Arizona's Cross-Party Alliance and What It Means for Christians Navigating a Divided Nation
Something unusual is happening in Arizona. Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is reportedly set to name John Giles — a Republican — as her running mate. In a political era defined by trench warfare between parties, this is the kind of move that makes people stop scrolling and ask a simple question: Is this real?
It is. And whether you see it as shrewd political strategy or a genuine gesture toward cooperation, it forces a conversation worth having. Not just in political circles. In church pews. Around kitchen tables. In the quiet of your own conscience.
Because Christians are called to something. Not to a party. Not to a platform. To a Kingdom. And that calling has everything to do with how we think about moments like this one.
John Giles, Katie Hobbs, and the Rarity of Crossing the Aisle
John Giles is not a stranger to stepping across political dividing lines. Reports note that he has crossed party lines before — a pattern that apparently made him an attractive choice for a Democratic governor looking to build a broader coalition in a competitive state. Arizona has long been a political battleground, a place where neither party can afford to govern in a silo.
Whether Hobbs' choice is driven by political calculation, personal conviction, or both, the optics are striking. A Democratic governor. A Republican lieutenant. One ticket. The message, intentional or not, is this: governing requires more than ideological purity. It requires the ability to work with people who see the world differently than you do.
That is not a Democratic idea. It is not a Republican idea. It is, as it turns out, a deeply human one — and a profoundly biblical one.
The Christian Call to Unity Is Not the Same as the Call to Compromise Truth
Here is where we must be careful. The word "unity" has been stretched so thin in modern discourse that it has nearly lost its shape. It is used to silence dissent. It is used to demand conformity. It is used as a political weapon dressed in the language of peace.
Biblical unity is nothing like that.
"Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." — Ephesians 4:3
Paul's instruction to the church at Ephesus was not a call to dissolve conviction. It was a call to bind genuine diversity together under something higher than personal preference — the Spirit of God. The unity Paul describes is costly. It requires humility. It requires the willingness to see another image-bearer as worthy of dignity, even when you disagree profoundly.
This distinction matters enormously when Christians engage with politics. Supporting cooperation between people of opposing parties is not the same as abandoning moral conviction. It is not compromise on truth to acknowledge that your political opponent is also made in the image of God. It is not weakness to believe that governance — imperfect, human, temporal governance — sometimes requires working with people unlike yourself.
The danger for Christians is not in appreciating cross-party cooperation. The danger is in baptizing any political arrangement as the will of God — in attaching the sacred to the partisan.
Polarization Is a Spiritual Problem, Not Just a Political One
Let's be honest about what is actually happening in American political culture. The rage is not primarily about policy anymore. Policy disagreements are ancient and manageable. What has metastasized is something deeper — a tribal contempt, a refusal to grant basic good faith to those on the other side. People are not just voting differently. They are treating political difference as a moral category. As evidence of evil.
Christians should recognize this immediately for what it is. It is idolatry. When a political identity becomes so central to a person's sense of self, so load-bearing to their identity, that they cannot imagine the humanity of someone who votes differently — something has gone wrong at the level of the soul. The party has become the god. The platform has become the scripture. The tribe has become the church.
This is not a left-wing problem. It is not a right-wing problem. It is a human problem, which means it is a problem that lives inside every one of us, including the people filling seats in Bible-believing churches every Sunday morning.
Arizona's political moment is small in the grand sweep of history. But it is a mirror. What does it reveal about what we actually believe about unity? About the image of God in people we disagree with? About our capacity to hold conviction without contempt?
Civic Virtue Is a Form of Christian Witness
The early church did not have voting rights. They did not shape legislation. And yet the New Testament is saturated with instructions about how believers should conduct themselves as citizens — with honor, with prayer for leaders, with a visible difference in the way they treated power and authority.
Peter tells scattered believers living under an empire hostile to their faith to "live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God." The civic life of a Christian is a form of witness. How you talk about politicians. How you engage with people who hold opposing views. Whether your public posture reflects the grace that has been shown to you — all of it preaches something.
What does it preach when Christians are among the most vicious voices in political discourse? What does it say about the transforming power of the gospel when our social media feeds are indistinguishable from those of people who have never opened a Bible?
Civic virtue — patience, honest dealing, genuine respect for the dignity of opponents, the willingness to hold complexity without collapsing into rage — is not optional for the Christian. It is woven into the fabric of what it means to be salt and light in a broken world.
What Arizona Asks of Us
We are not here to endorse Governor Hobbs' choice. We are not here to celebrate John Giles or assign him virtue simply because he crossed an aisle. Political moves are political moves. They carry mixed motives and uncertain outcomes like every other human endeavor.
But the conversation this moment opens is worth entering seriously. A culture that cannot imagine cooperation across difference is a culture in deep trouble. And the church — if it is willing — has something to offer that no political party can manufacture. It has a theology of the other. It has a doctrine of the image. It has a Savior who crossed every conceivable boundary to reconcile enemies to God and to one another.
The question Arizona puts on the table is not really about one governor or one running mate. It is about whether we still believe that people are more than their politics. Whether we can hold our convictions firmly enough to act on them without holding our opponents cheaply enough to dehumanize them.
For the Christian, the answer has already been given. It was given on a cross. It was given to enemies. It was given at great cost.
The only question left is whether we will live like it.