After Political Violence, How Do We Love Our Enemies?

I was shocked and horrified when I heard the news on Saturday that someone had attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania.

Despite other recent instances of political violence, such as January 6 or the 2022 attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, a current or former president hasn’t been wounded or killed since the attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981 — which can feel like a very distant era of American politics. Many of us are feeling fear, disorientation, or anger at this moment. As Christians, we need to meet perilous feelings with a resolve to follow Jesus and remember his teachings: The truth will set us free, and we must learn to love our enemies.

Denouncing political violence

After Saturday, our first commitment should be to denounce all forms of political violence and pray for the victims and their families. I hope you will join me in continuing to pray for the healing and full recovery of the victims who were wounded on Saturday, including Trump, and comfort for the family of Corey Comperatore, who was killed.

I’ve been encouraged that Saturday’s shooting and political violence have been unequivocally denounced by political and religious leaders across the political spectrum. Political violence is a dire breach of our faith and civic values. It must be a bright line in our politics that we never cross. But despite the feeling of abnormality of an attempted presidential assassination, it’s important we remember how violence (including political violence) has already traumatized so many and become such a sobering feature of our public life.

Fundamentally, when I talk about “political violence,” I mean the act of mediating political disagreement with violence, which can include terrorism, assassinations, coups, riots, and more. The reality is that we have been dealing with political violence for quite some time, from the incidents I mentioned already to the shooting at the Congressional baseball practice in 2017 that wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011, and more.

Among politicians and media members, there has also been a lot of conversation about the need to “lower the temperature” in our politics, a hope and goal that I share. Since Saturday, I have tried to engage in my own soul-searching about whether any of my rhetoric has been overly strident or vitriolic. I encourage you to do the same. But as people of faith, we can’t just consider this goal from a political lens; we must think about it through the lens of our faith.

In this moment, we must hold fast to two injunctions from Jesus’ teaching: “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32) and the command to love our enemies. “Lowering the temperature” must not lead to false equivalency, become a pretense to censor those who denounce violent rhetoric, or cause us to shrink away from defending our democracy and the most vulnerable.

Loving our enemies

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). Jesus uses one of his common rhetorical techniques in which he contrasts what is common knowledge or law with his new standard. In this case, raising the bar of loving our neighbors — which is already a tall order — to the even higher standard of loving our enemies. 

Politically, the word “enemies” can seem to reinforce a toxic us-versus-them mentality that is already so pervasive. I prefer to think of those who have opposing views or beliefs as opponents rather than enemies. But if we are honest with ourselves, purported all-or-nothing, existential political stakes make political opponents increasingly feel like enemies. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center finds that “[d]eeply negative views” of the opposing party are about three times as likely now as they were 30 years ago. Instead of disagreeing with political opponents, the majority of Americans now have contempt toward them. This is the territory of seeing them as “enemies,” the same people Jesus calls us to love.

Loving our enemies means we strongly denounce evil and unjust systems, words, and actions while we refuse to dehumanize or demonize those who are promoting them. For Christians, loving our enemies is made possible by seeking to find the image of God in each person.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. captured this ethic in a sermon in which he says that, “within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good.”

“When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it,” King preached. “And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls ‘the image of God,’ you begin to love him in spite of.”

How do we strike this balance of truthfully criticizing the positions of political adversaries while not demonizing or vilifying them, and, indeed, loving them? Paul offers guidance in Romans 12:14-21, when he advises “do not repay anyone evil for evil … If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

To put it in modern terms: I want to keep Americans who both do and don’t believe in gun control safe from gun violence. I want everyone in the country to have access to good and affordable health care, regardless of their views on Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act. And I will ardently defend the right of someone with whom I disagree on every single issue to cast their vote in a free, fair, and safe election.

Praying for those who persecute us and overcoming evil with good are antithetical to the politics of retribution that have become far too prevalent in our discourse. While I am fearful this shooting may inflame a spirit of retribution and revenge, I am hopeful it may do the opposite. In their speeches at the Republican National Convention this week, I hope that Trump and his allies disavow their former rhetoric of retribution against his enemies.

A spirit of truth-telling

The shooting cannot deter our firm commitment to truth-telling in a spirit and ethic of love. While I desperately want to see this horrific moment inspire real and lasting change in the tenor and tone of our politics, this requires much more than simple calls for unity. We can truthfully criticize the substance and implications of dangerous rhetoric and policies without demonizing those who advance or agree with them.

It is disingenuous and hypocritical that some Republican politicians and right-wing Christians are already blaming the rhetoric of the Left or Democrats for what happened on Saturday, while simultaneously calling for less polarized rhetoric. For example, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, posted on Saturday, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Those of us from across the political spectrum who have consistently and clearly denounced anti-democratic trends and forces in our politics are not imagining or inventing Trump’s well-documented past actions, current rhetoric, and future plans. They have been seriously anti-democratic in nature and have often helped to normalize political violence. Just because many within the GOP and the “Make America Great Again” movement have ignored, rationalized, or tolerated this rhetoric doesn’t erase the ongoing danger it poses to our body politic and democracy.

We also need to be honest about the role of guns in American society and their terrifying ability to turn political disagreements into deadly violence. These weapons of war can transform political rallies, school classrooms, shopping malls, churches, and any other public setting into sites of horrific massacres.

As Christians who believe democracy, while flawed, is the best political system to protect everyone’s dignity and chance to thrive, we can never shy away from telling the truth about actions and rhetoric that undermine the rule of law, demonize or scapegoat the “other,” or are authoritarian in nature. We cannot let a horrific event like Saturday’s shooting silence us when we see anti-democratic behavior in the future.

Civic discipleship and peacekeeping

While the reality and future threat of political violence can leave us feeling powerless, now is the time to convince people that they have agency to change the tenor and character of our politics.

In recent months, I have worked with a broad group of theologically and politically diverse Christian leaders to make the argument for civic discipleship. We firmly believe that if more American Christians — parishioners, pastors, and politicians — embraced its principles, we would transform our churches and society.

Our “Call to Civic Discipleship” lists among its commitments that Christians in politics should exhibit the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23) — as well as seeking truth, being firm but civil, being principled but not ideological, confronting violence with nonviolence, and more.

One way to build a more peaceful society in the turbulent months ahead is to get involved in ensuring we have a free, fair, and safe election. Sojourners is co-leading trainings for poll chaplains and peacekeepers, so they can be a moral presence at polling places across the country this fall through Faiths United to Save Democracy. This initiative is one way that people of faith all over the U.S. can help ensure that all eligible voters, no matter which candidates they support, can vote in a free, fair, and safe election.

We can also look to organizations that are focused on building bridges between voters on opposite sides of the United States’ political and cultural divides — groups like Braver Angels and the One America Movement. These groups and so many others help encourage and facilitate encounters that can help us break out of our social bubbles and hear from and build relationships with people of goodwill who have very different perspectives on politics.

By modeling our commitment to truth and embracing a commitment to love our enemies, we can counter political violence with a faithful witness that builds the Beloved Community and a more just and inclusive democracy.