American Christians should take a lesson from Saint Patrick this campaign cycle. Shrill calls to annihilate the enemies of America have gained a lot of traction in certain corners of presidential politics. Sadly, many so-called Christians, especially white self-identified Evangelicals, are listening.
Supposed Christians have flocked to support Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, as Institute for Christian Studies Professor Gideon Strauss noted for Providence Magazine, a project of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Both Trump and Cruz have engaged in hateful rhetoric aimed at the Islamic State.
Strauss summarized one particularly vile example. Trump has repeated a fabricated story about an “American general executing Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pig blood as inspirational for the future of American foreign policy.” That’s not to mention how Trump also endorsed committing war crimes by killing families of terrorists.
Cruz, too, is guilty of spewing similar bile, as Strauss highlighted. “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out,” Cruz claimed, a sentiment he repeated regularly on the campaign trail. (Coincidentally, besides the troubling ethics of this proposal, top military commanders said carpet bombing wouldn’t work.)
Now let me be clear. I wholeheartedly oppose the Islamic State. I affirm that the U.S. government has the right – moreover, the duty – to defend Americans. However, I believe the actions Trump and Cruz have called for fall outside traditional Christian Just War teaching. Strauss got it exactly right when he asserted “that many evangelicals have succumbed to a politics of the gut that has little to do with serious moral formation of any kind.”
Christian support for the ruthless machinations by Trump and Cruz is indeed disturbing. Perhaps equally troubling, though more subtle, is what this says about American Christians’ confusion regarding their collective mission. As members of the global Church, we should each take a personal interest in the running of our earthly country, wherever we reside. But this should never supersede our calling to advance God’s Kingdom – our true homeland.
Governments employ war and statecraft to complete their God-given mission of promoting order, while the Church relies on evangelism and discipleship to reconcile the world to God. When self-described Christians become obsessed with mercilessly crushing their enemies through state-sponsored violence, they have lost sight their mission.
That’s where American Christians can learn from Saint Patrick. The patron saint of Ireland, Patrick helped to spread Christianity in the Emerald Isle during the fifth century. Patrick, born in Britain, was captured by Irish marauders as a young man. He was enslaved as a shepherd for six years before escaping his pagan captors. During that time, he came to Christ and developed a deep prayer life.
After achieving freedom, Patrick made a surprising decision. He chose to return as a missionary to pagan Ireland. He didn’t seek vengeance. He didn’t commit violence. He obeyed God’s call to spread the Gospel, spending much of his life sacrificially loving his former captors.
The results of this decision were both incredible and transformational. David Plotz, host of Slate magazine’s “Political Gabfest,” described what God accomplished through Patrick in an article, reprinted for Slate in March 2013:
“He [Patrick] spent his last 30 years there [in Ireland], baptizing pagans, ordaining priests, and founding churches and monasteries. His persuasive powers must have been astounding: Ireland fully converted to Christianity within 200 years and was the only country in Europe to Christianize peacefully. Patrick’s Christian conversion ended slavery, human sacrifice, and most intertribal warfare in Ireland.”
When those who claim to be Christians obsess over destroying their enemies, they’ve embraced the “pagan warrior honor ethos,” to borrow a phrase from Strauss. That places them in closer spiritual proximity to the pagans Patrick evangelized than to Patrick himself.
Yes, Christians have a duty as citizens. We should appropriately support just wars. We should also hold our respective countries accountable to prevent vengeful killing. But what this world needs even more is for the Church to step up to the plate and do what it does best: evangelism and discipleship.
This truth should prompt deep spiritual introspection. Our first and best efforts as Christians should be focused on spreading the Gospel to unbelievers through nonviolent persuasion like Saint Patrick. May we too enlarge God’s Kingdom, produce lasting peace, and promote human flourishing, even among our enemies.
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Photo Credit: Statue of St Patrick near Saul (2) (Albert Bridge) / CC BY-SA 2.0
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