by Charlie Bell, Fellow in Public Theology and Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, Associate Vicar of St John the Divine, Kennington, in the Diocese of Southwark, and member of the LLF Vocations and Ministry Working Group
The truly horrible killing – in front not only of thousands of young people but also of his own family – of Charlie Kirk yesterday evening must rank amongst the most viscerally disturbing and potentially dangerous events of the past year. It is not, of course, the only example of gun violence – indeed, not even the only example of gun violence in the US yesterday – and nor is it the only killing, or attempted killing, this year of a figure in the US political arena, yet already it is clear that its impact on public life will be profound. At the time of writing, we know neither the identity nor the motive of the killer, yet it is already being described as a piece of political violence – and sadly, given the state of politics across the Atlantic and even on this side, too, there may be outrage but there is rather less surprise. We have sunk to this level, and we know it.
The political response to these kinds of acts of violence is often mixed, but mainstream politicians – indeed, those who genuinely represent the mainstream perspectives of much of the population who sit somewhere around the centre ground – will usually see times like this as an opportunity to speak of, and genuinely strive for, unity. For all we disagree – sometimes vehemently and fundamentally – actualised violence in the public square is universally acknowledged as something to be avoided at all costs. It is through words that we disagree, and it is through democratic forms of accountability that we challenge and protest actions taken. A gun is never – and can never – be the answer to our differences. That way lies ruin and destruction, and, in the end, nobody benefits from cycles of violence – it is a path to civil unrest and devastation. This has been the accepted narrative through most of our recent history.
Yet something seems to have changed, for the worse.
As I say, as yet we do not know the identity of the killer, or their motive. Yet already we have heard a clear line being pushed by a number of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic that lay the blame for this on ‘the left’. In doing so, they play a very dangerous game indeed.
Trump was first out the gates blaming the ‘radical left’. Musk, Yusuf, Harwood, Jenrick, and many more, followed him. X is full of sanctimonious blaming of ‘the left’ for fomenting this political violence. Others, like Nigel Farage, have followed, with allusions to ‘free speech’ which intentionally leave little to the imagination and suggest that there is a grand conspiratorial plot by their opponents to meet calm speech with violence. Indeed, the pervasive and rather vague language of ‘martyrdom’ is as disturbing as it is bizarre – and plain wrong.
This does three deeply pernicious things. The first is to – again – blatantly ignore the impact of gun ownership, and the accompanying ‘God given right’ philosophy, on the potential for political violence in the US. The second is to blatantly ignore the swathe of political violence committed against those who would identify as left wing over the past year, pretending into existence an inevitable link between left-wing politics and violence, and further escalating the rhetoric that politicises and makes more dangerous an already tinder-box situation. And the third? In the process of doing this, to try to divert the public conversation from the actual rot at the heart of much of our contemporary public life and its source – cheap, amoral populism. It is to employ what is a horrifying human tragedy, with its structural underpinning, to further political game-playing and propaganda.
Nobody in politics, from whatever wing, is immune from criticism in the way our public debate has been debased. This is not, really, a question of right and left, but rather, ultimately, of good faith and bad faith, whatever the political philosophy. There are plenty of right-wing and left-wing politicians who are able to clearly state this, and there are right-wing and left-wing identifying politicians and political commentators who instead choose to fan the flames of anger and division rather than seek for common ground. Yet our political ground – here and in the US – seems to have shifted to favour those who offer easy answers and lazy stereotyping in place of serious and calm debate. Politics has become less concerned with the common good, and instead tends towards authoritarian and totalitarian modes of behaving that all too easily take hold in our public life.
And whilst it is true that words do not kill, we must surely not be naïve and imagine that our rhetoric has no impact, whoever we are, and however important we believe our cause to be. As cheap populism of all forms has grown in recent years, we have sat increasingly lightly to the truth and made use of caricature and lies to convince and convict others of our point of view. We have bought into the idea that ‘to win at all costs’ is the most legitimate of political philosophies, and forgotten the simple idea that telling the truth, and engaging with actual people and their ideas rather than caricatures and easy targets is the way to build a stable and secure democracy.
