In the world of “believe it or not,” the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently rejected a statement condemning “the destruction of property and the infliction of bodily violence against political opponents.” Yep, you heard this right. A statement condemning violence based on “a growing number of personal threats to public officials” could only muster 25% support within this leading Calvinist denomination, even though the alleged attempted assassination of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh had just occurred.
A pastor from Florida with Cuban roots argued that it was sometimes appropriate to “pick up the sword.” Others appealed to the American Revolution saying the statement “would condemn the very existence of this country,” adding “it’s important to be very, very clear about this in the kind of country we live right now, with a … growing tendency for an overextended federal power.”
Fast forward five months and we recently witnessed a brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi by an attacker wanting “the truth” and threatening to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps if she lied to him. Not finding Nancy home, he used his hammer to beat Paul severely and fracture his skull. In the charging documents, he told the police “much like the American Founding Fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender.”
it wasn’t long before the inevitable lies and conspiracy theories showed up in my social media feeds. I saw an image of a pair of underwear with a hammer, and the caption said, “Get it now: Paul Pelosi Halloween costume.” Another photo showed a hammer attached to a person’s belt with the caption “Open carry in San Francisco.”
Self-proclaimed Christians were among those who posted these photos and some were even friends. Several of them follow Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point Faith who responded to the attack by saying, “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.”
Thankfully true Christianity was on display too. Like the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bart Barber, who said “I’m praying tonight for Paul Pelosi, and I invite Southern Baptists to join me in doing so.” “What happened to him is reprehensible.”
The Commonality of Violence
The tolerance or even welcoming of violence by many in the Christian faith isn’t a one-off event or a case of a few bad apples or something contained to a particular Calvinist denomination. Of the 75% of white evangelicals believing that God has granted America a special role in human history, 27% of these agree that violence might be necessary in order to save America.
Violence against abortion clinics are on the rise with assaults up 128% in 2021. The January 6 insurrection event showcased people using Christianity to justify their attack against a Constitutional process. There, Ali Alexander, the founder of the Stop the Steal movement, said that if Biden became president, he and his supporters would return to “occupy D.C. full of patriots,” adding, “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.”
Following the 2022 mid-term election, Nick Fuentes, a self-described Christian conservative and American nationalist, concluded that he and his followers are in the minority. His remedy: a “dictatorship” “to take control of the media or take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe.”
To be fair and without appealing to a both-sides type of whataboutism, violence on the other side also contributes to this poisonous atmosphere of hate and distrust. Following the leaking of the draft Supreme Court Dobbs opinion, violence against anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups became widespread, even occurring in areas close to home in Seattle. Pregnancy centers in Kirkland, Lynwood, and Everett Washington associated with Care Net of Puget Sound were vandalized in July of this year. So were churches in Bellevue and Olympia Washington.
Stochastic Terrorism
Ever heard of the term “stochastic terrorism?’ Todd Morely from the Small Wars Journal calls it “a quantifiable relationship between seemingly random acts of terrorism and the perpetuation of hateful rhetoric in public discourse, accompanied by catastrophizing and fear generation in media sources.”
David French uses the analogy of a funnel to explain the link from widespread hateful or apocalyptic speech to violent action. “At each new step from rhetoric to action, engagement narrows and intensifies. Lots of people might “just” talk. Fewer people actually act. But the more people who talk, the more people who act. We can easily recognize this reality in extremist movements. They rarely spring from healthy communities.”
According to an October 2022 NBC News poll, roughly 80% of both Democrats and Republicans see the other side as enemies, posing a threat, if not stopped, of destroying American as we know it. Kalmoe and Mason’s February 2020 polling found that 11 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans agreed that it was at least “a little” justified to kill opposing political leaders to advance their own political goals. Then in February 2021, the same polling team found a fifth of Republicans and 13 percent of Democrats—or more than 65 million people—believed immediate violence was justified.
We Can Make A Difference
As I’ve written before, I grew up learning scripture. Mom would post verses on the refrigerator door and then hold us captive each mealtime for memorization drills. Sometimes we memorized whole chapters and other times selected verses. I can still remember many of my ABCs, a set of verses where the first word of each verse started with one of the letters of the alphabet.
Her favorite verses and ones she’d routinely test us on dealt with behavior. At the top of the list were verses such as Ephesians 4:32 “and be ye kind one to another…” and Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure…”
Another fav was Psalms 19:4 “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” She encouraged us to recite this verse daily, a practice I still often do today. Because Lord knows I need to. I make mistakes each day, saying words and thinking thoughts that “miss the mark.”
This holiday season, lets focus on “keeping Christ in “Christian” rather than the culture keeping Christ in “Christmas.” May the “words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart” reflect the Christ in us as we “put off” the works of the flesh such as outrage and division and be people outwardly known by the fruits of the spirit.
Let it be through us that future surveys will show a drop in the rhetoric about enemies and a rise in kindness and generosity. That we, the church, might be known as peacemakers in these highly polarized times, faithful to “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”