A Theological Audit of The After Party — Part II

When the “How” Replaces the “What”

5 Key Takeaways:

• The abortion example shows the method in practice.
  When discussion shifts toward the substance of abortion, facilitators are instructed to redirect participants back to relationships and political differences.
• The goal does not have to be changing doctrine.
  A Christian can keep the same beliefs while becoming less willing to act on them publicly when confrontation is framed as un-Christlike.
• The funding matters because the intent is clear.
  New Pluralists openly described The After Party as a way to influence conservative evangelicals by emphasizing the “how” of politics over policy outcomes.
• The real work happens upstream.
  Major foundations are investing in the values, habits and assumptions that shape political behavior before those beliefs ever become votes, activism or policy.
• The larger concern is neutralizing conviction.
  If Christians can be persuaded that acting forcefully on biblical beliefs is divisive or spiritually suspect, those beliefs do not need to be changed—they only need to be weakened in practice.

In Part I, I examined The After Party’s central premise that Christians should move away from focusing so heavily on the political “what”—parties, candidates and policy outcomes—and toward the Christian “how” of humility, hope, relationship and peacemaking.

Christians should behave like Christians in politics. That is not the dispute. The problem comes when the “how” is elevated in a way that makes the “what” appear spiritually secondary, even when the issue itself carries profound moral consequences.

The After Party’s own facilitator materials provide a useful example of what that looks like in practice. The issue they chose is abortion.

When the Conversation About Abortion Becomes About Abortion

The After Party’s 2025 Facilitator Guide includes a story about two people with differing views on abortion who become friends. The point is to show that relationships can survive serious political disagreement.

But on page 5, facilitators are told that if participants begin sharing their own views on abortion, they should “gently bring it back” to the larger theme of maintaining relationships despite political differences.

Good Faith’s Resources page confirms that this guide is provided for both its six-week group curriculum and shorter workshop format.

For Christians who believe unborn children possess inherent human dignity, abortion is not simply a political disagreement to be managed relationally. The dispute is over whether an innocent human life may legally be ended and whether government has an obligation to protect that life.

Christians may disagree over political strategy, legislation or persuasion. But once abortion becomes merely the backdrop for a lesson about getting along with someone who disagrees, the moral substance of the disagreement has been subordinated to the relationship.

I am not arguing that The After Party is trying to make evangelicals pro-choice. The material does not establish that. What it does establish is the curriculum’s method: when the political “what” begins taking over the discussion, the facilitator is instructed to steer participants back toward the relational “how.”

That distinction is the entire point.

You Don’t Have to Change the Belief to Change Its Consequence

A political-formation program does not have to change a Christian’s doctrine to change that Christian’s political behavior.

A believer can still say abortion is wrong while becoming convinced that fighting aggressively for legal protection of unborn children places too much faith in politics. A Christian can maintain a biblical understanding of sex while deciding that resisting gender ideology publicly is needlessly divisive. Parents can still believe they have God-given authority over their children while becoming reluctant to confront institutions that undermine it because confrontation itself has been associated with tribalism, anger or misplaced hope.

The doctrine remains. What changes is what the Christian believes the doctrine requires him to do.

The After Party’s own FAQ says pastors should spiritually form their people politically, but that this formation should focus primarily on the “How” of politics rather than particular candidates, parties or policy positions.

There is a biblical truth here. Winning does not justify sinful means. Christians cannot lie, slander, hate or excuse wickedness because they believe the outcome is important.

But the reverse is equally true: behaving rightly does not make the outcome morally irrelevant.

As I noted in Part I, Scripture does not separate godly character from moral action. That principle matters even more once we see The After Party’s framework applied to abortion. Biblical faithfulness governs how Christians engage, but it also requires them to respond when something is actually wrong. The prophets identified sin, confronted it and demanded righteousness.

The practical point is simple: Christian conduct matters, but so does what we are confronting. Sometimes faithfulness itself requires confrontation.

Which Brings Us Back to the Money

This is why Megan Basham’s original investigation into The After Party’s funding remains indispensable.

Her January 2024 First Things investigation, “Follow the Money to the After Party,” traced the foundations and organizations financing the project and examined why large philanthropies were interested in Christian political formation aimed heavily at evangelical audiences.

The After Party has rejected the suggestion that its funders control the curriculum. Its FAQ says funders do not create or vet the material, and its response to Basham likewise insisted that donors had no input into course content.

Fine. But donor control and donor intent are not the same thing.

A foundation does not have to write the curriculum for its reason for funding the curriculum to matter.

New Pluralists was remarkably direct about that reason. In its own description of The After Party, it said the project would “influence conservative Evangelicals” with a biblically grounded message that the “how” of political engagement matters more to God than the “what” of policy outcomes. It specifically referenced battleground-state evangelicals, churches, Christian colleges and local networks.

That is not an accusation from a critic. That is the funder describing the intended effect of the project.

What Did the Money Build?

The After Party’s own response to Basham explains that funding helped pay for the professionally produced video curriculum, website, social-media implementation and a “national distribution infrastructure.”

That is significant because The After Party is not merely a few people sharing opinions online. Institutional money helped create the infrastructure to professionally produce, market and distribute a political-formation curriculum nationally while making it free for churches to use.

Good Faith says The After Party has now equipped more than 300,000 people and offers the program individually, as a six-week group study or as a condensed workshop.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation alone awarded Redeeming Babel $600,000 in 2024 for core support of The After Party. Packard described the purpose as promoting healthy political engagement and democratic values among American Christians and evangelicals.

