In a recent church newsletter column titled “A Still More Perfect Union,” the Rev. Joe Mills, 49, of the Westchester Community Church, reached out to his congregation to urge respect for one another and made a promise to refrain from using the pulpit as a place to endorse candidates or partisan stances. Now that the election is over, Mills talks about the need for bipartisanship and community involvement.

Q What moved you to write this column?
A It’s still pertinent, especially in an election like this because so many people, God love them, have shown so much hatred and I believe that at this time we need to move past hatred and ignorance. Both parties have good people and all parties have bad people. I just have so much respect for our system of government and it starts at the local level.

Our particular congregation is made up of probably about half Republicans and half Democrats. This election, more than any in my ministry (24 years), I have never seen an election that has had this high of animosity, fear, and ignorance.

One of the sources of ignorance is that the Internet has changed the rules. For instance, blogging. There are people from every stripe who spend inordinate amounts of time putting out false information about every candidate. And when they do it, though, at the end of their articles, they will cite it as fact and they will put a reference underneath it to make it look as though it is incredibly well thought out, but it is nothing more than an op-ed piece. So one of my desires was to say to the members of our congregation, I expect of them to be educated, respectful, and prayerful. Beyond that, I have witnessed in our community and beyond, incredible anxiety. The moral issues of the day, the economic issues of the day, the international issues of the day, have become so complicated. One of the reasons for that complication is that we now truly live in a multinational and multi-ethnic economy and world. Every issue gets much more complicated than it has been in previous times.

Q What did you hope to accomplish with the column?
A I’m not trying to sway people to a particular position. But one of my fears is that we don’t look at larger sets of values. We look at single issues now. And supposedly, in order to be a candidate, you now have to be a perfect candidate, which means you have to represent 100 percent of somebody’s values. Unless I’m mistaken, living in this nation means that we have to negotiate every single day, across party lines, across state lines, and across cultures. I’m not just talking about ethnicity, I’m talking about the difference between living here in Illinois, and living in Texas or Nebraska, where how we understand community is different. Any candidate who gets to a certain level of government, has to really begin to negotiate deals in order to get anything done.

My faith would say that God is perfect, and since no human being can measure up to that, I want us to cut a little bit of slack to human beings, who try every single day. And because I have tremendous respect, for basic principles of both conservatism and liberalism, I drive people nuts.
I want to push us to move past those labels and begin to look at how complicated it really is. Every member of the church I serve, is a little bit of everything. And they are that because of their life experience, and their hurts, and their values. So I want I us to spend a little more time actually listening to one another and I would argue praying for one another.

Q Your column mentioned an incident where church leaders did use the pulpit for endorsements. Can you explain why you felt that was inappropriate?
A Awhile ago, I heard there were a series of lawyers out West who had negotiated with a group of churches to intentionally break the law. Having said that, I want us to understand there are laws that are not good laws on the books. But the reasons we have laws is to have a basic structure that protects us both from ourselves and from one another. And that same group, I guarantee, would be absolutely incensed if the opposite group had done the same thing.
So the reason I felt then and I feel now that it is wrong, is that the local church is a place of dealing with the fundamental tenets of our faith. It’s my job to do basic scripture, history, values. It is also my responsibility to show that I understand why there is basic separation of church and state. I do not ever want the state coming into my local church, telling us how we must do our day-to-day operations. And for the same reason, I do not believe it is right for me to tell the state how to do theirs. And I think we could be incredibly creative on a lot of issues.

For instance, school prayer. I believe we can find room to pray, as long as it is not guided by one faith tradition. Very few school teachers and families do not value prayer. They simply want to know that tomorrow, that our church is not going to guide the prayers for the rest of our nation. And that’s what happened early in the nature of our country is that, literally, there were religious groups that were being persecuted by the majority of religious groups because they didn’t share the same faith stance. And they were all Christian. Now, it’s more complex because we are also dealing with other faith traditions that are not Christian. So I don’t see, at that point, any difference.

For me, I want to make sure I’m doing my job so well at the local church that our members are praying everywhere. And if they are, at that point, why do we need to worry about the public school. Because I’m doing my job, our members are doing theirs. I also believe that if our church is doing its job incredibly well, we are such a compelling witness to faith, that people are going to want to come here. So I see that we have a responsibility to ourselves, and to promoting our message through the life of our congregation.

Q What kind of feedback have you gotten thus far?
A No negative. I’ve had negative when, from the pulpit, I’ve prayed for all the candidates. Because, we have people that were angry that I prayed for McCain and were angry that I prayed for Obama. But notice, I was very clear, if I’m going to pray for one of them, I’m going to pray for both. Because, I don’t necessarily have to like one or either, but one of the two was going to win the election. And I also believe that my prayers should never be arrogant. I’m terrified about arrogant prayer, such as ‘I will only pray for you as long as you quit being a heathen. No, I’m going to pray for you for wisdom and grace, and to honor the highest ideals of what our nation is about.

We better be doing something about volunteering at our local level. Bare minimum, we should know about what’s going on in our community and we should be volunteering for it. I come from the school of ‘Put up or shut up.’ I’ve been in every other church. I support all of the other churches’ activities, and I am proud to, simply because I care so deeply that they are well. I volunteer for our Chamber of Commerce because I want our businesses to be well. I support our public and private schools because I care about the health of people and children in our community. And I support our village. I attend (board meetings) when I can. I will ask questions, I participate, and if our village needs help, they know I will be there. I will support a person in elected office, even if I voted against them. Because if I cannot do that, then I am saying that I only value democracy when it’s for me, and I believe that defeats then, the purpose of democracy.

Those who are at the extremes will hate me, and I’m very comfortable with that because I don’t believe the extremes should speak for the majority, but I absolutely will defend, in a democracy, their right to be at the extreme, as long as they do not move toward violence. Violence is beyond democracy and there is no room for that in any system.  That’s why violence in speech infuriates me. And ignorance in speech that can lead to the harm of any person or any party offends me. I hated the attacks on Palin and I hated the attacks on Obama because I thought that was mean-spirited and, in most cases, ignorant.

Q What prevents us working together?
A I’ll give you my laundry list. First, greed. I wish that we would pay more attention to who benefits because greed destroys the fabric of democracy. And I have a lot of room, even in my disagreement with people who on many of the moral issues of the day have disagreement, as long as they don’t move to violence, because I can deal with that at the local level. If I’m doing my job well, then people are going to work hard with one another. The second one,  people that complain without proposing a solution. I believe we must take the risk to try to create solutions. Some of these solutions will be grand failures, but I respect anybody who’s willing to try to put a solution out there and show that they’ve taken the time to actually put it together and they’re trying to garner bipartisan support. Because everything in a democracy, in order to work, must have bipartisan support.

Q Do you live in Westchester?
A I most certainly do. I could not imagine serving a community where I didn’t live. I’m a native Cleveland, Ohioan. I love my church, I really do love serving here. We have hard challenges but we have a really good faith community, and it’s an honor to serve here.