Standing Against Violence:
Bishop Brown’s Response to the Trump rally shooting

The attempted assassination yesterday of former president Donald Trump marks another profoundly sad moment in American history. There is absolutely no justification for this act of violence, and I add my voice to the chorus of Americans of all creeds who condemn this shooting without reservation. I bid your prayers for him and his family; for others hurt, traumatized, or killed in the attack; and for the Secret Service agents and other men and women who are charged daily with the protection of our elected leaders.

As Christians we can draw from deep wells of living water in chaotic moments like this. We turn daily, in times of joy and distress, to the living God whose boundless love is our only model for actually redeeming our nation and our world from its darkest pains. We know, through the life and death of Jesus Christ, that conflict cannot ever be fully and truly resolved with violence but only with the hard face-to-face work of reconciliation. Genuine peace falls upon us when we find the image of God in everyone — especially in those who deeply disagree with us. This work of reconciliation is the foundational calling of you, me, and every baptized Christian everywhere.

Assassinations and attempts to kill our elected leaders, current or former, are the antithesis of reconciliation and, sadly, not new in our nation. Caroline and I were in Buffalo, New York, earlier this week, not far from the site where President McKinley was shot in 1901. McKinley’s killer was attempting to create chaos and drive the country to anarchy. Other assassins have shot presidents and former presidents also believing completely in the righteousness of their cause. They justified the murder of a leader as the only way to bring about the change they desired.

Part of the struggle in American politics has been the temptation in every generation to describe elections in the darkest and most hopelessly apocalyptic terms. In our current election, many Democrats ominously prophesy that American democracy will be ripped to shreds if the “fascist” Trump is elected. Many Republicans ominously prophesy that American prosperity will be ripped to shreds if a “communist” Biden is reelected. Both predictions are cynical, self-serving, and ultimately destructive because they soon reduce one’s political opponent to a caricature of evil. It is one thing to point out the danger you think you see in the policies of an opponent; it is altogether another to claim your opponent is evil. It becomes an easy mental move to go from seeing another person as evil to seeing them as inhuman, and next to justifying their removal by any means possible. Such thinking is not new to 2024, but there is no reason you or I must perpetuate this degenerate logic further.

If you find yourself smearing those with whom you disagree as fascist or communist or with any other demonizing labels fashionable in modern American politics, then I urge you — beg you — to consider that you might be contributing to hopelessness and violence. Choose your candidate and vote, of course! Draw however from the living water of Jesus Christ. Insist in all humility and prayer that your heart and voice will never dehumanize another. Reject the rhetoric and look hard until you see the face of God in everyone. Remember that not all violence is shot from the barrel of a gun. Much violence is also shot straight from the words we choose which refuse to find Christ’s light in the other.