The polarization and partisan infighting of today’s political discourse appear to be signs of impending societal collapse. Yet the American political system has long been marked by intense and even violent disagreement between members of rival parties. Christian conservatives today must learn to accept this turmoil as an outworking of a fallen world and stand for truth while remembering that our political opponents are made in the image of God.
The rivalry between John Adams’ Federalist party and Thomas Jefferson’s Republican party during the 1790s led Adams’ administration to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Acts permitted the imprisonment of anyone who wrote, spoke, or published material that criticized the government or any of its officials. The Republicans responded by arguing that the states had the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional.
The political crisis of the 1850s, brought on by growing disagreement over slavery, created sharp contention between members of the Democrat party (who tended to be pro-slavery) and those of the Republican party (who tended to be anti-slavery). In 1856, South Carolina representative Preston Brooks went so far as to beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner unconscious on the floor of the Senate. Less than five years later, the southern states seceded from the Union, plunging the nation into a bloody civil war.
During the turbulent 1960s, violent protests and riots broke out over numerous political issues, including the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Militant activist groups emerged as the new realm of identity politics grew stronger. Many feared that the social fabric of America was unraveling.
According to German political philosopher and “Crown Jurist” of the Nazi regime Carl Schmitt, this state of affairs is entirely predictable. Schmitt was a fervent opponent of political liberalism and criticized the post-Great War Weimar republic for its lack of a politically sovereign president and enthusiastically supported Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party. Schmitt’s most well-known theory is the so-called “friend-enemy distinction,” which states that the core tenet of all political discourse is the distinction between friends and enemies on the public level. Two groups will only experience true enmity if war and mutual violence are realistic possibilities; therefore, all binary antagonism has the threat of violence at its root. This antagonism can be caused by any factor that unites one group of people against another: class, race, religion, or ideology.
Schmitt further developed this theory as a justification for Nazi takeover by arguing that all political communities need a sovereign leader who can unite the people behind a shared friend-enemy framework.
Ironically, although Schmitt was a fervent anti-liberal, his political framework has been adopted by many on the American Left today. Schmitt believed that a political community was by definition a binary entity; one could either be inside the community (a friend) or outside it (an enemy). For this reason, there could be no such thing as a third party within a political community. Take the transgender movement, which dubs people either “allies” or “bigots,” with no possible middle ground. To live within the friend-enemy paradigm eliminates any possibility of meaningful discussion of ideas by injecting the urgency of an existential crisis into every political scenario.
The idea of the friend-enemy distinction leaves out something very important to all human relationships: love. Not love in the sense of “do whatever makes you happy,” but love in the sense of 1 Corinthians 13 – the steadfast, patient, unwavering charity that desires the good of others above our own. If violence, whether political or physical, is the only way to prevent our enemies from infringing on us, Christ’s command to love our enemies falls flat. According to Schmitt’s philosophy, giving your enemy food and drink does not plant seeds of conviction but puts the other members of your political community at risk.
Christians cannot fail to identify the existence of enemies. Christ warns His followers to beware of false prophets, whom he describes as wolves disguised as sheep in order to gain admission to the flock. He commands them to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” as they confront the enmity and persecution of the world.
But as followers of Christ, our first response to hostility from the world should not be violence and hatred, but compassion for those who are walking in darkness. Certainly, the use of physical force is sometimes necessary to protect the innocent from those who would harm them, but it cannot be the default approach.
So what does it look like for Christian conservatives today to love those who advocate for wicked policies like abortion and transgender surgeries? It looks like standing for truth without forgetting that these people, too, are created in the image of God. They are deceived, lost, and missing the one thing that makes sense of the world, the only source of fulfillment: Christ Jesus, Lord and Savior.
The Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians reminds Christians that their enemy is not flesh and blood, but the spiritual forces of evil that fight for control of this world. As Christians, we know that our enemies will not win the day. “On this rock I will build my church,” the Lord Jesus told Simon Peter, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
It is this knowledge that frees us to love our enemies. Christ has already overcome the world, and we need not fear that the world will overcome us when we truly abide in Him.
