesus had given His followers an identity large enough to embrace their differences without allowing those differences to divide them. Their unity was not built on sameness but on a shared allegiance to someone greater than themselves. They were learning to see one another not primarily through the categories imposed by society but through the eyes of Christ.
The foundation for this complete shift in thought was laid in Jesus’ sermons:
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5:44–48]
If we follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus, enemies are reconciled, the last become first and the first last, the rejected of society are welcomed into His Kingdom… If we look at His teachings closely, we see that He was laying the foundation for The Church – His Body – in which, as Paul says, there is to be Oneness – a shared life of mutual concern for one another:
Contrast that vision with our present cultural moment. Increasingly, we are encouraged to define ourselves by what distinguishes us from others—our race, gender, economic circumstances, political affiliations, and cultural grievances. Identity has become a means of separation rather than belonging. We are taught to discover who we are by identifying who we are not. Political movements and cultural institutions often reinforce these divisions, encouraging us to view one another through the lens of competing interests, suspicion, and resentment.
The consequences are becoming painfully obvious. A society cannot remain healthy when its people increasingly understand themselves as rival tribes struggling for power. Trust disappears. Cooperation becomes difficult. Our neighbors become our opponents, and disagreement becomes evidence of moral failure. Eventually, the shared commitments necessary to sustain a culture begin to unravel.
The early church offered a profoundly different way of being human. It did not deny differences or ignore injustice. Rather, it insisted that something deeper than our differences could unite us. Paul reminded the Ephesians that Christ “is our peace” and had broken down “the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14). In Jesus, God was creating “one new man in place of the two” (Ephesians 2:15).
Perhaps our culture’s greatest need is not another identity to defend but a greater identity to share. The church has been entrusted with precisely that vision. Jesus prayed that His followers “may all be one” so that the world might believe the Father had sent Him (John 17:21).
The genius of Christianity was never that everyone became alike. It was that people who were different could become ONE. And in a world increasingly determined to divide itself, recovering that vision may be among the most important gifts the church can offer.
Perhaps there is also a lesson here for our life together as a nation. What if we began thinking of ourselves and one another simply as Americans? Not primarily as Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or progressives, members of competing racial or cultural groups, but as people who share a common home, a common future, and a responsibility for one another. Our differences would not disappear, nor should they. Our diverse histories, experiences, and perspectives can enrich our common life. But what if those differences were no longer the most important things about us? What if our shared identity became larger than the labels that separate us? Perhaps we might rediscover that we have far more in common than those who profit from our divisions would have us believe.
Of course, being American is not the same as being Christian. Our national identity cannot provide the spiritual oneness that comes through Christ, nor should the two be confused. But the principle is worth considering. A healthy community must possess a sense of belonging that is stronger than the differences within it.
With the recent explosion of nasty political discord and animosity and the multiplication of lies and division on social media, I have become very concerned for our cultural future. What world are we creating for our children?
The Founding Fathers understood something about the fragile nature of a republic that we seem to have forgotten. In his “Farewell Address” of 1796, George Washington warned Americans against allowing their regional and political loyalties to become more important than their shared national identity. He reminded them that “The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.” In other words, we should take greater pride in our shared identity as Americans than in any of the political, regional, or cultural labels that divide us. Washington recognized that the survival of the republic depended upon its citizens seeing themselves as one people. Their differences were real, but their common identity as Americans needed to be greater than the distinctions that separated them. Without this shared sense of belonging, the bonds holding the nation together would eventually begin to unravel.
John Jay expressed a similar conviction in Federalist No. 2 (1787), declaring that “the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united.” Jay believed that Americans were bound together by more than geography or political convenience. They shared a common history, common struggles, and a common future. “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people,” he wrote. Although Jay’s understanding of American identity was shaped by the cultural assumptions of his time, his larger insight remains significant: a nation cannot flourish when its citizens begin to regard one another primarily as rivals, strangers, or enemies. The moment our competing identities become more important than our shared identity, we begin to lose the very thing that makes a republic possible.
What might happen if we recovered something of this vision? What if, before identifying ourselves as Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, members of this race or that social group, we simply recognized one another as Americans? This would not require us to surrender our convictions, erase our differences, or pretend that our disagreements do not matter. It would mean recognizing that we belong to something larger than ourselves and that our common good is more important than the victory of any particular faction. Washington and Jay understood that unity was not merely a pleasant ideal; it was essential to the preservation of liberty. A republic cannot survive indefinitely when its people lose the ability to see one another as fellow citizens. Perhaps the first step toward healing our divided nation is recovering the simple conviction that, whatever else we may be, we are Americans together.
The American experiment has always depended upon the possibility that people from different backgrounds, cultures, and convictions could become one people without becoming the same people. If we lose that shared sense of belonging, we risk losing the very foundation of our common life. Perhaps the first step toward healing our fractured culture is surprisingly simple: learning to see one another not as representatives of opposing groups, but as neighbors, fellow citizens, and human beings whose futures are bound together. We do not have to agree about everything to recognize that we belong to one another.
This vision of Oneness, rooted in the teaching of the Lord Jesus and expanded in the teaching of the Apostles is what made the early Church a cultural reality against which even the Gates of Hell (and the Roman Empire) could not prevail (Matthew 16:18). I hope and pray that our current culture could learn this lesson from our Lord and also our national forefathers. But I fear that we won’t because we love the dopamine fix that all the division and anger gives us. Or as our Lord also taught, “people love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil” (John 3:19).
Regardless of what our culture at large chooses to do, if we are to follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus faithfully, we MUST be salt and light in this world. We cannot simply lament the growing divisions around us while allowing those same divisions to take root among us. Jesus calls us to something radically different. We are to practice the oneness for which He prayed (John 17:20–23), to love our enemies, and to pray for those who oppose us (Matthew 5:43–48). We cannot proclaim a message of reconciliation while living lives marked by hostility, suspicion, and division.
If we allow the spirit of our age to determine how we regard and treat one another, we will lose our ability to offer the world a meaningful alternative. Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25). Perhaps the greatest contribution the church can make to our fractured culture is not to win another argument or defeat another opponent, but to demonstrate that there is a better way to be human—a way marked by humility, grace, forgiveness, and love. If the world is ever to see what genuine unity looks like, it ought to be able to look at the followers of Jesus and find it there.
[Cover Image: Pexels Ivan S]
