What I Told My Church the Sunday After the Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump
Saturday, July 13, 2024 was a historic day. In many ways, the ultra-availability of information has desensitized people to the impact of important events. When there is an assassination attempt against the President of the United States, whether sitting or former, it is a unique moment in our history that begs context and response. Almost as soon as it happened, I began receiving notifications. I was shocked as I watched the former president grab the side of his head and then dive for cover while shots rang out.
What followed put me more in awe than shock. As the Secret Service surrounded him, Donald Trump told them to wait, pumped his fist in the air, and proclaimed, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It was an amazing display of composure and courage for all who viewed it. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the highest point of reality.” Whatever your opinion of President Trump, at the moment that he was less than an inch away from death, he displayed extraordinary courage and leadership that was inspiring in all of the right ways.
The Necessity of a Robust Pastoral Response
Historic moments of this magnitude should be addressed from the pulpit. They serve as cultural markers of significance. My children were captivated as I explained why someone would do such a thing and why a courageous response was necessary. But what about the church that I am responsible for pastoring? Should I close off the worship service from this event or use it as an opportunity for discipleship? I believe that discipleship is an all-of-life reality, and the pulpit offers a unique opportunity to lead the church in engaging the culture around them. To ignore such an event is akin to burying my head in the sand and giving in to a notion of toxic piety that is irresponsible and a dereliction of duty.
So, this past Sunday morning, after the historic events of Saturday, I stood in the pulpit of my church as a pastor, responsible for shepherding my congregants’ spiritual souls and applying biblical wisdom to their lives in this physical and political world. A portion of my comments were clipped and shared widely on social media. You can watch the clip here.
In this article, I want to reiterate and expand on what I said from my pulpit, as a pastor, to my church. I hope and pray these comments are instructive to other Southern Baptist pastors, particularly, but also to all pastors who are navigating these turbulent times.
I wanted to lead my church to understand two things. First, how should you understand such an event? Second, how should you respond to such an event? Answering both questions necessitated defining what President Trump meant by “Fight!” Other pastors and Christian influencers began to send messages of the responsibility to use this as a clarion call to promote unity in our church services the following day. In considering my response, I found this to be misguided and even dishonest. Yes, this attempt on President Trump’s life served as an example of how divided our nation is. No, this does not mean that Christians should respond by seeking common ground with those who seek violent destruction.
What Are We Fighting For?
Evangelicalism is greatly lacking in the kind of cultural engagement that seeks to confront the surrounding culture with biblical morality. However, pastors are responsible for training their people to engage in culture beyond just evangelism. This is not an either/or premise. Instead, it rejects being reductionistic in our evangelistic approach. Christians need to understand that it is necessary to promote sanctification to the culture at large. This is what Jesus meant in Matthew 5:13 when he called His people “the salt of the earth.” Christians are the preserving agents in an unbelieving culture. Beyond solely proclaiming the facts of the good news of Jesus, we must also display the transformation produced through faith and proclaim the values of Scripture for the sake of a society in need of those changes.
Simply calling for unity when the fruits of societal destruction occur is abdicating the responsibility of being salt and light. It is to be “trampled under people’s feet.” To immediately call for unity would be to ignore the fact that there are wicked forces that are seeking to destroy God’s creation in the present. Rather, we should point to the reality of division and the necessity of Christian influence to preserve what the wicked want to demolish.
Pointing out the division is not destructive. Instead, it can be an impetus to foster real change through Christian witness. We are fighting to preserve society and establish a future founded on God’s Word.
The Left Is Seeking to Destroy
Only one side of the divide seeks to destroy, and it does not help to ignore it by refusing to state it. Our nation is often understood in terms of the Left and the Right. This is a good description of the divide we face and must not ignore. To call for unity in the aftermath of this event is to insist that there is a common ground and foundation that can be agreed upon. This is untrue, and it is unhelpful, at best, to pretend it is.
Isaiah 48:22 informs us that there is no peace for the wicked. Therefore, to state that there can be peace amid wickedness is foolish. Further, there is only one side of the divide in our nation that propagates ideologies that call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). That is the Left. Blanket calls for unity that came the day after this wicked ignores the obvious nature of the divide and obfuscates the reality of radical evil in the soul and society that currently plague our nation.
There is only one side of the divide that wants to codify into the law of the land the murder of innocent children in the womb, seeking to make legal the murder of millions more children. There is only one side that wants to give puberty blockers to minors, striving to make legal gender reassignment surgery for minors without consulting parents. There is only one side seeking to discriminate against the next generation with racist DEI policies. There is only one side seeking to make the proclamation of biblical values hate speech. Only one side is currently destroying the economy, which will hinder legacies to the next generation.
Only one side wants to banish Christians from the public square entirely and, if they got the power, would shutter every church in the nation that preaches the full counsel of God’s Word against the radical LGBT agenda.
And only one side is using violence-inducing rhetoric, backed by the full power and reach of the entire mainstream media establishment, against their political opponents, demonizing them as existential threats to “democracy” and painting them as the reincarnation of Hitler.
We must not pretend that these things are untrue for the sake of civility. Instead, it must become clear to pastors that when wolves are at the gate, the time for asking for unity is over. It is time to prepare for the fight that is to come. The only way unity is possible is through repentance and submission to the morality that still exists within the right. It is vital to remember that fighting for the things that matter will require a nation within which to fight.
The Left wants to destroy this great nation by destroying Christian influence, the nuclear family, our children, and now the lives of individuals who stand in their way. We cannot unite with that.
The Right Is Imperfect But Still Must Win
This is not a blanket endorsement for everything that the Right is or has ever done or promoted. This certainly is not a blank check to ordain the right to carry on without real accountability to conservatism. Instead, this is a reality check. The Right, at least, has a common ground to build a future to recover national greatness according to biblical values. The weakness of the Right is forgetting that it exists to conserve what is good. It does not open the door for great numbers when we seek unity with wickedness. Instead, it diminishes what is right about it in the first place.
For the future of our nation, we must cease to foolishly advocate for some token notion of “unity.” Instead, we must be honest with ourselves and with our people. Now is not the time to bury your head in the sand in order to wait until it is over. Instead, now is the time to fight. The division is not always negative. It is only negative when it devolves into violence. To prevent that from happening, pastors will be required to stand in the gap and at the forefront to prepare our churches to be salt and light in society. We must advocate for what is good, reject what is harmful, and call for the repentance of those who seek to destroy what is good in the fabric of our society.
It is time to steel our spines as pastors in preparation for the cultural engagement ahead.
Yes, there are many failings on the Right in America. But as it stands today, it is the only political apparatus that Christians can have any hope of working with to secure peace for our families and to ensure that we, as Christians, can maintain the freedom to worship, live, and spread the Gospel in America. If the Left were to gain total control of this country, swift and severe persecution of Christians would soon follow. Our children would be at risk. Our churches might be shuttered. Our country would continue to rush headlong down the slippery slope of a moral, cultural, and sexual revolution that will ultimately destroy our nation.
With that in mind, I have no issue rebuffing false equivalencies and misguided calls for unity. This is part of my responsibility as a pastor and a shepherd. It’s time for the members who sit under our preaching, teaching, and care to hear this message without any apologies:
The Right must win.