That does not mean Packard wrote the curriculum. It means something much simpler: major philanthropic institutions considered the political formation of American Christians important enough to finance.

“Upstream” Is Where the Real Work Happens

The Hewlett Foundation provides useful context for why.

Hewlett funds projects involving U.S. democracy, climate, reproductive health, gender equity and other public-policy priorities. Those positions do not prove that Hewlett inserted its policy preferences into The After Party.

What matters more is how Hewlett describes its civic strategy.

In May 2026, Hewlett announced $19 million in grants aimed at strengthening civic participation and reducing polarization. The foundation described civic culture as sitting “upstream” from policymaking and said that healthier civic culture helps create progress on issues ranging from education and economic opportunity to climate and technology.

That is exactly why political formation matters.

Policy is downstream from values. Before people vote, organize, protest or demand legislation, they decide what deserves urgency, what constitutes justice, when confrontation is justified and whether pursuing a political outcome is faithful or excessive.

Change those assumptions and you can change political behavior without ever changing a person’s stated beliefs.

This Is Bigger Than Left Versus Right

The significance of New Pluralists is not that establishment institutions from different political camps sometimes work together. Regular readers already understand that dynamic. What matters here is what they are working together to shape.

New Pluralists openly describes its mission as building an ecosystem that makes pluralism part of American culture by funding organizations, connecting practitioners and influencing the ideas and practices governing how people engage one another.

In the context of The After Party, the practical effect is difficult to miss. When Christians are repeatedly taught that political confrontation, moral certainty and insistence on outcomes are less Christlike than unity, relationship and de-escalation, some will begin laying down the public consequences of their own biblical convictions in the name of “oneness.”

They may still believe the same doctrines privately. They simply become less willing to act on them when doing so creates conflict.

That is the real power of working “upstream.” You do not have to change what Christians believe if you can change what they believe faithfulness requires them to do about it.

The Broader Depolarization Industry

The After Party is also not operating in a vacuum. There is now a much broader institutional effort aimed specifically at reducing political polarization inside faith communities.

One America Movement, for example, works directly with churches using psychology, neuroscience, identity research and conflict-prevention methods to combat what it calls toxic polarization. Its programming includes a workshop titled “Creating Change with Positive Peer Pressure,” which teaches leaders how social norms shape behavior and how those norms can be intentionally changed inside homes, churches and communities.

Its Division Assessment asks whether church members are willing to challenge “extreme views” within their own group and warns that false polarization can cause people to see political conflict as a battle between good and evil.

There is nothing wrong with rejecting false information or refusing to demonize every political opponent. But Christianity actually does contain categories for good and evil, truth and falsehood, righteousness and wickedness. A framework designed to lower polarization therefore cannot escape the question of who gets to define “extreme” and when moral conflict is legitimate.

When organizations outside the local church are intentionally helping congregations reshape their political and social norms, the authority used to define those norms matters.

The Exhausted Christian Is Particularly Susceptible

This is also why The After Party’s appeal to an “exhausted majority” matters.

Christians are tired of political ugliness. I am too. We should reject hatred, dishonesty, cruelty and political idolatry. We should love our enemies, control our tongues and refuse to justify sinful behavior simply because our side might win.

But exhaustion has a predictable effect: people who are desperate for relief from conflict become increasingly willing to equate peace with the absence of confrontation.

Biblically, those are not the same thing.

Peacemaking is not passivity. Love sometimes requires correction. Justice requires action. Faithfulness can create conflict precisely because truth has consequences.

The Christian alternative to political ugliness is not silence, accommodation or pretending every substantive disagreement is merely relational. It is learning to confront what is wrong without becoming wrong ourselves.

That is harder than lowering the temperature, but it is also much closer to the biblical standard.

What Is Really Being Formed?

Megan Basham followed the money behind The After Party. Following that money through the church doors shows why the curriculum itself deserves equal scrutiny.

The larger concern is not necessarily that Christians will emerge believing different doctrines. It is that they may emerge believing their doctrines demand less of them publicly.

A Christian can continue believing abortion is wrong, marriage has a biblical definition, parents possess God-given authority and government has moral obligations—while becoming increasingly reluctant to fight for any of those things because doing so feels divisive, tribal or insufficiently Christlike.

At that point the theology may remain unchanged on paper, but its political consequence has been substantially weakened.

Humility is biblical. So are unity, hope, love and peacemaking. But those virtues must be defined by Scripture rather than expanded until courage looks like arrogance, conviction looks like extremism and confrontation looks inherently un-Christlike.

The After Party explicitly says it is not a Bible study and that its focus is politics. Yet it invokes Scripture to define faithful Christian political engagement, encourages pastors to use it for political formation, and has benefited from substantial institutional funding that helped place those ideas inside churches across the country.

That places a serious responsibility on pastors before they bring it through their church doors.

The test is not whether the curriculum sounds nicer than the political culture Christians are tired of. It is not whether its creators are sincere. And it is certainly not whether humility, hope, unity and peacemaking are biblical virtues. They are.

The test is whether the definitions being attached to those virtues—and the political obligations being drawn from them—are faithful to the whole counsel of Scripture.

Because if Christians can be persuaded that acting forcefully on their biblical convictions is itself somehow less Christlike, their beliefs do not have to be changed.

They only have to be neutralized.

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