If You Can't Beat 'Em, Beat 'Em To Death
Charlie Kirk's Death and the Roots of American Violence
My wife and I got to see Hamilton last night. It was breathtaking. Especially with Leslie Odom Jr. reprising his role as Aaron Burr!
But as the story which the play portrays tells us, it does not end well.
This story of social and political difference in America, from Burr and Hamilton to today, continues to remind us that we believe violence is the only practical solution to our problems.
As the story on stage unfolded, I began to think of the news this week of Charlie Kirk’s death. The death of Minnesota Congresswoman Melissa Hortman and her husband. The deaths of countless African Americans like George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I watched and was grieved.
We often pretend that these acts of socially and politically motivated killings are aberrations of what it truly means to be American. Yet as I watched Leslie Odom Jr. raise a revolver to finally settle his character’s dispute with Hamilton, I couldn’t help but think: this is America working exactly like it’s supposed to work.
Righteous Violence?
A few years back, Drew Gilpin Faust, the historian and former president of Harvard, wrote a piece in the Atlantic explaining the story behind John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and the “Secret Six” who financed the endeavor. Six Northeast Elite from Boston and New York, abolitionists, all convinced that the only path forward was violence, funded John Brown’s raid. These six elites even rationalized their decision to attack a United States armory (prior to the Civil War) as the only or best course of action to see change.
Gilpin-Faust writes,
“As a nation, we are unable to get over John Brown. And as a nation, we have not figured out what violence we will condemn and what we will celebrate. I found myself unspeakably moved as I stood before Nat Turner’s Bible in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. At the same time, I am horrified by the violence of the January 6 rioters and by what I regard as widespread threats to the rule of law. We pride ourselves on being a country with a written Constitution that sets peaceful parameters for government. Yet the Supreme Court established by that Constitution has issued rulings providing that the citizenry may be armed not just for recreational hunting, but with weapons, including assault rifles, that are frequently purchased with an eye toward resisting that very government. Lawmakers walk the floors of the Capitol with pins shaped like AR-15s in their lapels. The rule of law seems historically and inextricably enmeshed in the tolerance—even the encouragement—of violence.”
She goes on to note that even Martin Luther King Jr’s. famous non-violent action approach was contested by Malcom X, who, according to Gilpin-Faust, could claim an American tradition of the ‘right to violence’ to overthrow injustice just as the Secret Six did.
The tension between King and Malcom regarding Brown’s violence was notable:
“But, fittingly, given his defining commitment to nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr. remained silent on Brown. Even as the keynote speaker at a centennial observance of Brown’s raid, King did not mention the man once. The place of violence in the centuries of struggle for Black freedom has been long contested, and by the mid-1960s, King faced growing demands from Black activists urging forceful resistance to white threats and assaults instead of the Gandhian passivity that underpinned his philosophy. Malcolm X regarded Brown as “the only good white the country’s ever had.” The Black Power movement that challenged King’s vision of a Beloved Community could claim deep roots.”
Her article names the fundamental American conundrum quite succinctly.
From the Revolutionary War and the slave trade, to abolition and the Civil War, to January 6, and the killings of Melissa Hortman, Charlie Kirk, and many more, we are a nation founded on violence, and we need to be more honest about the legitimacy that this foundation has in American society.
Yet despite this disturbing reality, Gilpin-Faust does not seem willing to give up the idea that there is such a thing as righteous violence, at least not in this article. Her question:
“how do we determine which violence we will condemn and what we will celebrate,”
Is absolutely fascinating to me.
I’m amazed that there is never a question asked about whether violence should enter the debate at all! It is rather a question of what kind of violence is acceptable and when.
But this is the entire problem.
One person’s righteous violence is another person’s heinous act of bloodshed. One person’s noble cause is another person’s crime against humanity. Who gets to decide which violence is justified? It seems it is only later history, written by the winners of a conflict, that gets to decide who we celebrate and who we demonize. This is far too arbitrary a line to draw in the sand and a constantly moving target based on the tastes of the time.
Violence and Its Ubiquity
There are moments when even Christians in America, whose God said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” seem to celebrate the cause of violence as the only recourse for change. I remember (in my homeschooling days) having a history book as part of our curriculum called “In God We Trust,” which told stories of faithful Christians who had taken a stand for freedom in America.
One of these entries told the story of a clergyman named John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, “The Fighting Parson,” who, during the Revolutionary War, took off his clerical robes during one Sunday sermon to reveal the uniform of an officer in the Army of the Continental Congress. This illustration was drawn in such a glorified way: Muhlenberg gallantly flinging off his clerical robes to reveal “true bravery and courage” underneath. Here was a brave Christian who knew when it was time to stand up for what was right: i.e., participating in a violent revolution.
