“Subtractions add up” (Oct. 13) did an excellent job of summing up the withdrawals from Mennonite Church USA but never mentioned the elephant in the room: the culture war that attracts religious conservatives to the Republican Party on issues of LGBTQ rights and abortion. MC USA and other Protestant churches are dividing over man-made articles of the culture war, leaving the teachings of Christ in the Beatitudes and the Gospels silent.  

We all need a dose of intellectual humility. In the midst of contemporary politics, this is difficult, but we might try to find common ground in the person and ministry of Jesus and how he valued human interactions that the “religious class” had written off. To whom have we offered grace, to whom have we offered understanding, to whom have we affirmed that they are invited, not excluded, from the table of Christ? Let’s put aside politics and church divisions and keep in mind the final judgment as illustrated in Matthew 25:31-46.  

Reading Scripture, we find that Christ is “woke,” and some Christians might be alarmed by this. But if Jesus’ relationships with the outcast and “unworthy” are any beacon to us, we must put aside the divisions that have driven us away from Christ, have the courage to take measure of how we might possibly have been wrong  and then reconcile with each other rather than continue to slice the pie smaller.  

Donovan G. Unruh, Chippewa Falls, Wis.