We have, in the process, allowed bad actors to increasingly influence our debate, believing in and promoting the lie that saying disgusting and demeaning things ‘nicely’ and with a sense of ‘politeness’ is some form of hallowed civil public debate. We have similarly increasingly accepted the idea that ‘free speech’ in a democratic society comes with absolutely no responsibility – that disinformation, lies, dehumanising language are all important to preserve as part of ‘healthy debate’. Those who speak into public spaces cannot, surely, have carte blanche to stir up hate and even violence, however carefully and casuistically they say these things, and however much they smile at the same time in a performance of ‘reasonableness’.
At the same time, we have failed to pay proper attention to power dynamics and the unequal impact of our words on others, imagining that when we devalue another’s humanity it is all part of ‘the debate’. Not all words are equal, and nor is their impact – yet this simple and self-evident truth is all-too-frequently ignored. We ignore the fact that if we keep hacking away at another person with our rhetoric – and, indeed, with our actions – we cause deep wounds that dehumanise both them and us. In our pursuit of the mythical ‘freedom of speech’, we fail to remember that another key watchword of healthy democracies is the affording of dignity to all its members.
Yet we seem unable to join the dots between intentional divisiveness, the dehumanising of opponents, the deserved and undeserved loss of trust in the institutions that have held us together, the fomenting of violent disagreement, the trivialising and normalising of violence in the public square (thinking, indeed, of January sixth), and the increasing preponderance of violence itself. It is – frankly – killing us.
So how might the church speak into this space – especially an Established church like the Church of England? What might we do to try to play our part in reviving the best of public life and in banishing those things that lead to this kind of devastation?
The first thing we must do, surely, is get our own house in order. Our public debates – the way we have spoken to and about each other, and spoken of each other’s ideas, has been a disgrace far too much of the time. Our willingness to scapegoat others, to see an issue and not a person, to blame someone else rather than take responsibility for our own actions and words, appears endless, and similarly our determination to debate in bad faith means our ‘good disagreement’ is nothing of the sort. At its best, the church – particularly an Established church – should, surely, be a place of genuine discussion and dignified (in its truest sense) debate. Imagine an Established church that gave the space for opposing points of view to meet, not only to find common ground but to more carefully understand and outline the differences that remain. Imagine a Church of England that could be not only an example of how things might be done, but the agora in which they actually are done.
Yet we must not fool ourselves that this will happen overnight. Not only do we need to be a place that practices what we preach, but we need to find a way of speaking into public debate that dials down the rhetoric and promotes free and dignified speech in which the humanity of the other is our first concern. This will mean naming power imbalances and pointing out where cheap populism would rather scapegoat than engage. It means, for example, making clear that the question of immigration is not as simple as some wish to make out, and that simplistic answers will therefore not do. It means committing to listening as much as to speaking, and to recommitting to the idea of being accountable to one another as part of what it means to be human. It means respecting the other enough to really hear them, and building a society in which we can expect that from the other, too, where we might once again find trust in the public square.
This is a hard ask, and it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. Indeed, as much as the church wants to think of itself as a place and agent of reconciliation, let’s not be hasty and imagine we are at that stage yet. Perhaps the Church of England’s vocation, right now, is instead to call the nation to a period of reflection – one in which we need to share. This is not some nice-sounding but fruitless exercise – it is painful, and self-examining, and purposeful. This reflection is an active process – one where we have to be willing to attend to and address the rot, before we dare rebuild upon it. It is to call the nation – those of good will – to an active willingness to reject cheap populism and instead choose graceful truth-seeking, and be changed in the process. It is to reorient our public life. Perhaps, simply, this is the church’s vocation in such a time as this. If the Body of Christ cannot do it, then who can?
And with God, nothing is impossible.