The Sica and the Rifle

I disagreed with almost everything Charlie Kirk stood for, from his election fraud conspiracies to his Christian nationalist sentiments. But I wish he were still alive so I could continue to disagree with him. His murder by a sniper at a university campus in Utah yesterday is evidence of an increasingly troubling trend in American political life. As our discourse deteriorates into shouting matches and extreme polarization, the temptation to use violence against our political opponents grows. It appears that the temptation became too great for one person yesterday, and he or she decided to use a bullet instead of a ballot, a bolt-action rifle instead of reasoned debate.

This assassination in Utah is a troubling reminder of 1850s America, when ordinary citizens took to threats and fisticuffs, and the debate about slavery and sectionalism in the halls of Congress went from spirited discourse to a public beat-down in the Senate chamber. It also reminds me of the 50s in Palestine, when a group of assassins called the Sicarii (named for the sica, a dagger they used) started killing public figures known for collaborating with the Roman administration and then slipping away into the Jerusalem crowds. The common denominator in these two historical examples is that within a decade devastating wars broke out—the Great Revolt in the first century and the American Civil War in the nineteenth. I hope and pray that the killing of Charlie Kirk does not portend a similar conflict in our time.

We do not know yet what exactly inspired Wednesday’s assassin to take action with a rifle shot, but we do know that for us Christians violence has no place. When one of his disciples tried to defend him by striking with a sword in Gethsemane, Jesus declared that everyone who takes up the sword will also die by the sword. In other words, once we let the genie of violence out of its bottle, it is impossible to put it back inside, and before long it will come for us. After yesterday’s killing I fear that retaliation will follow, and that the violent response will be incommensurate and indiscriminate. And if no one on either side of the political divide has the courage to forswear violence as a solution, I fear for our nation.

In 2023 Kirk commented on the prevalence of mass shootings in our country. He said, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” That kind of rhetoric is irresponsible and dangerous, as Kirk found out yesterday.

I hope you will join me in praying for Kirk’s wife and two young children, for all the traumatized witnesses of the shooting, for all victims of gun violence in the US (including a school shooting in Colorado this week that was witnessed by the son of one of Sarah’s friends), for our nation as a whole, and for the witness of the church.