JUST DAYS BEFORE the midterm elections, the Sojourners community reacted with shock, mourning, and fear at the horrific and murderous attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Eleven congregants were killed while observing the Sabbath in the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history.
That this evil act of anti-Semitic terrorism should take place here in the United States is deeply shocking. Yet both U.S. and world history teach us that the poison of anti-Semitism is very real and has deadly consequences. Anti-Semitism is one of the oldest and most persistent forms of bigotry alive in the world today, and Christians—who believe all human beings are created in the image of God—have a duty to name anti-Semitism and confront it at every turn, particularly given the shameful complicity of so many Christians in the Holocaust and other oppression and killing of Jewish people.
This hate crime capped off a horrific week of violence inspired by white supremacist ideology, in which racist and conspiracy theories were openly promulgated on the campaign trail by Donald Trump and amplified by prominent voices in right-wing media and dark web spaces. The attempted murder of critics of the Trump administration by mailing pipe bombs, the killing of two African Americans—Vickie Lee Jones and Maurice Stallard—in a grocery store after a failed attack on a black church, and the massacre of Jews in their synagogue—all were carried out by white supremacist nationalists, who are the greatest terrorist threats in America today.
In his closing election messages, Trump was unashamedly using a political strategy of fear and hate. The violence we have seen cannot be disconnected from the bigoted and hateful words of presidential political rhetoric. When the president proudly called himself “nationalist,” amid such hate and violence, the white nationalists, supremacists, and anti-Semites felt supported and emboldened.
Our hearts were broken as we reached out in love, care, and solidarity to our Jewish friends, colleagues, fellow believers, and citizens. Our faith was offended by these assaults that directly contradict the biblical commands to love and protect our neighbors, and especially to focus on “the other” who is often under attack. Our conscience was seared by the hateful politics that likely will lead to more violence. Words matter, and hateful words lead to violence. At a time of moral crisis, we as people of many faiths will live and love side by side.
DAYS AFTER THE synagogue massacre, a group of interfaith leaders gathered to offer words of consolation, solidarity, and hope and issue a call for prayer. At such a politically volatile time, prayer is not perfunctory but rather one of the most powerful ways to apply our spiritual resources to a national and political emergency.
Rev. James Forbes, who convened us at the gathering, called us to pray for “the transformation of our nation.” Rabbi David Saperstein finished the reading that was interrupted at the Tree of Life synagogue, he said, as a response to the “explosion of hate groups” and “degradation of civil discourse.” He added, “We must never forget that so long as one group can be targeted with hate, no group is safe. ... What has been so extraordinary is how religious communities have arisen after such tragedies have occurred. ... We shall remain united.”
Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner encouraged the connection of faith to our civic duty. “We find our nation today [going] back to oppression, back in a dark place, with hatred and violence on the rise,” she said. “And still we rise, because we are answering the call to refocus our eyes to see even more clearly the image of God in every person.”
Rev. Rob Schenck shared a most powerful testimony. “As an evangelical minister,” he said, “I have every reason to be hopeful, even at times like these. ... And yet in these days I find myself ... filled with regret for having spent 35 years of my career engaging in the kind of inflammatory, vitriolic, contemptuous language that we hear spewed so much today from the highest echelons in our society. ... I never dreamed that the words that I used with such conviction would be turned into the most unspeakable and murderous acts by some of my listeners. But I watched in horror as they were. And so I will carry that as a terrible burden on my conscience for the rest of my life.”
Schenck concluded with a “admonition, a warning to our president, to our elected and appointed officials, even to my fellow religious leaders—the day has now come when your inflammatory, denunciatory, disrespectful, and contemptuous language has been converted into the murder of innocent human beings.” Civic and religious leaders, he said, must take “moral ownership of language and attitudes toward others. May God help us to repent and to ... treat one another with the same respect and acceptance and affirmation that we all long for.”
Jim Wallis is the founder and former president of Sojourners. He is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. His latest book is The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
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