Should Political Conversations Be Happening at Church? — Reverend Clay Stauffer

 

Airdate: October 15, 2025

Julie Rose: Does political conversation belong in a church meeting?

Clay Stauffer: At our church, we've been able to maintain what we call a "big tent" approach or a "purple" approach, and basically say that, "We can be united by a lot of things, and we can still talk about the issues where there is high emotion, lots of convictions and strong beliefs, and we can be better as a community if we do that together.

Julie Rose: Hey there, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And look, I get it, nobody likes to be uncomfortable, but I've learned from experience, and you probably have too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that is what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy. Today, I'm joined by Clay Stauffer. He is the senior minister at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, where he's been hosting gatherings to talk about tough political issues, and he's got a new book. It's called, "What the World Needs Now: Virtue and Character in an Age of Chaos." I'm really pleased to have Reverend Stauffer with us today. Thanks so much for being here.

Clay Stauffer: Thanks for having me, Julie.

Julie Rose: So, I guess it's kind of the big question right out of the gate, I'm gonna put you on the spot, make you Uncomfy. Why do you think a church should be the place for conversations about thorny political questions? I mean, I'll name a few that you've hosted: gun violence, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine. Couldn't, maybe even shouldn't, church be an oasis from all of that?

Clay Stauffer: I think church should be an oasis; however, I think we have to be able to come together in this very polarized culture and talk about these complicated topics where there's deep disagreement, high emotion. Um, we can't be afraid to, to go there because there aren't many places left in our culture where people that have different opinions, politics, ideologies can come together to do that. So, I would affirm both of what, both things that you said. Yes, the church is an oasis, but it also needs to be a place where people can come together to talk about difficult topics. It, it's not always easy. It, it can be uncomfortable. People can get upset, and some people will choose not to engage in it, but I think we have to engage in it because it matters, and so I want the church to be a unifying place where, yes, we lift up the things that bring us together — our faith,Christ, service — but also where we can talk about these important topics that, frankly, people want to talk about, and if they don't get to talk about them in a face-to-face community, then they're gonna go straight to their social media platforms, and they're gonna talk about it in a much more unhealthy way.

Julie Rose: Can you tell me about a moment, uh, I guess maybe in recent history, where you found yourself kind of grappling with this?

Clay Stauffer: Sure, I can think of a few. Most recently we think about what happened with Charlie Kirk, and a lot of people, uh, don't want to go there because they think that that gets into the political, but we have to be able to talk about it. People being killed for their beliefs, regardless of what they are, is wrong, um, and we have to call that for what it is. At the same time, we can also have a dialogue about the different things that Charlie Kirk talked about and the fact that many different people, uh, feel differently on some of those topics.

Julie Rose: And so, have you had a forum or hosted gatherings then in your congregation related to political violence since the assassination of Charlie Kirk?

Clay Stauffer: So, since then, those conversations have been taking place in small groups and Sunday School classes, but we are planning, uh, an event where I'll be joined by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jon Meacham, and we're gonna talk about incivility and the rise of political violence and the role that people of faith can play in making it better. Emotions have run very high, and there are people who feel, um, very strongly one way, and there's people who can feel differently, and so, uh, it, it as just like you talk about all the time on your podcast, it can be difficult, it can be uncomfortable, but I believe that we live in a time now where we have to lean into that and stick with that if we're gonna get our culture to a place where we can actually address these very difficult topics.

Julie Rose: How are you teaching then or modeling in your congregation, um, what those conversations look like for, or should look like for Christians?

Clay Stauffer: Well, first of all, we, we can't be afraid to have them, but we also can't lead with them because they are divisive. in the same token, we can't be afraid to have them because they're important. And so, I want people to listen, I want people to respect other people's humanity and their perspective and where they come from, and I also want people to not go into these dialogues thinking, "I'm gonna change everybody else's mind," but, "I am going to bring my beliefs, my convictions, and I'm also gonna listen to yours," and then the relationship that we have that's based on mutual respect is not contingent upon me convincing you or you convincing me. You have to be willing to listen to other people because our world is in a place now where we basically have echo chambers. Social media has taken us to a very dangerous place when it comes to incivility, and it seems like the more outrageous the comment, the more likes or follows that it gets, so you have to be open to at least having the conversation, and if somebody's not willing to have the conversation, then it almost ends there.

