Unless you're willing and able to enforce a BDFL stance, I don't think there is actually any alternative.

As soon as people start disagreeing with any choices you make, and it's not well-understood that "what I say goes", you're going to have people who want to try to change how you run things, and that is the definition of politics.

Either you force your own politics on people, or you open yourself up to accepting changes from other people... which is still politics.