Chronicle of Philanthropy: The Commons, Does Faith Have an Answer For Our Biggest Divides?:

Every Sunday, Jacquetta Carter sets off on an unusual religious journey. Leaving her home in a middle-class neighborhood of Joliet, Ill., Carter and her husband, Keith, drive 45 minutes north, through other western Chicago suburbs and into this relatively affluent community. Their destination, Hope Presbyterian Church, sits on a small hill surrounded by large homes set on expansive, neatly trimmed lawns.

At the church, the Carters, who are Black, slip into the pews of the predominantly white congregation. Worship is reserved, even solemn — Hope members jokingly describe themselves as the “frozen chosen.” The Baptist-raised Jacquetta, however, chafes at the quiet. “Come on, Pastor,” she cries out in the call-and-response she’s accustomed to, even if hers is the only voice raised. Indeed, she can seem so out of place at Hope that police once stopped her outside the church and questioned what business she had there.

Still, Carter, 45, has found in the church a place where she can be herself and be loved for it. “It has become a family for me,” she says. “It has become more of a family than my own family.”

Hope is part of an unusual partnership. About a decade ago, it invited Bethel New Life, a new predominantly Black church rooted in Baptist doctrine and tradition, to share its building for a modest rent. And last year, the two congregations began to share the same pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ron Beauchamp, Bethel New Life’s Black leader.

Philanthropy and nonprofits have invested a great deal in efforts that target just one of America’s many divides — the chasm between MAGA and liberal, Black people and white people, rural and urban. Hope and Bethel, meanwhile, are trying to bring people together across a trifecta of division — faith, race, and, in some instances, class. And they’re trying to bridge differences without help from foundations or experts; a grant request was turned down.

They still worship separately — Hope in the morning, Bethel New Life in the afternoon, with the Carters attending both. But Beauchamp and others are trying to fuse the two into a community and, perhaps, even into a single church. Their journey is a test of the unifying power of a belief in God, with thorny questions about identity and compromise.

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