Julie Rose: Did Jesus model that in a way that's important to you?

Clay Stauffer: I think He did. I think He listened, I think He cared, I think He was humble, and I also think that He met people where they are and, and, and brought them along, but He met them where, you know, where, where they are, and, and I think, uh, if we think about it, there's a lot of Christians today that maybe don't follow that example. Politics and religion, as much as a lot of people would like to keep them separate, they are intertwined in our culture for a lot of people, and so some people might have a very strong view on whatever the topic might be, but the way that they express themselves and the way that they treat other people while having the dialogue is not very Christlike, so I think it, that, that our words and our tone and our behavior matters in addition to our beliefs and our convictions.

Julie Rose: Yeah. Dr. Clay Stauffer, can we talk about what you have described as the most difficult experience of your ministry, and that was the shooting that took place at the Covenant School in Nashville, right there, um, in 2023? One of your own parishioners, a young girl, died, was killed in that shooting. And not too long after that, you convened, a couple months, actually, you convened a panel forum right there in your cha, chapel, right, I'm not sure what you call it in your, in, yeah, in the sanctuary,

Clay Stauffer: yes,

Julie Rose: uh, about gun violence. Surely you have gun, you know, gun rights enthusiasts in your congregation, and also people who are afraid of guns in your congregation, and so how, how and why did you decide that that was important for your congregation, given, you know, the fact that you'd also just held a funeral for this little girl?

Clay Stauffer: Yeah, certainly one of the most difficult things that I've ever been through was the Covenant shooting, and we lost, uh, a young girl named Evelyn Dieckhaus, who was a a 9-year-old third grader at the Covenant School; her family goes to our church, and, uh, we, I think it happened on a Monday morning, that, the shooting, and her funeral was the first one on that Friday. And so, I have been involved with an organization called, uh, Safer Tennessee, where we basically say, "We have the Second Amendment, and a lot of people believe in the Second Amendment, I believe in the Second Amendment, but there are lots of things that we can do in our culture to make our schools, our churches, our communities safer," and so, in the aftermath of Covenant, which was excruciating for our church family and for our community, we've been having those dialogues. So, the forum, it was, it was myself, uh, Senator Bill Frist, former Senate Majority Leader, who's a friend of mine, um, and Alex Jahangir, who is a, uh, ER doctor at Vanderbilt, who has seen firsthand, um, what happens when there's a school shooting, and we have the dialogue, and not everybody that was there agreed with everything that was said, but we all were coming from a place where we genuinely believe that there's more that we can do to make our community safer so that we don't have to see this happen time and time again, and it was a packed forum, both in person and online, and it's been viewed many times on YouTube where you can actually go to see it, and I think a lot of good has come from it. Will you convince everybody to get on the same page with gun rights and gun legislation? No. But can you at least build consensus around, "Maybe there's some more things that we can do to make our community safer and to keep this from happening again?" I think most people would agree that we can.

Julie Rose: Reverend Stauffer, if I could circle back kind of to the sort of theme where we started, right, which is, like, "Why, why don't you stay in your lane as a minister, as a church?" Um, because, again, I can think about, like, the, I have had, I have done episodes on my news related podcast, Top of Mind, about gun violence, right, you can go to, there's a bazillion podcasts and YouTube panels, and there are plenty of places where these kinds of conversations can take place. What is different, and why is it important, do you think, for these conversations to also be happening in the sanctuaries of churches?

Clay Stauffer: Because if churches don't have these conversations, then churches will continue to sort themselves out by political ideology, so they'll be all red or all blue, all conservative, all progressive, and at least for me as a Christian, that's not what I think the church is about. I believe Jesus prayed, John 17, that, "All would be one so that the world might believe," so we don't want to use this as a way to divide people. We want to use these conversations as a way to bring people together and say, "These are difficult topics, these are challenging topics, but we have to be able to talk about them," and then you have to be very intentional about when you do that.

Julie Rose: And so, how does having these conversations prevent Woodmont from "sorting" itself? Because I could also see it going the other way, I could see people saying, like, "Oh, well, now I know that Reverend Stauffer's a little more liberal on this issue or a little more conservative than I would like, so I'm outta here, you know, I'm gonna go find a place where more people in, in the chapel agree with me."