For anyone born and raised in this country, we cannot seem to escape some version of this violent imagination as sacrosanct. The lure of violence is always nearby to ultimately solve our differences when all else fails.
Even Gilpin-Faust’s description of MLK’s “Gandhian passivity” betrays a belief that there is always a need for violent action at some point because peacemaking is ultimately passive non-action.
This line of thinking is exactly why Charlie Kirk was shot on Wednesday. It is why Melissa Hortman was killed in June. It is why countless lives have been lost in wars both foreign and domestic.
Deeply baked into the DNA of our society is the belief that if we really want change, violence is the answer. If you don’t agree with someone, violence is the answer. If their perspective is gaining momentum and you perceive it to be wrong, violence is the answer.
If you can’t beat ‘em, beat ‘em to death.
Watch, as has happened many times with gun-related deaths, as people begin talking about “one bad egg” or “mental health” issues in relation to this shooter. Some will say they were “disturbed” or “angry with Kirk’s politics,” or “radicalized” through some special process that the rest of us are immune to because “we are a country that embraces free speech.”
Those things could all be at play; more than one thing can be true. But we will not hear calls for us to also consider our national history and repent for our complete and total dependence on violence to solve our problems.
We’ve never known another way, and we need to be honest about that.
Unresolvable conflict with a King? Revolution. Unresolvable issues with indigenous groups? Wipe them out. Unresolvable differences over slavery? Send in John Brown.
Christians and Violence
The question will be asked in reply, “What are we supposed to do, just let things happen?” Or, the question I am particularly sensitive to, “this is easy for a white guy to say whose people have not experienced unprovoked violence at the hands of authorities. Are we supposed to be a doormat?”
No. May it never be.
But violence cannot be considered the only version of ultimate action. That is what states and nations do, but I don’t believe that is what Christians do. I realize that’s not universally accepted, but there is certainly a Christian tradition and precedent for this stretching back to the early church. It is a tradition, I believe to be the most faithful to Jesus’ teaching.
The church has too often seen Jesus’ declaration, “blessed are the peacemakers,” as an optional call to do when it is practical, instead of an enduring supernatural ethic, only possibly in the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ve deemed peacemaking to be the same as passivity and, when push comes to shove, not feasible in a modern society.
The Psalmist writes that “the Nations rage” against the Lord (Psalm 2:1). It is these foundations of violence that I have been addressing here, which are at work in the rage and rebellion described by the Psalmist. Killing another human is rebellion against God, who breathed life into every human body. When one human being decides when another should die or when one nation decides the fate of another, we are in rebellion against God.
In this moment, we are in need of a church that rejects all forms of this rebellion through violence and searches for more creative ways to bring about change. Violence is easy; Peacemaking is the real hard work.
As my friend
has written so well,“While the testimonies of many around us would seem to argue that violence is a last resort, it seems that violence is the seedbed from which our thoughts and actions originate. Are we, as humans, so shaped by the normality and practicality of violence to get things done that we have stopped believing there’s another way?”
Hear me, peacemaking is not passive! Nothing about Dr. King’s (or should I say Rev. Dr. King’s) peacemaking was passive. It was extremely actionable and practical. Further, it was not even primarily “Gandhian” as Gilpin-Faust describes it (though he certainly learned from and was inspired by Gandhi’s work in India).
It was first and foremost Christian because of King’s commitment to the God who, in Jesus, took on the violence of the world in himself, not resisting it with more violence. It is this obedience even unto death that has begun to make all things new in the power of His resurrection. It is out of this vision that what King called “non-violent action” is possible.
The earliest Christians knew this and took up their cross and followed Jesus in the same way, resisting all forms of violence. Christians throughout history have done so on many occasions. But sadly, many Christians believe violence still has its place at some point (After all, we need to be practical).
Until we stop being more American than Christian (to loosely quote Stanley Hauerwas), I don’t think Christians will be able to see another way.
And until Americans are truly willing to name the foundations of violence upon which this country was founded, we can expect more of the same.
I do not say this because I celebrate any kind of violence. I am grieved time and time again by the stories that continue to be reported with what seems to be increasing frequency.
No, I do not say violence will continue because I wish it to, nor because I hope to be right and thus prove my point. I say this because as humans we are incapable of doing anything else but “rage” apart from the Christ whom we often rage against.
Lord Have Mercy