Clay Stauffer: Yeah, well, that, that does happen, but I can tell you that, at our church, we've been able to maintain what we call a "big tent" approach or a "purple" approach, if you wanna use mixing red and blue, and basically say that, "We can be united by a lot of things, and we can still talk about the issues where there is high emotion, lots of convictions and strong beliefs, and we can be better as a community if we do that together," and we've been able to do it.

Julie Rose: I've heard you talk about this idea that I hadn't heard before and that has, I can't stop thinking about it now, um, like, we know that Americans are becoming less, like, religious in terms of, you know, adhere, like, church going and so forth, but that there's also this idea that maybe a lot of us have transferred our religious zeal, that, you know, kind of our behaviors over to our political partisanship, so talk to me just a little bit about that. I think that's, that's really interesting, but when you start thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Clay Stauffer: Yeah, I felt this way during the pandemic when things were shut down, churches couldn't gather. I think that that exacerbated a movement in our culture where people were basically beginning to replace religion with politics. Where their politics, their loyalty to the "tribe," whatever the "tribe" is, became the religion, and I don't think that that's healthy. There's always been divisions and disagreements when it comes to politics, but we're now living in a time where incivility has reached a crescendo, and it's leading to violence, and I don't think that the answer to that is just to not talk about these things. The answer to that is to talk about it and to teach what it looks like to listen to somebody else, to hear where they're coming from, to respect their humanity and who they are as a person, and just to recognize we're not all gonna agree on a host of topics, and I think that Christians need to lead the way on that, and oftentimes they don't.

Julie Rose: We're also seeing communities of faith being targeted by violence, it feels like increasingly, I don't know if that's the case, but it certainly feels, and, and quite recently, my own faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was, um, was directly targeted. Um, It's deeply unsettling for members of, of, you know, for, for, for believers to feel like, you know, we could be hated in a way that would bring, make the, make us the target of violence, and, as you mentioned, we're also seeing, you know, political violence taking place. And so, your book is called, "What the World Needs Now," so what is the answer? How do we find our way out of this, and what, if anything, can believers do to lead out on that?

Clay Stauffer: So, the things that we need to focus on are the things that we agree on, the things that Jesus taught, um, that we're called to love one another, that we're called to show compassion and mercy, that we're called to give voice and look out for the least of these, um, that we're, we're called to forgive. A lot of people tend to forget that; they wanna hold onto everything forever, and it builds resentment and bitterness, so, in the book, I try to offer a number of solutions in terms of what I think our world and our culture needs at this particular time, but you're absolutely right that every time, whether it's a Mormon church or a synagogue, every time they're targeted with violent acts, people are afraid, the temperature gets turned up, but I think that religious people of different traditions need to keep preaching peace, civility, listening and understanding, and it doesn't mean that all violence will go away, but it is the light and the hope that our world needs, and so that's what we're gonna keep doing.

Julie Rose: Dr. Clay Stauffer is the senior minister at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville, and his new book is "What the World Needs Now: Virtue and Character in an Age of Chaos." You can learn more about his work and ministry at claystauffer.com. Reverend, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Clay Stauffer: Julie, thank you for having me, enjoyed talking with you.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. I really admire the courage it takes to try and facilitate conversations across political difference within a faith community or congregation because I've noticed in my own congregation we tend to avoid talking about how our faith relates to politics or social issues. Sunday schools study sessions can actually get a little awkward when somebody starts to go there, stating a perspective that verges into current event territory and everyone kind of tenses up like, "Oh no, where are we going with this? Send us back to safety!" And my big challenge lately is that I've recently been invited to be one of the leaders of our adult Sunday school discussions, and so now I'm wrestling with how to make these meetings and these scriptural conversations also be meaningful and relevant to our current lives when I know that there's a lot of deep disagreement in the class around these big issues, and a lot of people in the room would rather us stay far, far away from that. So, I'd love your advice, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the right role you think faith has to play in political conversation. Email me, uncomfy@byu.edu, or find us on social media; we are @uncomfy.podcaston Instagram. Let's keep the conversation going. Uncomfy is a BYUradiopodcast. Samuel Benson produces it. The team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.

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